Come To Office 3 Days A Week Or You 'May' Lose Your Job: Meta Stresses Return To Office

Mark Zuckerberg's tech giant, Meta Platforms Inc META, has recently reiterated the importance of employee office attendance. The company underscored the potential consequences of non-compliance, including possible job terminations.

The communication, dispatched by Meta's "head of people," Lori Goler, emphasized that starting September 5, employees assigned to physical offices must attend at least three days a week. 

This initiative aims to encourage robust collaboration and interpersonal bonding among the staff, the New York Times reports.

Also Read: Amazon Cracks Down on Remote Work: US Employees Reminded of Return-to-Office Rules

Employing a system that tracks office attendance via badge and Status Tool data, managers will monthly inspect adherence to this mandate. 

Lori Goler outlined in the memo, "As with other company policies, repeated violations may result in disciplinary action, up to and including a Performance rating drop and, ultimately, termination if not addressed."

Meta's push for increased office attendance dovetails with its overarching objective of enhancing efficiency throughout the company. 

Spearheaded by Zuckerberg, this approach to business led to substantial cutbacks, seeing approximately 21,000 employees, or about 25% of the workforce of the Facebook and Instagram parent, being laid off.

The office attendance policy specifically targets those employees designated to a particular office. 

In contrast, those who operate remotely have to limit office visits to no more than four days every two months, barring a compelling business justification. "We believe that distributed work will continue to be important in the future, particularly as our technology improves," a representative from Meta elucidated. 

They added, "Our immediate focus on in-person engagement seeks to enrich the experience of those opting for office-based work while ensuring judicious allocation of resources towards the remote work paradigm."

Following a lackluster performance in 2022, Meta's shares experienced a resurgence, soaring by over 120% since the outset of this year. This surge is due to the firm's enhanced financials and investor optimism about its fiscal prudence initiatives. 

Previously, in June, Meta had informed most of its workforce about the impending three-day office attendance policy. This directive, however, exempted the remote employees.

Meta is not alone in this transition. Other tech behemoths, like Amazon.Com Inc AMZN, have also advocated returning to the office. Recently, Amazon found itself in the eye of a storm as some employees expressed discontent over the company's office attendance mandate and environmental policies.

In November 2022, Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, banned remote work at the company.

Price Action: META shares traded lower by 2.09% at $279.45 on the last check Friday.

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.