The new office return date for Capital One workers? Try 2022
January is shaping up to be the new September for many major U.S. companies to summon workers back to long-deserted offices, as the COVID-19 Delta variant trips up employers eager to normalize their operations.
On Thursday, banking company Capital One, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, said it no longer expects workers to return to the office by Nov. 2, its previously slated target date for bringing back employees to the physical workplace.
Capital One, which employs 52,000 people, said it is not yet prepared to open its U.S. offices given the still-unpredictable nature of the virus and the fact that young children remain ineligible for vaccination. Capital One declined to set a new, firm date by which workers are expected back at their desks given that safety precautions are in flux and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends that masks be worn indoors.
Capital One expects to adopt a hybrid work model sometime in 2022, according to a company statement.
"Given the continued fluid nature of the situation, a decision was also made not to attempt to forecast a specific date for a full-scale reopening of U.S. offices. Associates will be provided 30 days advance notice before any decision to fully reopen U.S. offices in 2022 - moving into a destination hybrid work approach - is made," the statement read.
Capital One committed to hybrid work in late June, comprising both in-office and virtual work on Mondays and Fridays. It's the latest American corporation to publicly acknowledge the ongoing risks and challenges of reconvening employees in offices.
Joining Google and Ford
In late August, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced an extension of the tech giant's voluntary work-from-home policy from October 18 to January 10, 2022.
In an email to employees, Pichai said that while tens of thousands of Googlers are being welcomed back to the company's offices on a voluntary basis, "In many parts of the world the pandemic continues to create uncertainty."
Given these variable conditions, Pichai said the company is extending its voluntary work-from-home period through January 10, 2022.
"Beyond January 10, we will enable countries and locations to make determinations on when to end voluntary work-from-home based on local conditions, which vary greatly across our offices," Pichai said. "To make sure everyone has ample time to plan, you'll have a 30-day heads-up before you're expected back in the office."
The company employs some 135,000 people, with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and satellite offices employing thousands in New York City and other major business hubs.
Automaker Ford is also delaying its return to the office. The company recently announced that some workers will continue to work remotely at least until January 2022. Ford said it will explore hybrid arrangements — including some in-office work — in the new year, depending on the state of the virus.
"While we continue to prepare our non-site-dependent team members to transition to a hybrid work model, the state of the COVID-19 virus remains very fluid and therefore we are adjusting the start of our hybrid work arrangement to no earlier than January 2022," Ford said in a statement to CBS News. "In the interim, we will continue monitoring the virus and as conditions improve, explore opportunities for team members to return on-site for collaboration and teamwork."
Apple has also delayed its planned return for workers to its corporate offices until 2022 at the earliest because of the latest rise in COVID-19 cases, according to reports. The iPhone maker told employees in a memo that a return would not take place until at least January, Bloomberg reported.
"Road to recover will be a winding one"
This is the second time the Cupertino, California-based company has moved back its timeline for in-person work, after initially delaying a planned September return until October. CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that "the road to recovery will be a winding one" on a conference call this month.
According to Bloomberg, Apple employees will be alerted one month before they must return to the office. They will be required to work at the office at least three days a week, with the option to work remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays, Bloomberg said. Apple did not immediately reply to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment.
Apple is hardly alone. Tech companies large and small are pushing back in-person work, citing uncertainty as coronavirus cases rise nationwide.
Lyft, which had been planning to bring workers back to its San Francisco headquarters in the fall, is now putting off their return "until we're in the clear," citing the uncertainty caused by the latest coronavirus wave. The ridesharing company does not expect its nearly 5,000 corporate workers to return to their offices until February 2, 2022, at the earliest.
"We anticipate the COVID situation will remain fluid for the upcoming months, making it difficult for us to land a clear return date without a possibility of moving it again," Lyft CEO and cofounder Logan Green said in a message to employees.
The company is extending the work-from-home period by six months "to provide a buffer of several weeks after the winter holiday for team members to settle into their assigned offices," according to Green.
Circling distant calendar dates
Online food delivery platform DoorDash is also committing to remote work for the remainder of the calendar year. After that, the company will transition its nearly 6,000 corporate employees to hybrid work beginning in January 2022, with some days spent each week in its San Francisco headquarters and other days spent working remotely.
"We intentionally chose 2022 for our return-to-work plan in order to meet employees where they are," a spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.
Amazon, which had previously set a September 7 return date, said over the summer that tech and corporate employees are now expected to report to its U.S. offices on January 3, 2022. The ecommerce company isn't requiring employees to get inoculated against the virus, but will require those who are unvaccinated to wear masks in office.
Austin, Texas-based employment website Indeed is also circling January 3 of next year on its corporate calendar for the company's 11,000 employees to show their faces in the office again. Citing concerns over new COVID-19 variants, Indeed last week said it would delay its move to a hybrid way of working from September 7 to the start of next year.
"Up until yesterday, we were going to go into new ways of working — with employees electing whether they want to be in office, hybrid or remote, based on their job," Paul Wolfe, Indeed's senior vice president of human resources, recently told CBS MoneyWatch after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans, even those who are fully vaccinated, start wearing masks indoors again.
"This morning we announced to employees we are moving into this new way of working starting in January, mainly because we've got these new variants that are now the dominant strains in the U.S. and are much more contagious than the previous variants," Wolfe said.
Planning for the future
San Mateo, California-based Roblox, the maker of a global online game platform, also pushed its office return date for its more than 1,000 employees from mid-September to the new year, targeting January 4, 2022, to resume in-person work.
DocuSign, a San Francisco-headquartered tech company that allows businesses to manage electronic agreements, also remains unsure of when employees might come back.
"Like most companies since March of 2020, we continue to put out dates by which we thought our office would open," said DocuSign's chief people officer Joan Burke. She said the company is currently targeting October 4 as a reopening date, noting that "it's far enough out in future that it's something we could plan for."
Even so, DocuSign says it will again delay reopening its offices if the virus calls for it. "If we decide to delay the October 4 opening, I'm quite sure we'd put a date out there," Burke said.
A moving target
Security expert Allison Wood, a director at global risk consultancy Control Risks, said employers must view their policies around the return to work as evolving in tandem with the virus. Wood has been closely monitoring epidemiological indicators that suggest a delay in returning is in order.
"Companies are re-examining what measures are in place and when it makes sense to expect people to return to the office. It has to do with the Delta variant and changes in guidance and recommendations from the CDC and other state and public health bodies. It's cause for companies to sit back and reevaluate their decisions and policies that are in place," Wood said.
Her clients, which include technology and manufacturing firms, are rethinking their expectations for workers returning to the office, as well as risk-mitigation measures like masking up, practicing social distancing and even mandating vaccines.
"The one thing that remains consistent about the pandemic is that it's evolving and changing so we're reminding our clients that they must retain a certain level of flexibility and agility in how they make decisions. This is a pretty clear example of that," she said, citing the rise of the Delta variant.
Breakthrough risks
At the same time, employees are reevaluating their plans given the incidence of breakthrough infections in individuals who are already vaccinated.
"I think we all thought six months ago that September was going to look good, but 'Miss Delta' was like, 'Yeah, I don't think so. You better check yourself,'" said Danielle Ompad, a professor of epidemiology at New York University.
To that end, Overstock, the online furniture retailer based in Midvale, Utah, close to Salt Lake City, has announced it won't bring workers back to the office any earlier than January 2022. Overstock had initially targeted Memorial Day in May as a return date for the company's more than 1,500 employees in customer service, marketing, merchandising, financial and technology roles.
"Our initial plan was to come back then, but in March we decided we would wait until next year. We aren't gong to come back any earlier than January 2022," CEO Jonathan Johnson told CBS MoneyWatch.
"We know what working from home looks like and we know what working from the office looks like, but what's in between, we don't know. I'd like to learn from others as they come back, and we'll do what they do well and we won't do what they make mistakes on," Johnson added.