Facebook,Google,Amazon delays return to the office plan

Tech giant Google has push back its return office date to January 2022. CEO, Sunder Pichai, in a letter to employees, has informed that the company is extending its voluntary return to work policy until January 10, 2022. The company has taken this decision following a surge in Covid-19 cases. Pichai said that even though the situation has eased in some locations, the pandemic continues to wreak havoc in some parts of the world. Considering such factors, Google will extend their global voluntary return-to-office policy through January 10, 2022, to give more Googlers flexibility and choice as they ramp back.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been a humbling challenge for all of us and I continue to be impressed by the way our teams are navigating through it. In spite of these challenges, I’m happy to say that a large number of offices globally are already open for business, and we are welcoming back tens of thousands of Googlers on a voluntary basis. Given that conditions around the world are still highly variable, I wanted to share how we’re planning to approach the next few months,” Pichai noted in the letter. Post the January 10 deadline, Google will end voluntary work-from-home based on local conditions. However, he said that return to the office may vary across the Google offices. Pichai said that it would give a 30-day heads-up before expecting the employees to return to the office.

 Earlier, Google employees were asked to resume work from the office by October 2021. However, the deadline has been pushed due to the rise in the Covid-19 delta variant. Facebook too delayed its return to office till January 2022 in the US following a spike in the COVID-19 cases because of the delta variant. Facebook had earlier planned to let in fully vaccinated employees with masks and covid-appropriate behaviour but that has been put on hold till January. Amazon had also announced last week that it would not reopen office till January 2022 at least.