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Amazon sent a message to its employees early this week, telling them to return to their offices or they will be switched to part-time work, joining a number of tech companies that have made a similar decision, in what seemed like the end of the “work from home” culture after about 4 years of peaking with the coronavirus pandemic.
The quarantine conditions during the pandemic imposed the “work from home” method in most parts of the world, and it quickly spread as a practical solution in light of the lockdown imposed by most countries of the world during that period.
Even after the pandemic ended, the work-from-home policy continued to flourish, with many even considering it a time of decline in office work for certain sectors.
But recently, many major global institutions such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have begun to review this policy, as their managements have found that working from the office increases productivity, greatly improves the bonding and cooperation between colleagues, and strengthens teamwork skills among employees.
Here are the most prominent global companies and institutions that have decided to cancel the work-from-home policy and return to offices, either partially or completely, according to the Business Insider website.
Apple
In August 2022, Apple’s top executives asked employees to work from the office three days a week. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the decision was made to restore employee engagement to its previous levels.
Although several employees at the company demanded that the work-from-home policy continue, claiming that they were able to do exceptional work from home, the company has stuck to its decision to this day.
In March 2022, Google sent a message to its employees in San Francisco and some other US locations asking them to return to the office at least three days a week, before tightening the screws even further and emphasizing that attendance would be a key factor in performance evaluations.
In a memo from Google’s Chief People Officer Fiona Ciccone, it was clearly stated that “from now on, working from home will be considered exceptional.”
Meta
In September 2023, Meta, the owner of Facebook and WhatsApp, updated its work-from-home policy and asked its employees to work from the office 3 days a week, and it also stopped adding remote work to new employment contracts.
In June of this year, the company notified its employees that their attendance would be monitored every two days, warning that failure to do so could result in termination of the contract.
Tesla
In June 2022, Elon Musk sent a letter to his employees titled “Mandatory Return to Office Policy,” which included strict words like “If you don’t show up to the office, we will assume you have resigned,” and emphasized that every employee must work at least 40 hours a week.
Musk has clear views on working from home, which he sees as “morally wrong,” pointing to his constant appearances at Tesla factories, saying: “If I hadn’t done this, Tesla would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.”
Disney
In a 2023 memo, Disney CEO Bob Iger told employees they would have to return to the office at least four days a week, prompting about 2,300 employees to sign a petition calling for the decision to be reconsidered. “This policy will slow pandemic recovery and growth by creating resource shortages and causing irreplaceable loss of institutional knowledge,” the memo read, according to The Washington Post.
Zoom
Believe it or not, even the company that built most of its success on the idea of remote work has abandoned this policy with its employees. We are talking here about Zoom, whose video conferencing application is the basis of remote work.
In 2022, no more than 2% of Zoom employees worked from the office, but late last year, the company required those within a 50-mile radius of its headquarters to return to the office at least two days a week.
It is true what they say: If the remote employer is a slacker, then the norm for corporate people is to work from the office!
