Last month, after the departure of several high-profile executives, Apple walked back its three-day-a-week return-to-the-office policy, which had been slated to go into effect in late May. The company cited the rising number of COVID-19 cases, but the real reason, it seems, was simply that employees didn’t want to. (They’re still required to come in twice a week, making COVID a pretty weak excuse for the policy shift.) Apple is only the latest and highest-profile company to discover that the three-day office week — that eminently reasonable-sounding middle ground for which proposals were widely circulated last year, and subsequently was championed by Mayor Eric Adams, office landlords, and CEOs everywhere — is, in practice, kind of a flop.
“A lot of companies that had been in the news standing firm on their return policies did back up,” said Elise Freedman, a workforce-transformation-practice leader at Korn Ferry who is helping companies coordinate their return-to-office plans. “It’s a very interesting situation. There are no one-size-fits-all answers, no silver bullet. No matter what you do, it’s not going to work for all employees.” Even financial firms, perhaps the most gung ho about return-to-office policies, have mostly caved, resigning themselves to a hybrid future that has, in many cases, stalled out at two-day-a-week callbacks. Only Goldman Sachs seems to be holding firm.
What makes the three-day week so unpersuasive? For some employees, it’s fear of COVID, but as many people have pointed out, the virus is hardly dissuading most of them from doing other things. “People are at dinner, the movies, they’re around. People are learning to live with COVID,” said Freedman. “What they liked was the flexibility.” And while virus variants and surges have been a useful excuse for companies that want to save face after workforce revolts, it is by now clear that the COVID waves will likely keep hitting, so we are, at some point, headed for a return-to-work reckoning. Companies will either need to call everyone back in spite of the virus or give up on a mandatory return.