Microsoft gives up trying to fix a reopening date for its offices 

Microsoft postponed the full reopening of its headquarters at Redmond and offices in other US locations from October 4 to whenever public safety guidelines make it safe to do so, making it the latest US tech giant to push back office reopening plans because of surge in Covid-19 cases in the US due to the Delta variant of the virus.

The tech giant said in an update on its website on Thursday that it will communicate a 30-day transition period that provides time for its 1,60,000 employees to prepare, whenever it decides to reopen.

 “We had planned for October 4 to be the first possible date to fully reopen Microsoft’s own Redmond headquarters, and many other work sites in the U.S. But as we shared with our employees today, we’ve shifted those plans,” the note said. 
The company has decided against attempting to forecast a new date for a full reopening, given the over Covid-19.

The announcement is similar to the one by Silicon Valley counterpart Google. CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post on August 31 that employees can continue to work remotely at least until January 10, 2022. The tech firm had planned to call employees back in October 2021.

 Further, he added that offices around the world can decide for themselves when to reopen after that, and give employees a 30-day notice before asking employees to return to the office.

Apple, too, has told its workforce across the globe that they don’t have to return to their offices till January, or even later. The iPhone maker had planned to call employees back in early September, a decision that did not go down well with employees with some 80 of them writing a letter of displeasure to CEO Tim Cook.

Amazon, which had planned to call employees back by September, has also postponed the reopening to January 3, 2022. Facebook’s teams in the US and a few other countries also will not have to go back to offices until January 2022.

Also read: Microsoft employees plan to spend more time in office than managers expect