Apple Inc. set a September 5 deadline for corporate employees to be in the office at least three days a week, marking its latest return attempt after Covid-19 spikes delayed its plans several times.
The company will require employees to work from the office on Tuesdays, Thursdays and a regular third day that will be determined by individual teams. That is a shift from Apple’s original plan, which called for in-person work on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. The company notified employees of the new approach on Monday.
The Cupertino, California-based tech giant has been working toward getting its employees back in the office since at least June 2021, when it first announced the three-day policy. But virus flare-ups forced the company to push back deadlines, leaving workers on a two-day-a-week schedule. The new policy will first take effect in Silicon Valley and then spread to other offices.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the updated deadline.
Apple has been making other Covid-19 adjustments. The new policy comes weeks after the company dropped its mask mandate in common areas of offices. Apple had removed such a requirement at individual desks several months ago.
The company also held an in-person gathering at its campus in June to watch a developers’ conference presentation. That was a first since 2019 and signaled that Apple was inching closer to normal operations.
In Santa Clara County, where many of Apple’s main offices are housed, seven-day case averages and daily new Covid case counts have declined from July, but are still much higher than before the Omicron spikes earlier in 2022. Still, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its Covid-19 recommendations last week.
The iPhone maker has been one of the most stringent technology companies when it comes to pushing employees back into the office, irking some staffers, Bloomberg News has reported. Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and others have been more open to remote work in recent months.
It’s a busy time for Apple. The company is gearing up for an event in September to announce the iPhone 14 and new watches. It’s also preparing updated Macs and iPads for launch later this year.
Recruiters laid off
Apple laid off many of its contract-based recruiters in the past week, part of a push to rein in the tech giant’s hiring and spending, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
About 100 contract workers were let go in a rare move for the world’s most valuable company, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. The recruiters were responsible for hiring new employees for Apple, and the cuts underscore that a slowdown is underway at the company.
Workers laid off were told the cuts were made due to changes in Apple’s current business needs. Bloomberg first reported last month that the company was decelerating hiring after years of staffing up, joining many tech companies in hitting the brakes. CEO Tim Cook confirmed during Apple’s earnings conference call that the company would be more “deliberate” in its spending - even as it keeps investing in some areas.
“We believe in investing through the downturn,” Cook told analysts. “And so we’ll continue to hire people and invest in areas, but we are being more deliberate in doing so in recognition of the realities of the environment.”
Apple is still retaining recruiters who are full-time employees, and not all of its contractors were fired as part of the move. An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the decision.
The move to lay off workers is unusual for the technology giant, which employs more than 150,000 people. But it’s far from alone in taking such a step. In recent months, Meta Platforms Inc., Tesla Inc., Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Oracle Corp. have all eliminated jobs in the face of a tech spending slowdown.
Terminated contractors were told they would receive pay and medical benefits for two weeks. When they were laid off, employee badges were disabled and workers were told they would need to email a list of their belongings if they wanted those items to be returned. Recruiters were let go across many regions, including at Apple’s offices in Texas and Singapore.
Apple previously fired a large group of contract workers in 2019 in Cork, Ireland. At the time, the company had been relying on several hundred contractors to listen to recordings of Siri conversations to help improve the product. Apple let the workers go as part of scaling down the program in response to privacy concerns. The company also fired some contractors while working on the Apple Park campus in 2015.
Like many other companies, Apple employs contract workers for tasks such as technical support and customer service. It also uses contractors for localizing products and improving its Maps service. Contract workers typically receive fewer benefits than full-time workers and have fewer protections.
