(New York) The company whose name has become synonymous with remote working is joining the growing back-to-office trend.
Zoom, the videoconferencing pioneer, requires employees who live within an 80 km radius of its offices to work on-site two days a week, a company spokesperson confirmed in an email.
The release clarifies that the company has decided that “a structured hybrid approach – that is, employees who live near an office must be on site two days a week to interact with their teams – is the more effective for Zoom”.
The new policy, which will be implemented in August and September, was first reported by The New York Times, which reported that Zoom CEO Eric Yuan fielded questions from employees unhappy with the new policy. during a Zoom meeting last week.
Zoom, headquartered in San Jose, Calif., has grown exponentially in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic as companies strive to shift to remote working; even families and friends have turned to the platform for virtual meetings. But that growth stalled as the threat of a pandemic subsided.
Shares of Zoom Video Communications have fallen sharply since peaking at the start of the pandemic, falling from US$559 per unit in October 2020 to below US$70 on Tuesday. Shares fell more than 10% at the start of August. In February, Zoom laid off about 1,300 people, or about 15% of its workforce.
Google, Salesforce and Amazon are among the big companies that have also tightened their back-to-office policies despite backlash from some employees.
Like Zoom, many companies are asking their employees to only come to the office part-time, with hybrid working shaping up to be a lasting legacy of the pandemic.
Since January, the average weekly office occupancy rate in ten major U.S. cities has hovered around 50%, dropping below that threshold during the summer months, according to Kastle Systems, which measures occupancy based on entrances.
