Facebook-parent Meta to employees: Time to return to office – Times of India

Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has told employees that they must return to office later this year, according to a source familiar with the matter.
In June 2021, Meta extended its remote work policy to all full-time employees amid the pandemic. Two years later, Meta has told employees they must come into the office three days a week starting in September, reports The Information.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, then said that the company had learned during the Covid pandemic that work can be accomplished effectively from anywhere. He said, “good work can get done anywhere, and I’m even more optimistic that remote work at scale is possible, particularly as remote video presence and virtual reality continue to improve,” Zuckerberg said at the time.
After the pandemic, the company adopted a new approach when restrictions were lifted. The company tasked managers with determining if employees on their teams must work on-site or remotely.
Back in March, Zuckerberg suggested that Meta’s policy would be updated due to an internal analysis that revealed in-person engineers are more productive.
“Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely,” Zuckerberg said.
He added further, “This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.”
Employees who work remotely on a permanent basis are not affected by the latest policy change.
“We are committed to distributed work, and we are confident people can make a meaningful impact both from the office and at home,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “We are also committed to continuously refining our model to foster the collaboration, relationships and culture necessary for employees to do their best work.”
Last month, Meta carried out the second round of layoffs, sacking around 21,000 employees. This comes after the initial layoff when the company had let go of 11,000 employees as the company prepared for its “year of efficiency.”