Howard Schultz
David Ryder | Reuters
Starbucks Company employees will return to the office at least three days a week at the end of the month.
Starting January 30, commuting employees will be required to report at the coffee giant’s Seattle headquarters on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Tuesdays set by their team. decision. The memo does not specify what qualifies as travel distance.
Workers near regional offices will also be required to come to work three days a week, although specific dates are not required.
The coffee giant’s workforce has been working remotely since the start of the pandemic. In September, Starbucks asked those employees to work in the office one to two days a week. But CEO Howard Schultz wrote in a memo to employees on Wednesday that ticker data showed employees were not complying with that directive.
The memo from Schultz, who is leaving the company this spring, says the new policy is meant to “rebuild our connections with each other and synchronize teams and efforts”. He also compared corporate employees’ continued teleworking to bartenders, who never had that option.
Schultz became interim chief executive in April after former chief executive Kevin Johnson retired. During his third term at the company, he announced a The $450 million plan to reinvent Starbucks and fix what he calls “self-made mistakes.”
Starbucks isn’t the only company recently mandating a stricter return-to-office policy. CEO Bob Iger, who returned for his second leadership term at Disney, tell staff on Monday that they have to return to the office.
Elon Musk set even higher expectations for attendance at the office at Twitter after he acquired the social media company. And Apple authorized employees to return to work three days a week back in September.
