Meta’s return-to-the-office edict is here: employees back to work

Meta’s mandate that employees must return to the office at least three days a week went into effect on Tuesday – a reversal of the tech giant’s remote working policies put in place during the coronavirus pandemic.

In June, Meta informed its employees that their presence in the office will be required three days a week starting in September.

“We believe distributed working will continue to be important going forward, especially as our technology improves,” a Meta spokesperson told The Post on Tuesday.

“In the near term, our personal focus is to provide a strong, valuable experience for our employees who choose to work remotely, and we are being careful and intentional about where we invest in remote work.”

Weeks before Meta’s new policy went into effect, the company warned employees who violate the mandate could face termination.

“Accountability will be central to this [policy] fair and effective,” Lori Goler, Meta’s head of people, wrote in a memo to employees.

Goler wrote that managers must review employee attendance records on a monthly basis.

“As with other company policies, repeated violations can result in disciplinary action, up to and including a downgrade in performance rating and ultimately termination if left unaddressed,” she wrote.

The policy change comes after Facebook’s parent company allowed all full-time employees to work remotely during the turmoil of the COVID pandemic.

Welcoming the remote working policy at the time, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, stated, “Good work can be done anywhere, and I’m even more optimistic that remote working at scale is possible, especially as remote video presence and virtual reality continue to advance improve.” .”

Zuckerberg struck a different tone in March of this year, when he wrote in a blog post: “Engineers early in their careers, on average, perform better when they work face-to-face with teammates at least three days a week.”

The end of the pandemic prompted companies in the technology, finance and other sectors to call their employees back into the office.

Companies like Apple, Amazon and Google, which originally embraced remote working, have also changed tack and required their employees to return to their desks – typically three days a week.

On Wall Street, companies like Goldman Sachs want their employees to be back in the office five days a week.