New York
CNN
—
Nearly three years after the pandemic began, US offices are finally more than half filled as workers gradually get to work. back to the office.
Office occupancy rates across 10 major US cities exceeded 50.4% pre-pandemic levels for the first time since early 2020, according to security swipe tracker Kastle Systems. That marks the first time the occupancy rate has surpassed the 50% mark since March 2020, when many offices laid off employees because of Covid.
Workers still aren’t returning to the office consistently or on a daily basis: Last week’s data showed Friday was the day with the lowest capacity and Tuesday the highest. Kastle notes that all 10 cities it tracks “now have occupancy rates above 40%.
Big companies have started cracking down on employees who don’t want to return. Disney is order company employees back to the office four days a week starting March 1. Starbucks
(SBUX) also recently established a three days a week office calendar.
Apple
(AAPL) also urged its company employees to be at the office at least three days a week, causing tension with some of the company’s employees. Snapchat’s parent company recently asked employees to return to the office 80% of the time, or the equivalent of four days a week, starting this month.
However, Amazon
(AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy no try to force The company’s workers will be returning to the office soon, saying in September that the company “has no plans to ask people back.”
Dozens of YouTube contractors will strike Friday to protest what they describe as an absurd return-to-office policy that could force many of them to relocate from other states.
The protest involved more than 40 contractors for YouTube Music, according to the Alphabet Workers Union, which is backing the strike. The contractors work for a third-party company called Cognizant, and they are calling on the company and YouTube’s parent company, Google, to revise their in-office policies to be more flexible.
The strike was first reported by axis, said contractors voted to strike after receiving orders to report to an Austin office starting Monday. Google declined to comment.
According to the Alphabet Workers Union, about a quarter of the striking workers were based outside of Texas, and the majority of the contractors were initially hired as remote workers.
“On average, YouTube music workers are paid $19 an hour and cannot afford the direct work-related relocation, commuting, or childcare costs,” the group said on the site. his Facebook. “The coming back to work day threatens the livelihoods of workers who do not live in the Austin area.”
With a global labor shortage and stubbornly high number of job opportunities, forcing people back into the office can backfire. Workplace experts say leaders who require employees to work more days at the company than they’d like — and threaten pay cuts or layoffs if they don’t comply — have may be creating a more permanent problem, workplace experts say.
Many of the leaders’ arguments about going to work now focus on the need to preserve company culture, collaboration, and mentoring for young workers.
Meeting time is important, but workplace research shows that neither culture nor collaboration is necessarily optimized simply by letting employees spend 40 hours a week in the same building. . It also shows that when employees and teams are allowed to schedule in person rather than remotely, it can boost engagement, morale, and retention.
— CNN’s Jeanne Sahadi contributed to this report.
