Twitter on Thursday announced reopening plans of all its offices and business travel globally as COVID-19 wanes worldwide, while also allowing work-from-home mode forever to employees willing to not come to office. In a statement, the micro-blogging site's CEO Parag Agrawal mentioned that Twitter's offices will reopen from March 15, 2022.
"It's been almost two years since we closed our offices and travel, and !Meant. to announce that we're ready to fully open up business travel and all our offices around the world, Business travel is back effective immediately, and our office openings will start on March 15," Agrawal posted as a statement on his Twitter handle.
However, Agrawal also stated that for the employees, the decisions about where they work, whether they feel safe traveling for business, and what events they attend, should be theirs.
Announcing several work modes that best suit the employees, Agrawal said, "As we open back up, our approach remains the same. Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever. Office every day? That works too. Some days in office, some days from home? Of course. That's actually how most of you feel. This brings me to my next paint... "
"In 2020 we adjusted quickly to working virtually with resilience and agility, but almost all of us were working from home. Distributed working will be much, much harder. Anyone who has joined a meeting remotely while others are in a conference room knows this pain. There will be lots of challenges in the coming months, and we'll need to be proactive, intentional, learn, and adapt. We're in this together, and we each play a role in the open, inclusive, and productive culture we want to create," the Indian-origin CEO added.
He also mentioned that details on logistics, dates, safety measures, and how we work will be coming soon from Pat and Tracy to whom I am deeply grateful, along with the amazing cross-functional team that carded us through the past two years, adding, "And thank you to the Tweeps who have in-office roles, like our data centers, who have been coming into work for the last two years and continue to show up for us and our customers every single day. We appreciate you."
"I look forward to seeing you all back at the office or perhaps at an event, somewhere in your home city, or mine?." he concluded.
Twitter joins a wave of technology and finance companies that have begun mandating a return to office. While some big employers have embraced voluntary work-from-home policies permanently, others are betting that it is best to push in-person interactions among colleagues.
Meanwhile, earlier today, Alphabet Inc's Google from April 4 will require employees back about three days a week in some of its US, UK and Asia Pacific offices, its first step to end policies that allowed remote work because of COVID-19 concerns.
An internal email on Wednesday seen by Reuters told employees in the San Francisco Bay Area that "advances in prevention and treatment, the steady decline in cases we continue to see and the improved safety measures we have implemented ... now mean we can officially begin the transition to the hybrid work week."