Three days of presence: Microsoft orders employees back to the office
Starting with the area around the Redmond headquarters, Microsoft employees must return to the office three days a week as of February. The rest will follow.
(Image: VDB Photos/Shutterstock.com)
Microsoft employees will have to go back to the office at least three days a week, starting in February for everyone who lives within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of a site in and around Redmond near Seattle. Amy Coleman, Head of HR at the US company, has now announced this in a memo to the workforce. The obligation to be present on the majority of weekdays will then be extended in two further steps, first to the remaining locations in the USA and later to those in the rest of the world, writes Coleman. US magazine The Verge quotes anonymous Microsoft employees as saying that the move is also likely to be aimed at reducing the workforce. “It's not about downsizing,” the manager assures.
Obligation to return against the trend
The HR manager justifies the move with the “clear data” that when people work together on-site, they are more successful. They are more motivated, more efficient, and achieve better results. When developing the AI products “that define this era,” Microsoft needs the energy and dynamism that arise “when smart people work side by side and solve problems together.” At the same time, the flexibility that is valued at Microsoft should not be abandoned. Those affected will now receive a personalized email, and exceptions can then be requested.
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With this step, Microsoft is now also largely abandoning regulations that were introduced after the coronavirus pandemic. Other US companies have already gone much further with the obligation to return to the office; Amazon, for example, ordered all employees back to the office at the beginning of the year. The fact that there were not enough jobs for employees in the first place turned out to be an obstacle. In Germany, on the other hand, the number of employees working from home remains stable, with many in the IT sector in particular working at least partially from home. “Prominent examples of individual companies bringing their employees back to the office remain isolated cases,” the ifo economic institute recently stated.
(mho)
