Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at Axel Springer Neubau in Berlin on Oct. 17, 2023
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Microsoft said on Tuesday that employees will be expected to work in an office three days a week starting next year.
Employees that work near Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, or the Puget Sound area, will be required to be in the office three days a week, starting in February. After that, the policy will extend to other U.S. locations and then to international offices.
The company is sending emails to employees who live within 50 miles of a Microsoft office around Puget Sound about the shift, the company said.
“As we build the AI products that will define this era, we need the kind of energy and momentum that comes from smart people working side by side, solving challenging problems together,” Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s human resources chief, said in a memo posted on the company’s website.
Microsoft previously had a policy, dating back to the Covid pandemic, that allowed most employees to work from home half the time without manager approval.
Microsoft has held several rounds of layoffs this year, but Coleman wrote that, “this update is not about reducing headcount,” and instead is “about working together in a way that enables us to meet our customers’ needs.”
In its latest earnings report in July, Microsoft reported better-than-expected results, briefly lifting the company’s market cap past $4 trillion.
