Zoom has issued a mandate for all staff who live within 50 miles of the office to attend the workplace at least twice a week, joining tech giants such as Google in encouraging more in-person attendance.
The San Jose video conferencing company, which rose to prominence during the remote working revolution created by the pandemic, said the office working mandate was part of a “structured hybrid approach”.
The office mandate affects around 8,000 employees working at 12 locations worldwide, including in the UK where it has about 200 staff and offices in London.
A Zoom spokesperson said: “We believe that a structured hybrid approach – meaning a set number of days employees that live near an office need to be on-site – is most effective for Zoom. As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers.
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“We’ll continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently.”
A spokesman said that in the UK “employees who live within a reasonable commuting distance of an office are required to come in a select number of days a week on designated team days”.
Last week, Google announced that it was offering a $99 summer special rate at its on-campus Mountain View hotel to coax staff back to the office.
“Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction,” an advert reads. “Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts.”
It added: “You could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities.”
However, many Google employees said the daily rate was still too expensive. “Now I can give some of my pay back to Google,” one employee wrote on an internal messaging platform.
In June, Google chief people officer Fiona Cicconi emailed staff doubling down on office attendance, saying “there’s just no substitute for coming together in person.”
“Of course, not everyone believes in ‘magical hallway conversations,’ but there’s no question that working together in the same room makes a positive difference,” she said. “Many of the products we unveiled at I/O and Google Marketing Live last month were conceived, developed and built by teams working side by side.”
She said that Google will start including office attendance in colleagues’ performance reviews and teams will start sending reminders to workers “who are consistently absent from the office.”
Cicconi also asked approved remote workers to consider switching to a hybrid work schedule. “Our offices are where you’ll be most connected to Google’s community,” read the email seen by CNBC.
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