Microsoft preparing to allow workers back in the office
Microsoft has joined other corporate giants in assessing the best way to bring workers back to the office, a year after the pandemic sent home employees, who had to learn how to be productive on video conference calls while juggling interruptions from families, pets and the doorbell.
The tech giant announced this week that it would begin allowing more workers back into its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, starting on Monday, while also acknowledging that work life may never be the same.
In this stage of reopening, which Microsoft described as Step 4 in a six-step “dial,” the Redmond campus will give some 57,000 nonessential employees the choice to work from the office, home or a combination of both. Microsoft will also continue to require employees to wear masks and maintain social distancing.
Microsoft plans to open its office without restrictions only once the virus acts “more like an endemic virus such as the seasonal flu,” Kurt DelBene, an executive vice president, wrote on the company blog. But even then, office life for Microsoft’s 160,000 employees is not likely to look like what it did before the pandemic.
“Once we reach a point where COVID-19 no longer presents a significant burden on our communities, and as our sites move to the open stage of the dial, we view working from home part of the time (less than 50 percent) as standard for most roles,” DelBene wrote.
President Joe Biden has said he is hoping for a return to normalcy by July 4, but there are still uncertainties, like new variants, local surges and whether the workforce is ready.
How to balance these challenges with the desire to return to the office has varied in large part by the requirements and goals of individual industries.
Some, like finance, have been more aggressive with returning workers to the office, premised on the belief that in-person working is best suited for the networking and training the profession demands.
JPMorgan Chase is planning to bring its interns into its Manhattan office, as it did last summer, and it is continuing to build its new headquarters on Park Avenue in New York City.
Others have been more open to more substantial changes.
Technology giant Google has said it is testing a “flexible workweek.”
Major retailer Target is cutting about a third of its space in its Twin Cities headquarters as it plans for remote work by many employees to become a permanent part of office life.
Microsoft sought to put numbers behind its decision, with the results of a survey of more than 30,000 full-time and self-employed workers.
Nearly three-quarters said they wanted flexible remote work options to continue, and 46% said they were planning to move this year now that they could work remotely. Self-assessed productivity remained high, but 54% of respondents feel overworked.