Apple Planning for Employees to Return to Corporate Offices Soon

Apple plans to start having employees return to its corporate offices around the world in the near future despite the fact that many other tech companies are implementing work-from-home policies through at least the end of 2020, reports Bloomberg.

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Apple plans to bring employees back to its offices in phases over the course of a few months, according to people with knowledge of the company's plans. The first phase, which encompasses staff members unable to work remotely or who are facing challenges working from home, has already begun in some regions. This phase will expand to major offices in late May and early June.

A second phase, which kicks off in July, will see even more employees returned to Apple's global offices, though Apple's plans to have employees return to work are fluid and may change based on local and state stay-at-home orders.

Starting this week, Apple managers are beginning to let employees know if they're in the first phase or a later stage of the process. During the first phase, employees will either be asked to work from the office on a regular basis or only for certain periods of time dependent on their roles.

Some of the first employees to return to work at Apple's Silicon Valley campuses could include those who focus on hardware development. According to Bloomberg, some future hardware initiatives, such as virtual reality and augmented headsets, have been dialed back in recent months due to the limitations of at-home work.

Apple has long emphasized in-person collaboration and has shied away from allowing employees to work from home, which is a factor in its approach to returning to standard working conditions. Facebook and Google have said that most employees will be able to work from home through the end of the year.

Amazon plans to allow office workers to work from home until early October, while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey today said that some Twitter employees can work from home permanently if they choose to do so.

Some Apple employees have been working at Apple's offices throughout the pandemic to keep business critical operations running, which includes those who manage data centers, deploy software, and test hardware. As employees return to work, Apple will implement temperature checks, mask wearing, and social distancing.

In addition to planning for corporate employees to turn to work, Apple has begun opening up some of its Apple Stores. In the United States, retail locations in South Carolina, Alabama, Alaska, and Idaho are reopening this week, and all stores in Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and South Korea have been reopened.

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Top Rated Comments

Saipher Avatar
66 months ago
Companies should look into letting employees who can, and are willing to, permanently work from home, specially in areas where traffic is terrible like the SF Bay Area and LA. So much time and gas are wasted while sitting in traffic, plus all the stress and accidents it causes, it all could be avoided if more people just worked from home.
Score: 32 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Sasparilla Avatar
66 months ago
>> despite the fact that many other tech companies are implementing work-from-home policies through at least the end of 2020 <<

I had to chuckle a bit at this. Apple at its core is a product company, they design, build, sell mostly physical things. Much of the rest of the tech world is mostly just software. Guessing it's harder to do real products from home. JMHO...
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Analog Kid Avatar
66 months ago

Look at Sweden and maybe we can all learn something from them.
The US could learn how to get a 30% higher mortality rate from a 30% lower infection rate, I suppose...

California, I guess, could learn to increase their infection rate by 150% and their mortality rate by 470%...
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tyranne201 Avatar
66 months ago

The mothership will be beaconing you all to return soon!

This will mark a HUGE moment within California once employees return to Apple Campus 2.
??? this will mark nothing. just a bunch of people returning to work and eventually some will get infected. When another wave hits, they will need to send people home again.



Apple understands that this is a pandemic situation that can be controlled through education and precautions. Not like many Governors that turned this into a scamdemic instilling fear and panic into the population using baseless data that the world was going to end if they didn't lockdown everyone at home. Look at Sweden and maybe we can all learn something from them.
Sweden? The country with the highest death rate in the Scandinavia? I think THEY need to learn something from the rest of the world.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
OriginalMacRat Avatar
66 months ago

My goodness, that building is huge.
With rows and rows of side by side desks. Not even cubes.

What could go wrong?
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Rocko99991 Avatar
66 months ago
Cue the 'too soon!' posts.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)