Insurance employees reportedly threaten to quit after CEO backtracks on remote-work policy: 'I sold my house and moved closer to my grandkids'

• Insurance company Farmers Group announced changes to the company's remote work policy last month, WSJ reports.
• Most employees will now be required to work from the office three days a week, starting September.
• Since then, many employees have reportedly expressed frustration and anger about the change.

Workers at insurance giant Farmers Group are reportedly threatening to quit or unionize after the company's new CEO backtracked on its remote work policy.

Employees expressed their frustrations with the decision by flooding a Farmers Group internal social media platform with over 2,000 comments, The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed screenshots of the reactions, reported. Workers who commented on the platform said they were considering leaving their jobs or forming a union, with one saying they were hired with the promise that remote work would be allowed moving forward, the Journal reported.

"I sold my house and moved closer to my grandkids," another worker's comment read, according the Journal. "So sad that I made a huge financial decision based on a lie."

The company's CEO Raul Vargas, who took over the position in January, announced last month that most employees would be required to work in office three days a week, the Journal reported.

Farmers Group spokesperson Carly Kraft told Insider over email that the company will shift to this hybrid work policy in September. She added that these employees have three months' notice to "adjust and make arrangements." The hybrid policy change will impact roughly 60% of the company's employees, Kraft wrote.

The policy change is "a blended approach we believe will allow us to continue offering the flexibility that we all value while reaping the benefits of the office environment," the statement continued. "Our intent is to foster greater collaboration, creativity and innovation while also providing better opportunities for learning, training, mentoring, career development and organic interaction."

Vargas's decision mirrors that of a growing list of companies calling workers back to the office — some enforcing return-to-office mandates. Last week, Meta said workers would be required to work three days a week in-office starting in September. Amazon employees recently staged a walk-out to protest the company's return-to-office plans.

Executives who have announced these changes have emphasized a belief that working in-person will boost worker productivity and collaboration. After workers grew accustomed to flexible work policies during the pandemic, these policies are prompting outcry from many workers across industries. 

Some Farmers Group employees had the impression that their former remote policy was a "permanent change," as one worker commented on the internal social media platform, according to the Journal. In 2022, when Jeff Dailey was CEO, working in-person was optional, managers told the publication.

"The decision to embrace virtual work at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 was one that made sense at the time," spokesperson Kraft told Insider, "and adopting a hybrid approach in September 2023 is what makes sense for our organization now."