New Farmers Group CEO Raul Vargas has reversed a prior company decision to allow most workers to do their jobs from home by instituting a hybrid work schedule starting in September.

Despite some employees reportedly making major life changes — such as selling homes and relocating — after being told they could do their jobs from home, Vargas told employees they’d have to come to the office several days a week. The shift in thinking made national news, with the Wall Street Journal quoting outraged employees on company message boards.

Vargas took over as CEO at the start of the year after being promoted in October 2022.

“As business conditions — such as emerging from the pandemic — change, so must business approaches,” Carly Kraft, spokesperson for Los Angeles-based Farmers, said in an email to Insurance Journal.

Kraft said employees within 50 miles of a Farmers office must come into work at least three days per week.

“Our intent is to foster greater collaboration, creativity and innovation while also providing better opportunities for learning, training, mentoring, career development and organic interaction,” Kraft said. “Based on business need and different types of positions, roughly 60 percent of Farmers employees will be hybrid, while other roles will be either virtual or in-office.”

Kraft said virtual work made sense during the pandemic, but “adopting a hybrid approach in September 2023 is what makes sense for our organization now.”

“While many employees are excited about the opportunities ahead, we recognize that not all business decisions will be supported by all employees,” she added. “However, we have approached this with a great deal of thoughtfulness, including giving employees three months’ advance notice so they have time to adjust and make arrangements.”

According to data from Scoop Technologies, a software firm that said it has developed what it calls the Flex Index to monitor workplace strategies of thousands of companies, 52 percent of insurance companies mandated hybrid arrangements in May, up from 34 percent in February.