Apple orders corporate staff to return to the office once a week from April 11 after multiple delays

Apple has set April 11 as the deadline for U.S. corporate employees to return to office at least one day a week. 

The iPhone maker has been attempting to bring employees back to office since June last year, but had postponed the move several times as COVID-19 cases rose through autumn and the winter of 2021. 

Employees will be required to work from the office at least one day per week by April 11, CEO Tim Cook said in an internal memo on Friday, according to Bloomberg News.

The memo said that by three weeks after April 11, staff will be required to work twice a week from office and from May 23, at least three days a week, the report added.

Apple joins a wave of technology and finance companies that have begun mandating a return to office as COVID cases ease.

Apple employees will be required to work from the office at least one day per week by April 11, CEO Tim Cook said in an internal memo on Friday

Google from April 4 will require employees back about three days a week in some of its U.S., U.K. and Asia Pacific offices, its first step to end policies that allowed remote work because of COVID concerns.

However, Twitter has said that employees can continue to work from home forever if they wish. 

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet on Thursday that the company is ready to fully open up business travel and all its offices around the world, however, said it would be the employees’ choice on where they work.

Twitter was one of the first in the tech business to urge employees to work remotely when the coronavirus first emerged in the US in mid-March 2020. 

At the time human resources boss Jennifer Christie said that the company would ‘never probably be the same’ in its work culture post-pandemic.

She predicted: ‘People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way.

‘Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.’

An aerial view of Apple Park is seen in Cupertino, California, United States

Apple, on the other hand, has pushed hard to get staff to return to the office, and the company believes in-person collaboration is key to its success.

The company’s push to force workers back into the office has drawn backlash from some employees, 

‘Over the last year we often felt not just unheard, but at times actively ignored,’ Apple employees wrote in a letter to CEO Tim Cook last summer. 

Facebook, also facing pressure from employees, last summer said that all employees would be able to request a permanent remote status.

Annie Dean, who was head of remote work for Facebook earlier in the pandemic and is now vice president of ‘team anywhere’ at software developer Atlassian Corp, told the Wall Street Journal that bosses who force staffers back to offices in rigid ways will lose credibility with their workforces.

‘Our sense of place has been permanently disrupted,’ she said. ‘That’s just not going to be the way that we go forward.’