No paywall: https://archive.ph/hpy6b
Paywalled: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/11/business/return-to-office-2022.html
Title: The End of a Return-to-Office Date
More and more companies are saying: We’ll get back to you.
The executives had a good feeling about Jan. 10, 2022 — the date when DocuSign’s 7,000 employees worldwide would finally come back to work.
This deadline wouldn’t be like that earlier one in May 2020, which was always a fantasy, or August 2020, which was a bit ambitious, or October 2021, a plan derailed by the Delta variant. Fourth time’s the charm.
“Every time we delay this we’re pushing off the inevitable,” said Joan Burke, the chief people officer, in a late November interview. “At some point in time DocuSign is going to be open.”
That some point in time is no longer in January. The Omicron variant interjected. Just as companies from Ford Motor to Lyft have done in the past week, DocuSign postponed again. In place of a new date came the company’s promise to “reassess our plans as 2022 unfolds.”
“Employees understand the evolving nature of what we’re dealing with makes it impossible to predict,” Ms. Burke said this month. “I can’t even remember all the dates we’ve put out there, and I’m the one who put them out there.”
Return-to-office dates used to be like talismans; the chief executives who set them seemed to wield some power over the shape of the months to come. Then the dates were postponed, and postponed again. At some point the spell was broken. For many companies, office reopening plans have lost their fear factor, coming to seem like wishful thinking rather than a sign of futures filled with alarm clocks, commutes and pants that actually button. The R.T.O. date is gone. It’s been replaced with “we’ll get back to you.”
Continues at the link above…