Meta Platforms is asking its employees to return to their assigned offices three times a week in a new mandate. This will begin in September as Meta joins other tech companies ending remote work.
Return-To-Office Policy
Office workers were notified by Meta about its new-remote policy, sounding the alarms of employees returning to the office. According to a report from Bloomberg, Meta will now require employees to work in the office three days a week beginning in September this year. This makes Meta the latest tech company to implement an RTO policy.
The company stated that this will not impact existing workers who primarily work remotely. Through this effort, Meta believes that the employees can make a meaningful impact both from the office and at home as they commit to distributed work between remote and in-person work.
Additionally, the new mandated policy will help the company's broader push to work more efficiently. As per the company's spokesperson, "We're also committed to continuously refining our model to foster the collaboration, relationships, and culture necessary for employees to do their best work."
Extending Remote Work
As per CNBC's report, Meta extended its remote-work policy to all full-time employees in June 2021. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg believed that good work can get done anywhere as he is optimistic that remote work at scale is possible. However, this latest effort from Meta has been discussed by the management for quite some time now.
Last March, Zuckerberg hinted that an internal analysis showed that engineers earlier in their careers perform better on average when working in person with teammates at least three times a week. LinkedIn reported that he then encouraged its employees in that same post in finding more chances to work together in person.
Aside from Meta, many companies have also been reversing course on their previous remote-work plans, including Google and Amazon. Similar to Meta, employees from these companies were also called to return to their physical offices at least three days a week.
Meta's Year of Efficiency
Meta also reduced its workforce this year, affecting thousands of employees last March. This follows multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few months to flatten its organization and cut teams it deems non-essential, considering that 2023 was hailed by Meta as the Year of Efficiency.
Impacted employees were given 16 weeks of base pay and additional two weeks for every year of service with no cap, paid PTO time, RSU besting, health insurance for six months, three-month support for career services, and immigration support.
Zuckerberg took accountability for these decisions, knowing that this is tough for everyone, especially for those who are impacted. For now, Meta will be focusing its investments on a small number of high-priority growth areas. While teams will grow meaningfully, some teams will stay flat or shrink over this year.
