In a late, stunning tweet by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman Thursday night, it appears as though Apple has had a change of heart when it comes to its employees coming back to work at its corporate offices at Apple Park.
According to the latest tweet from Gurman, Apple employees are all expected to be back at the office by January 2022 “at the latest.”
Breaking on @theterminal: Apple delays office return again on Covid surges, this time until January at the earliest. Story coming.
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) August 20, 2021
While nothing has been made official yet, the tweet does say that the reason behind the change is due to the local surges in COVID-19.
This is a breaking news story and we will update it once we have more information regarding it. Please stay tuned to Appleosophy.com and on our Twitter at @appleosophy.
UPDATE (Friday, August 20): It has been reported that Apple has informed its staff via a memo that it is halting the fall plan to return to the corporate office. The memo was sent by Deidre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president, retail + people.
Previously, the company had planned for all of its staff to return by October 2021, but due to the surging cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant, these plans have now been changed to January 2022.
When employees do eventually return to the office, they will be expected to work three days of the week at Apple Park, with two days being used at work-from-home days. Those days are set to be Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
Apple is encouraging its staff to get vaccinated but is not requiring for its employees at this time and is increasing the number of at-home COVID-19 tests to three per week.