Phoenix Employees Angered as Management Cuts Work-From-Home to One Day a Week

Bitterness is growing among employees at Israel’s largest insurance company. Calcalist has learned that Phoenix management has announced a reduction in remote work days to one day a week, compared with two days a week as had been customary since the start of the Iron Swords War.

Management, led by CEO Eyal Ben Simon, decided that because the Iron Swords War and its effects have eased, employees should work four days from the office. The decision was delivered to employees on Tuesday and is expected to take effect before July-August, that is, during the summer vacation period, when workers would prefer to be at home more because of their children’s school holidays.

The main opponent of management’s move is the workers’ committee. The committee, headed by Oren Shmidov, approached the Histadrut labor federation and asked it to intervene. A hybrid arrangement of just one home-working day during the work week is standard in the finance sector, but if a more flexible standard becomes established, the change can be viewed as a deterioration in working conditions. In any case, the Histadrut has decided not to intervene for now, since the right to at least two work-from-home days is not anchored in the employees’ collective agreement.

The committee, whether through the Histadrut or directly, is expected to open talks with company management in an effort to soften the decision. The move by Phoenix management is especially sensitive because elections for the Phoenix workers’ committee chairmanship will be held in about two weeks. Shmidov has served as committee chairman since August 2018.

Phoenix’s latest collective agreement was signed in May last year. The agreement included details of the employees’ move to Phoenix’s new campus in Rishon LeZion and covered 2,500 company employees, but, as noted, it did not include remote-work arrangements.

According to committee sources, the committee preferred to anchor improvements in employees’ salaries and provide incentives in the form of equity compensation through restricted stock units, RSUs, worth NIS 40 million. The restricted stock granted to the 2,500 Phoenix employees covered by the collective agreement amounted to 781,000 shares, approved in July 2025. These shares are to be released in equal installments over the next three years, with the first third due to be released by the end of the month.

The value of the restricted shares at today’s share price, NIS 171.7, is NIS 134 million, meaning employees are expected to receive about NIS 45 million this month alone. Not all of the amount is allocated to insurance company employees, but also includes Phoenix Group employees such as workers at Gamma credit company, the investment house and others. Phoenix Group employs 5,170 people.

The Phoenix workers’ committee said: “Last Tuesday, company management unilaterally announced its intention to reduce the hybrid work arrangement to one work-from-home day a week, without holding prior dialogue with the workers’ committee. The workers’ committee emphasizes that it is committed to labor relations based on dialogue, cooperation and mutual respect, and calls on company management to engage in substantive dialogue on the matter.” Regarding the restricted shares, the committee said, “Under the collective agreement signed by the workers’ committee about a year ago, Phoenix employees were allocated shares worth about NIS 40 million. Since then, the share price has jumped by about 160 percent, so the value of the allocation has grown by a factor of 2.6. This coming weekend, company employees will receive the first installment of the share allocation plan, which is one-third of the total shares granted under the agreement.”

Phoenix did not provide a response.