META, formerly known as Facebook, has announced it will fully reopen its US offices on January 31, while allowing employees the opportunity to postpone their return to office for three to five months.
The social media platform behemoth said that the relocation of the office was designed to give its employees a chance to adapt when returning to office.
In August, META said it intended to postpone its plan to return American workers to their office until January 2022 due to ongoing concerns about COVID-19. Janelle Gale, META’s vice-president of labor, said in a statement that META saw that some workers were not ready to return.
For those wishing to return in January we look forward to providing ongoing office information that continues to prioritize health and safety.
We also realize that some have not been able to return. We continue to offer a variety of options to choose what works best for them, so that our employees can make informed decisions about where they work.
META said some employees will be able to apply for remotely work if they are able to do their work away from the office.
Data, not dates, is what drives our way back to the office, the agency said.
Agencies around the world are being forced to reconsider their strategies for returning to work as the variants of the omicron COVID-19 continue to spread rapidly.
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The center’s VP security officer, Chris Rankow, has written to full-time employees by email that he will wait until the new year to check when US offices can safely return to a stable long-term workplace. No U.S. territories will be eligible for mixed work in January.
Earlier META had intended to return staff to their offices in October with strict vaccination requirements and masks but those plans were scrapped.
