Apple corporate employees head back to the office

Apple's corporate employees are heading back to the office.

Today marks the first day that Apple's corporate employees were required to be back in the office for at least one day per week. The policy change, which was first reported back in March, was announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook in an internal memo to employees.

The return to the office marks an end to the company's back and forth attempt at getting back to a sense of normalcy during the pandemic. Apple had previously set a number of dates for its return to the office and had to backtrack on those due to the fluctuation of cases rising and falling over the last year.

While employees are now required to be in the office for one day a week for now, that will quickly rise to two days a week in a couple of weeks. On May 23, Apple's new hybrid policy will take full form, requiring corporate employees to be in the office on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

While many of you have been coming in regularly for quite some time, we are now looking forward to welcoming those of you who shifted to working remotely back to our corporate offices. In the United States, beginning on April 11, we'll begin the phased approach to the hybrid pilot, with teams returning to the office initially one day a week, and then, beginning in the third week, two days a week. This transitional period will now be extended from four to six weeks.

We will then begin the hybrid pilot in full on May 23, with people coming to the office three days a week — on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday — and working flexibly on Wednesday and Friday if you wish.

It will be interesting to see how Apple's corporate employees will react to returning to the office. Other large technology companies, like Google and Meta, have much more flexible remote work policies for their corporate workers compared to Apple.