The list of major companies requiring employees to return to the office, from The Washington Post to Amazon
Nathan Stirk/Getty Images
- Many major companies are requiring employees to return to the office full or part-time.
- Business Insider compiled a running list of the companies calling employees back.
- The list includes companies like Starbucks, Amazon, and BlackRock.
In September, Amazon mandated corporate workers return to the office five days a week beginning January 2.
In December, Business Insider first reported that AT&T is following suit and expecting employees to be in the office 40 hours a week starting in the new year.
The two business giants are just one of the many companies calling their employees back to the office following the pandemic as COVID-19 restrictions have eased.
The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, told employees this week they would be required to return to the office five days a week, according to a memo obtained by Business Insider.
Other major employers, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, have also abandoned the hybrid attendance policy they adopted during the pandemic and instead implemented full return-to-office mandates.
Several executives and leaders have said they believe productivity increases when workers are in the office together, while others hope to increase in-person collaboration. Even some CEOs who previously praised the flexibility of remote work have started backpedaling, pressuring workers to comply with RTO mandates with threats to track attendance or even fire employees who don't comply.
Here's a list, in alphabetical order, of major companies requiring employees to return to offices. Business Insider will update this list regularly.
Amazon
CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a September 16 memo that Amazon would be pulling the plug on remote work starting next year.
"We've decided that we're going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID," Jassy said. "When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant."
The CEO cited easier employee collaboration and connection and said in-person work would strengthen the company's culture, echoing his February 2023 memo, which mandated employees spend at least three days a week in the office.
Not everyone agrees. Some Amazon employees have taken to an internal Slack channel to criticize the new RTO policy, Business Insider's Ashley Stewart first reported, with one staffer writing that it is "significantly more strict and out of its mind" than pre-Covid operations.
"This is not 'going back' to how it was before," they wrote. "It's just going backwards."
The critical reaction is reminiscent of employees' response to last year's surprise return-to-office rule. Thousands of Amazon workers joined a Slack channel to share their thoughts, with some even organizing to file a petition against the change.
Apple
In August 2022, Apple's senior leaders told workers they had to return to the office at least three days a week after previously requiring two days a week. CEO Tim Cook said the decision was meant to restore "in-person collaboration." Some employees fought back and issued a petition shortly after the announcement, arguing that staffers can do "exceptional work" from home.
Despite the pushback, Apple's hybrid work program launched the following month and is still in place.
AT&T
AT&T confirmed to Business Insider that it's requiring all office employees to work on-site five days a week starting in January.
The change follows about a year of AT&T accommodating a hybrid schedule in its widely publicized office push.
"The majority of our employees and leaders never stopped working on location for the full work week — including during the pandemic," a spokesperson for the telecom giant told BI.
AT&T told BI it's updating its facilities amid the policy change.
"As we continue to evolve our model, we are enhancing our facilities and workspaces, adapting our benefits programs, and incorporating best practices to ensure our employees are best equipped to serve our customers," the spokesperson added.
BlackRock
Last year, BlackRock mandated employees return to the office four days a week. The investment firm, which is headquartered in New York City, intended to bring employees into its then newly leased office space — which spans 1 million square feet across 15 floors, according to Hudson Yards.
In a May 2023 memo sent by the company's COO, Rob Goldstein, and the head of human resources, Caroline Heller, the execs wrote: "Career development happens in teaching moments between team members, and it is accelerated during market-moving moments, when we step up and get into the mix. All of this requires us to be together in the office."
Additionally, the memo notified staffers that the firm is giving them the opportunity to work remotely for two weeks during a time period that is relevant in their country, in an effort to offer "seasonal flexibility."
Chipotle
The fast-food chain announced last summer that corporate workers work in the office four days a week, Bloomberg reported. Chipotle had previously required workers to show up three days a week, according to the report.
Citigroup
Citigroup asked its 600 US workers, who were previously eligible to work remotely, to return to the office full-time, Bloomberg reported. In a memo released by the investment firm in May, the majority of staff are reportedly still able to work a hybrid schedule, with up to two days a week outside the office.
HSBC Holding Plc and Barclays Plc also followed suit, mandating workers to come into the office five days a week, according to the report.
Vaccinated Citigroup employees across the US were asked to return to the office for at least two days a week in March 2022, an internal memo obtained by Reuters said.
Dell
Dell told its sales staff to return to the office five days a week starting on September 30. Previously, the company let US employees pick between working remotely or following a hybrid schedule with about three days a week in the office.
September's sales-team mandate came with just a few days' notice, sending employees with kids into a hurry to find childcare, Business Insider reported.
Disney
In a January 2023 memo obtained by Business Insider, CEO Bob Iger told workers that starting that March, any Disney staff member working "in a hybrid fashion" would need to return to Disney's offices four days a week.
In response, over 2,300 employees signed a petition asking Iger to reconsider the mandate.
"This policy will slow, or even reverse, our post-COVID recovery and growth by creating critical resource shortages and causing irreplaceable institutional knowledge loss," signees wrote, according to The Washington Post.
Goldman Sachs
In March 2022, CEO David Solomon told Fortune that the company was asking employees to return to the office five days a week. Seven months later, he told CNBC that about 65% of staffers were working in the office.
However, some staff have failed to follow the policy a year into its implementation, causing senior managers to become frustrated and Goldman Sachs to further crack down on employees to return to the office full-time.
In March 2022, Google employees in the San Francisco Bay Area and "several other US locations" were told to return to the office for at least three days a week starting the following month.
Last year, however, the company tightened RTO expectations, telling staff in an email that office attendance would factor into their performance reviews.
Google's Chief People Officer Fiona Cicconi told workers in the memo that requests to work remotely full time will now be considered "by exception only."
Some employees expressed feeling "frustrated" with the new policy. One staffer previously told Business Insider, "We don't like being micromanaged like school kids."
IBM
IBM has made its feelings on in-person work strictly clear — telling managers to either come into offices or get out.
The company asked all its US managers to report to an office or client location at least three days a week, according to a January memo viewed by Bloomberg.
A source told the outlet that staff would have to live within 50 miles of an IBM office or client location. The memo reportedly told employees they had until August to complete their relocation arrangements, and those who were unable to comply with the new policy must "separate from IBM."
CEO Arvind Krishna previously told the news outlet that employees' careers could suffer if they work from home. He said that although he wasn't forcing his own staffers back to the office, he thought remote workers may struggle to get promotions.
JPMorgan
In April 2023, JPMorgan announced to employees in a memo that all managing directors must work in the office five days a week. The memo also reminded other workers of the current policy of working in-person a minimum of three days a week.
Despite some pushback from employees, CEO Jamie Dimon doubled down on the policy, saying disgruntled workers can choose to go elsewhere.
"I completely understand why someone doesn't want to commute an hour and a half every day, totally got it," he told The Economist. "Doesn't mean they have to have a job here either."
The company has also been collecting data on staff activity, including tracking attendance.
Meta
Meta updated its remote work policies in September 2023, requiring employees to head into the office three days a week.
It had also stopped offering remote work in new job listings. People familiar with the company previously told BI that hiring managers could no longer post new jobs that list the work location as "remote" or outside of an existing office.
The company doubled down on its RTO efforts in June of this year, telling workers that their attendance would be tracked daily and failure to comply could lead to termination.
However, some employees returning to the office said they were met with a lack of space and privacy, with one worker calling the mandate "a mess."
Redfin
In April last year, real estate company Redfin announced an updated return-to-office policy via a memo from CEO Glenn Kelman.
The memo noted that starting July 2023, Redfin would require "headquarters employees" who live within 20 miles of the company's Seattle, San Francisco, and Frisco offices to work from the office for a full day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Those who live beyond the 20-mile radius are required to visit the office in-person once a quarter for a day or more of meetings, the company said.
In order to hold employees accountable, the memo included a "no-exceptions" section, reading that "to determine your distance from an office, we'll use Google Maps, with the distance from your home address measured in miles driven over roads by car."
Salesforce
Salesforce told employees in an internal memo seen by The San Francisco Standard that the majority of workers have to be in an office four to five days a week as of October 1.
The new policy is mandated for select staff in sales, workplace services, data center engineering, and on-site support technicians, according to the memo.
Early last year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revised the company's annual strategic plan, including return-to-office mandates, according to a draft shared in an internal Slack message viewed by Business Insider.
The updated draft return-to-office policy required nonremote employees to work three days a week in the office and employees in "non-remote" and "customer-facing" roles to work four days a week. Engineers must work from the office 10 days per quarter, down from 20 in the initial draft, which was updated based on employee feedback.
Snap
Snap implemented a new mandate in September 2023, requiring employees to work in an office at least four days a week. The change represented a shift from the company's former "remote first" policy, which allowed employees to work from home or elsewhere.
Employees previously told BI that some managers told them the company is able to track workers' WiFi connections to see who is complying.
Starbucks
In a January 2023 memo to corporate staffers, then-CEO Howard Schultz said employees within commuting distance would be required to return to the office at least three days a week.
Schultz said some staff had failed to "meet their minimum promise of one day a week" and also pointed out that Starbucks baristas didn't have the "privilege" of working from home. The executive had previously said he "pleaded" with workers to come back to the office.
Starbucks employees responded by signing an open letter protesting the company's return-to-office mandate.
In September, former Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol took over as CEO of the coffee chain.
In October, the company threatened to fire staff if they did not comply with the RTO policy, Bloomberg first reported, citing an internal memo.
Beginning in January, the company plans to initiate a "standardized process" to hold workers accountable to the hybrid schedule at the team level, where consequences will cover "up to, and including, separation," according to the email obtained by Bloomberg.
Employees, however, may request exemptions due to physical or mental medical reasons.
Tesla
In June 2022, Tesla employees were notified of a mandatory return-to-office policy.
The email from Elon Musk included wording such as "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned," and noted that everyone at Tesla must work from the office at least 40 hours a week.
Musk, who has called remote work "morally wrong," nodded to his frequent presence at Tesla factories as the reason for the business' success. "If I had not done that, Tesla would long ago have gone bankrupt," he wrote in the email.
Ubisoft
In September, Ubisoft, the France-based maker of the popular "Assassin's Creed" and "Far Cry" video game series, ordered its staff worldwide to return to the office three days a week.
French workers at the video game maker went on strike on October 15 over the RTO mandate.
X
After buying X, formerly Twitter, in 2022, Musk told employees that not showing up to an office when they're able to was the same as a resignation.
Musk also told staffers in an email that remote work was no longer allowed and that employees were expected to be in the office for at least 40 hours a week unless given explicit approval to work elsewhere.
In 2023, X, then Twitter, National Labor Relations Board filed a formal complaint saying that X had illegally fired an employee who complained about Musk's RTO policy.
The complaint said that Yao Yue, a principal software engineer, criticized the mandate, tweeting, "don't resign, let him fire you." She also posted, "don't be fired. Seriously" in a company Slack channel.
Yue was then fired five days later and told it was due to violating an unspecified company policy.
Uber
In a memo obtained by Business Insider, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees that beginning in April 2022, Uber staffers in 35 of the company's locations were required to return to the office at least half the time. He added that on other days, staffers were allowed to work remotely and that some could be entirely remote if they got clearance from their managers.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently said remote work took away some of Uber's "most frequent customers," adding that "there is an audience who kind of stopped using us as frequently as they used to."
Walmart
Along with slashing hundreds of jobs, Walmart also asked previously remote employees in the US to move to offices.
Staffers located in smaller offices in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto are additionally being directed to the company's central hubs, including its headquarters in Arkansas or New Jersey, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The retail giant will still permit hybrid schedules as long as workers come in-person most of the time, according to the outlet.
The Washington Post
William Lewis, CEO and publisher of The Washington Post, told staffers in early November that they would be required to return to the office five days a week, according to a memo obtained by BI.
"I want that great office energy for us every day," Lewis wrote, referring to the energy in the office during election week. "I am reliably informed that is how it used to be here before Covid, and it's important we get this back."
All employees were expected to return to the office by June 2, 2025, while managers were expected to return by February 3, 2025.
After starting remote work in 2020, the Post previously required employees to return to the office three days a week in early 2022.
The announcement at the Post came shortly after Amazon's return-to-office mandate. The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and executive chairman.
Zoom
Zoom, the darling of remote work, said in 2022 that less than 2% of staffers work in person full time. However, last year, the video-calling company asked employees to return to the office.
Workers living within 50 miles of one of its offices were mandated to work there at least two days a week.
"We believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning employees that live near an office need to be onsite two days a week to interact with their teams – is most effective for Zoom," a spokesperson previously said in a statement. "As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers."
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/gjs6iD9
No comments