BioWare just joined the growing number of studios accepting remote work. This comes after nearly two years of job creation amid disruptions caused by the pandemic. The company is currently transitioning from temporary to permanent policy measures.
“This has been another challenging year with both work and home life continuing to be disrupted by the uncertainty of the global pandemic,” Studio General Manager Gary McKay said in a statement. statement on January 6, 2022. “We had to keep thinking on our feet to adapt to changing circumstances.” He went on to say that “continuing to work under the pressure of a world pandemic is not easy. We had to adopt new tools, processes, and ways of communicating. “
McKay noted that the work disruption caused by the pandemic has caused BioWare to change the way the company handles remote work. The solution seems to have been to reduce time in the office and spend more time working from home. The company also changed its hiring practices so that new employees would no longer have to move to Austin or Edmonton.
“Our goal is to work on the things that people love to do from home while also giving people the opportunity to return to the office with more flexibility,” says MacKay. He also points out that “another subtle but important change we’ve made is in the way we hire: in the past, we were only looking for people willing to move to Austin and Edmonton; Now we’re looking for new talent from anywhere in North America and we’ll meet them where they live. ”
These measures appear to be a continuation of previous temporary measures because of the pandemic. “The pandemic has also taught us a lot about how we can work together even while working across North America from hundreds of different locations,” McKay said. “And now, we’re going to take what we’ve learned and apply it to a new working model that will ensure flexibility for everyone in the studio.”
BioWare is just the latest in a long list of companies that have turned to alternative employment arrangements in recent years. Square Enix for example, changed its policy regarding remote work in December 2020. This was also originally conceived as a pandemic response. Similar in tone, the studio behind Bugsnax, Young Horses, adopted a four-day workweek in September 2021. Eidos followed suit a month later in October.
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https://www.thegamer.com/bioware-embraces-remote-work/ BioWare does the work remotely