Future of Work 
It was a big week for return to office announcements, with tech giants Google, Twitter and Apple updating their plans.
Announcements are being made in quick succession with company leaders organizing their strategy around who makes the first move. Here’s what happened last week:
[March 2nd] Google‘s Bay Area employees will return by April 4th under a hybrid model with the expectation of being in the office at least 3 days a week. They have continued to mandate that workers who come to the office are vaccinated, unless their manager has approved an accommodation.
[March 3rd] Twitter‘s return has a company wide reopening starting March 15, while leaving it to the employee to decide where they want to work. Back in May 2021, Twitter was the first large U.S. company to allow employees to work from home “forever.”
[March 4th] Apple has mandated corporate employees to begin their return to the office 1 day per week starting April 11, with a gradual introduction. 3 weeks thereafter, they’ll be required to be in the office twice a week and on May 23, there will be a requirement to be in on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Prior Announcements
Microsoft opened their Washington and Bay area offices on February 28th. Plans for their other locations around the U.S. to reopen “as conditions allow”. They were one of the first big employers to shut down offices in March 2020.
Meta is bringing back workers at the end of March but intends to let some employees work from home indefinitely. They have also stated that employees returning to the office will require a COVID-19 booster.
4 answers to the question “why now?”
1. Work from home levels are dropping.
Employees are tired of working from home and are looking forward to returning.
For many of you, I know that returning to the office represents a long-awaited milestone and a positive sign that we can engage more fully with the colleagues who play such an important role in our lives. For others, it may also be an unsettling change.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
2. Digital team transparency continues to be an issue.
In a recent article posted on Techcouver, there are a number of key themes that leaders haven’t solved when working remotely:
- noisy floods of app notifications
- answering and sending messages at all times of the day (and waiting for responses)
- continually searching through tools for information and project updates
- enduring endless status meetings
3. COVID-19 cases are beginning to drop.
John Casey, Google’s VP of Global Benefits, reached out to staff expressing that the company made the decision for the Bay Area’s return after a “steady decline in cases that we continue to see, and the improved safety measures” at its campus in Mountain View, California, among other neighbouring sites.
4. Big Real Estate Bets
Major tech employers has invested in prime real estate – whether by purchasing or committing to long term leases. These employers would like to capitalize on their investments. Below are a few notable transactions:
- Google’s purchase of St. John’s Terminal from Oxford Properties in Manhattan for $2.1 billion (Sept 2021)
- Apple acquired 4 buildings they were previously leasing in Cupertino for $450 million (Sept 2021)
- Google purchased a $1 billion office building in London’s West End (Jan 2022)
- Meta inked a 589,000 sq.ft. lease deal in Austin Texas (Jan 2022)
