As the pandemic struck wealthy economies in early 2020, workers (in white-collar jobs, at least) found themselves carrying out their duties from home. Now that vaccination programmes are continuing apace, more companies are grappling with how – and whether – to end the great enforced experiment in home working.
The answer is far from settled, with Apple telling its global workforce on Friday that they will not return to its corporate offices until January at the earliest, amid concern over the spread of new coronavirus variants. The tech company’s original plan to bring staff back in on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in a hybrid home-working pattern had already been delayed from early September to October.
Apple is far from alone in delaying the return, with health concerns unsurprisingly emerging as the governing factor. The UK government removed all guidance for people to work from home where possible on 19 July, but with infections remaining high, many companies have yet to bring all their workers back to the office.
In the US, prominent tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Lyft, Wall Street’s Wells Fargo and BlackRock are among those who this month delayed their return to the office until 2022 as cases of the more infectious Delta variant rise.
Yet many other US businesses have carried on as normal for months. Even within some companies there are inconsistencies: some Facebook contractors have complained that they have been forced back to offices even as permanent employees stay at home.
When businesses do return, one of the most significant frictions is proving to be vaccination status. The 2.1 million employees in US central government offices must now disclose their vaccination status on forms brought in this month. Joe Biden personally announced that those who have not been jabbed will be made to wear masks and socially distance from colleagues, making their personal decisions very publicly visible.
However, individual states are taking wildly different approaches, reflecting political divisions. Democrat-controlled California last week mandated all teachers be vaccinated or be subjected to weekly testing. By contrast, Republican-dominated Florida, Texas, and Montana have all tried to ban vaccination mandates, with varying levels of success. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, who himself caught Covid-19 this week, has appealed to the state’s supreme court after lower courts ruled against his ban on government entities or private companies that receive state funds requiring the wearing of masks or proof of vaccination.
Yet many American companies are taking a harder line on employees being inoculated than elsewhere in the world, in part due to…
Read More: Office politics: firms still grappling with home working puzzle | Working