Zoom wants workers back in the office 2 days a week

Zoom, the company that helped make working from home the norm during the pandemic, now wants its employees to return to the office.

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Last week, the video conferencing company asked all employees within 50 miles of an office to work in person on a part-time basis, The New York Times reported. The company plans to roll out that program later this month and in September, according to the newspaper.

CEO Eric Yuan took questions from employees unhappy with the new policy during a Zoom meeting last week, The Associated Press reported.

“We believe that a structured hybrid approach -- meaning employees that live near an office need to be on site two days a week to interact with their teams -- is most effective for Zoom,” a company spokesperson told the Times. “We’ll continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently.”

According to CNN, other companies, such as Amazon, Google and Salesforce, have adopted similar policies. Google has asked employees to come into the office three days a week, the Times reported. Salesforce told its employees that it would give a $10 charitable donation on behalf of any employee who reported to work during a 10-day period in June, according to the newspaper.

At Amazon, hundreds of the company’s corporate employees walked off the job for an hour in May to protest the announcement that they would be required to work at the office for at least three days each week, the Times reported.

Zoom, based in San Jose, California, saw its participation soar during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, participants in daily Zoom meetings increased from 10 million the previous year to 300 million, according to the newspaper. It was the most downloaded free iPhone app of the year.

But the company began cutting back this year, with 1,300 employees, of 15% of the workforce, laid off, the Times reported. At its height, Zoom’s workforce had grown more than 275% between July 2019 and October 2022.

Members of Zoom’s executive leadership team reduced their base salaries by 20% for the coming fiscal year, CNN reported. They also forfeited their fiscal year 2023 bonuses, according to the cable news outlet.

Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist and expert on hybrid work, said the tech industry’s return to the office was not surprising since many companies have spent a great deal of money on office real estate.

“They’re paying for their office and hiring local people so they get no upside from being fully remote,” Bloom told the Times. “The most surprising thing to me was they took so long to formally announce this.”