Careem goes remote-first, will allow employees to work from home on a permanent basis

Careem is going remote-first, giving its employees across 36 offices around the region the option to work from home on a permanent basis, it announced today. We’ve seen many technology companies in Silicon Valley extend the work-from-home policy until the end of 2021 and some including Twitter announce it as a permanent option.

But that is obviously not the case in the region. With this decision, Dubai-headquartered Careem has become one of the first big tech players of the region to introduce work-from-home as a permanent option for its workforce.

“We believe it is the future of work that is good for business and more flexible for colleagues. Moreover, it is deeply aligned with our cultural values of ownership and trust,” said Mudassir Sheikha, co-founder and CEO of Careem, announcing the decision in a social media post.

Mudassir and Careem’s Director of Talent Ella Fordham shared the details about the decision in a LinkedIn Live session earlier this afternoon.

The employees have been given the option to work from home which means they could still choose to come to office and work from there if they wish to. Careem will continue to keep its offices as they will be repurposed as collaboration spaces, said company’s Director of Talent, announcing the decision. She also said that working remotely is now the default way of working at Careem.

The company had first introduced work-from-home during Covid-19 across all its offices. Careem CEO said that only 10 percent of its colleagues had expressed interest in coming back to the office.

Even though Careem is introducing the option to work from home, it doesn’t mean that an employee who works at Careem UAE will be able to move to Egypt, Pakistan, or any other country, and work from there.

Answering a question, Ella Fordham explained that every employee will get 60 calendar days every year to work from anywhere in the world. But for the rest of the year, they will have to be in their contracted country. We’re still trying to confirm but it seems that the employees, according to the new policy, are free to work from anywhere in their contracted country throughout the year.

She also said that the company will not be introducing any new allowance for people to work from home but might repurpose the travel allowance it currently offers to its employees for this.

We’ve reached out to Careem to learn more details about this and will update the story if we hear back from them.