Google delays office return due to Omicron

As businesses struggle to adjust to an evolving COVID-19 pandemic, Alphabet Inc.’s Google employees will not be returning to their offices as planned in January and this is the fourth time the company has delayed a mandatory return of its workforce to offices as the threat of new Omicron coronavirus variant lingers.

Google had planned to bring in workers three days per week under a hybrid model mixing office and remote employment starting Jan. 10, which would have ended the “voluntary work-from-home period,” the company said in an email.

Now, Google will wait till after Jan. 1 to determine when its hybrid-employment model of three days a week in offices will begin, the firm said. The start will depend on local conditions, which the company noted, without mentioning the new omicron coronavirus variant, are “dynamic and vary greatly across locations.”

As conditions have allowed, Google has permitted employees to come into the 90% of its U.S. offices that have been safely opened, the company said. Almost 40% of U.S. employees have made an appearance in offices, according to Google.

Google’s decision comes amid a global scramble to respond to omicron, about which relatively little is yet known. At least eight new omicron cases were reported Thursday, five in New York, one each in Colorado and Hawaii, and one in a Minnesota man who had recently traveled to New York City. The first case identified in the U.S. was in a San Francisco resident believed to be fully vaccinated but not boosted.

Tech companies led the way in closing their offices when the pandemic ramped up in March 2020, and are seen as a bellwether as to when other companies will similarly require their workers to come into the office.

Google has several times created then delayed office-return plans as the virus has mutated and public health orders have changed. Google and other major companies had hoped to fully return to the office this past fall, but the spread of the delta variant pushed many to delay that date until January.

Last month, before the omicron variant was discovered, Apple Inc. pushed back its return date from January to Feb. 1. Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. said earlier this week it still plans on returning to the office in January. Amazon.com, DoorDash, Salesforce, and Uber Technology Inc., also plan to return in January — at least for now.