Meta tells staff they can defer their office return from three to five months

December 9, 2021: -Meta, formerly Facebook, has announced it will fully reopen its U.S. offices on January 31 while permitting employees the option to delay their return to the office by three to five months.

The social media behemoth said the “office deferral program” is designed to give its employees flexibility when returning to the office.

In August, Meta said it intended to delay its plan to return U.S. employees to their office until Jan. 2022 because of the ongoing concerns with Covid-19.

Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of human resources, said that Meta recognizes some staff isn’t ready to come back.

“For those wishing to return in January, we are looking for to providing a vibrant office experience that continues to prioritize health and safety,” Gale said.

“We recognize that some aren’t quite ready to come back,” she added. “We continue to offer a variety of options to choose what works best for them, so our employees inform decisions about where they work.”

Meta said specific staff would request to work remotely full-time if they can do their job away from the office.

“Data, not dates, is what drives our approach for coming back to the office,” the company had said.

Companies worldwide are being forced to rethink their return to work strategies as the omicron. The covid-19 variant continues to spread rapidly.

Google said in the previous week that it has indefinitely delaying its January return-to-office plan globally.

The company’s security VP, Chris Rackow, wrote in the email to full-time employees that it will wait until the next year to assess when U.S. offices can safely return to a “stable, long-term working environment.” None of the U.S. locations adopted the hybrid working mandate on January 10 as planned, his email said.

Meta had previously aimed that to return employees to its offices in October with strict vaccination and mask requirements, but those plans were scrapped.