Apple Suspends Return Schedule As RTO Index Treads Water

Apple has abruptly suspended its requirement that employees be in the office at least three days a week, citing a resurgence of Covid-19 cases.

The policy reversal also was a concession to pushback from thousands of Apple workers after the return-to-office rule was put into effect earlier this month.

A group calling itself Apple Together published a letter to the tech giant’s executive team urging a more flexible work schedule that emphasizes remote collaboration and eliminates the need for workers to commute.

According to a report in The New York Times, one of Apple’s top artificial intelligence engineers resigned this month because of the company’s office-return policy.

Apple said in a note to employees on Tuesday that it would start a “pilot program” to bring some workers back to the office for two days a week, but anyone in that program who felt “uncomfortable coming into the office” would have the “option to work remotely,” the Times reported. 

Apple opened a new $5B headquarters in Cupertino, CA in 2019, but the facility has largely been unused during the pandemic.

In addition to suspending its RTO requirement, Apple said this week it is re-imposing mask mandates for employees at its 100 retail stores due to a growing surge of Omnicron variant cases.

Apple’s lifting of its office-work requirement comes at a time when the return-to-office push shows no signs of getting closer to an average national occupancy level of 50%—and appears to have hit a ceiling at around 43%, according to Kastle’s weekly 10-city average of office occupancy, based on entry-card swipe data.

Except for a brief dip to 40.5% in the middle of April, which Kastle attributed to workers taking time off to coincide with their kids’ spring break schedules, Kastle’s Back To Work Barometer has hovered around 43% for nearly two months. This week’s average is 43.4%.

In each of its weekly updates, Kastle expresses confidence that office occupancy rates will continue to rise. In its April 19 report, Kastle trumpeted Apple’s announcement that it would be requiring workers to come back to the office.

Kastle has not indicated whether it factors hybrid work into its swipe-card data or pro-rates data for occupants that are only in the office for half of the week.

But it’s getting harder to put an optimistic face on the prospects for steady growth in office occupancy rates.

A broad consensus appears to be developing behind flexible, hybrid work strategies that give employees a much larger voice in decisions about whether to return to the office and for how many days per week.

Confronted with record-high gas prices, a workforce that largely consists of millennials who have embraced a work/live/play ethos is not showing much interest in returning to commuting.

Cities with downtowns full of partially empty office towers are rethinking their development priorities for midtown, planning for new mixed-use zones with residential space so workers can walk to their jobs. Conversions of office buildings to multifamily use are growing.

While the demand for office leases is strong—with a record number of offices leases coming up for renewal in 2022—many companies are in the process of reducing their office footprints, which is creating more space available for flex use at the same time demand for flex space is increasing, GlobeSt reported.

The adoption of hybrid work strategies that give workers the flexibility to decide when they come to offices—a decision-making power they’re not likely to give back in the midst of a long-term shortage of skilled labor—means that office occupancies will fluctuate during 2022, heavily influenced by economic factors including inflation.

After the worst part of a pandemic in which millions of US workers proved that they can maintain productivity while working remotely, workers can now vote with their feet when confronted with higher transportation costs or lingering outbreaks of Covid.