Apple set a September 5 deadline for corporate employees to be in the office at least three days a week, marking its latest return attempt after Covid-19 spikes delayed its plans several times.
The company will require employees to work from the office
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and a regular third day that will be determined by
individual teams. That is a shift from Apple's original plan, which called for
in-person work on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. The company notified
employees of the new approach on Monday.
The Cupertino, California-based tech giant has been working
toward getting its employees back in the office since at least June 2021, when
it first announced the three-day policy. But virus flare-ups forced the company
to push back deadlines, leaving workers on a two-day-a-week schedule. The new
policy will first take effect in Silicon Valley and then spread to other
offices.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the updated
deadline.
Apple has been making other COVID-19 adjustments. The new
policy comes weeks after the company dropped its mask mandate in common areas
of offices. Apple had removed such a requirement at individual desks several
months ago.
The company also held an in-person gathering at its campus
in June to watch a developers conference presentation. That was a first since
2019 and signaled that Apple was inching closer to normal operations.
In Santa Clara County, where many of Apple's main offices
are housed, seven-day case averages and daily new COVID case counts have
declined from July, but are still much higher than before the Omicron spikes
earlier in 2022. Still, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
relaxed its COVID-19 recommendations last week.
The iPhone maker has been one of the most stringent
technology companies when it comes to pushing employees back into the office,
irking some staffers, Bloomberg News has reported. Microsoft, Amazon,
Alphabet's Google and others have been more open to remote work in recent
months.
It's a busy time for Apple. The company is gearing up for an
event in September to announce the iPhone 14 and new watches. It's also
preparing updated Mac laptops and iPad tablets for launch later this year.
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