After years of leading corporate America's adoption of more flexible work policies, global tech companies are enforcing stricter in-office mandates.
Silicon Valley heavyweights including Google parent company Alphabet and chipmaker Intel have recently joined a growing cohort of other tech companies across the United States in demanding more in-person time from its employees, either by revoking remote-work privileges for some employees or increasing the number of days they're required to commute to an office.
Within his first few weeks on the job, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan increased the number of days employees will be required to report to an office, a shift he said was critical to the tech company's broader plans for a corporate shake up.
“I strongly believe that our sites need to be vibrant hubs of collaboration that reflect our culture in action,” Tan said on his first earnings call at the helm of the company. “When we spend time together in person, it fosters more engaging and productive discussion and debate. It drives better and faster decision-making. And it strengthens our connection with colleagues.”
Mountain View, California-based Google — one of the earliest adopters of a hybrid work policy — earlier this month told employees living within 50 miles of an office that they must show up to a physical hub at least three days a week or risk losing their jobs.
“As we’ve said before, in-person collaboration is an important part of how we innovate and solve complex problems,” Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said in a statement.
Push for in-person
While Google's mandate has been in place for the past several years, the ultimatum is the clearest indicator yet of the company's eagerness to get its workers back to the office as well as the newfound leverage Alphabet and other large employers have in enforcing their attendance demands.
Roles that were previously approved for remote work have either had that status revoked or have been told they'll be ineligible for new positions within the company or more susceptible to potential job losses.
At Intel, all employees will be required to work from an office at least four days a week starting in September, a move that will coincide with plans the Santa Clara, California-based company has to lay off as much as 20% of its global workforce. The mandate is a significant step up from the two to three-day requirement Intel has had in place since the early years of the pandemic and will shed a hybrid policy Tan said was "uneven at best."
Amid backlash from their workers, some companies are justifying the mandates by saying the in-office time is more valuable and productive than work done outside of it.
Intel's corporate shake-up plans, for example, land at a point when the iconic chipmaker is racing to turn around three straight years of sales declines in the face of surging artificial intelligence competition.
Other giants such as Amazon, Meta, TikTok and Microsoft have ramped up their in-person requirements, joining other large employers in demanding workers commute to an office as many as five days a week.
Some of the country's largest landlords say stricter in-office mandates are enough to bolster growing optimism that the demand for space will climb as corporate heavyweights push to revert back to their pre-pandemic workweek schedules. The number of CEOs who expected their companies to adopt a full return to a five-day workweek climbed to about 85% from the 64% reported last year, according to a recent KPMG survey.
Google's escalating enforcement of in-office attendance, however, is unlikely to be the panacea many market stakeholders are hoping for in terms of renewed leasing demand or real estate investments.
Company executives recently told analysts that while it plans to increase hiring through the remainder of the year, the company will keep its foot on the brake when it comes to workspace-related investments. Attendance policies aside,
Alphabet executives said they will continue to look at ways the company can stretch each dollar, whether that means slowing the pace of compensation growth or making additional cuts to its real estate footprint.
"We have to be able to repurpose some of these efficiencies into higher-priority investments," Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi recently told analysts. "How do we make sure every dollar is used efficiently? We need to make sure we're investing in how to drive short-term as well as long-term growth."