Ford gives 30,000 employees the option to work from home forever, another sign of workforce transformation

Ford Motor Co. says it will begin phasing in a new remote-office work model, one of the first in the auto industry, giving tens of thousands of employees the option to continue doing their jobs from home indefinitely.

The Dearborn, Mich.-based carmaker announced the new policy during a virtual town hall meeting Wednesday — one year after it sent workers home to wait out the pandemic — and said it would apply to all non-place-dependent workers. The balance between remote and in-person work will depend on the individual employee’s needs and those of their manager, said David Dubensky, chairman and chief executive of Ford Land, the company’s real estate subsidiary.