Google Postpones Return to Office Yet Again
- Paul Thurrott
- Dec 03, 2021
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27
Google has again postponed the date that it expects workers to return to the office. But this time, it isn’t offering a new return date.
News of the delay comes via CNBC, which has viewed an email from Google vice president Chris Rackow to employees explaining the change. The search giant will no longer require workers to return to the office on January 10 as it had announced this past August.
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Instead of a new return date, Mr. Rackow says that Google will wait for a “stable, long-term working environment” before it requires workers to return. But the firm still encourages workers to come into the office when “conditions allow, to reconnect with colleagues in person and start regaining the muscle memory of being in the office more regularly.”
“We will be re-learning our working rhythms together in 2022, which brings new opportunities and new challenges as we experiment with more flexible ways of working,” he adds in the email.
Most Google employees will only be required to work from the office three days a week whenever something close to normal returns. But the firm had previously scheduled return dates of October 22 and December 17, but a disturbing number of anti-vaxxer idiots and the resulting COVID-19 variants like Delta have prolonged the pandemic. And with a new variant called Omicron now making its way around the globe, uncertainty reigns yet again.
Google has confirmed the news delivered in the internal email.
“We’ll continue to determine when offices reopen and start the hybrid work week based on local conditions, which are dynamic and vary greatly across locations,” a Google statement notes.