Dr. Gleb Tsipursky – The Office Whisperer
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Angela Howard – Culture Expert
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- Walmart gives the green light for its corporate workers to return to the office starting November 8th — as long as they complied with the company’s vaccine mandate by Oct. 4.
- While public-facing workers in stores across the world have enjoyed no such respite, office workers were sent home early in the pandemic.
- An estimated 10,000 tech workers for the retail behemoth will continue to enjoy working from home — or wherever they choose.
Retail giant Walmart has announced that its corporate employees will officially return to the office starting the week of November 8.
“We are a company whose success is attributed to our people,” said Donna Morris, chief people officer at Walmart. “While technology has enabled us to succeed while working virtually throughout the pandemic, there is no substitution for being in the offices together — it helps shape our culture, collaborate, innovate, build relationships and move faster.”
Last July, the company also revealed that office workers would need to be vaccinated by October 4 in order to return to the workplace
A spokesperson added that the vaccine mandate will apply to all campus office workers, as well as field leaders, with room for accommodations for those with religious and medical exemptions.
Walmart’s headquarters are located in Bentonville, Arkansas, where it is currently building a new campus, but also has other offices across New Jersey and California.
The company’s nearly 10,000 tech workers are excluded from the return-to-office plan and will have the ability to continue working remotely moving forward.
“We had a way of working before the pandemic and we developed an effective way of working during the pandemic,” said Morris. “Now, I’m excited about our new, more flexible way of working.”
Most return-to-office plans had been uprooted by the Delta variant of Covid-19 causing an explosion in cases over the summer. This led large companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Google to postpone their plans to bring employees back until next year.
Even as employees return to the office, many of these organizations have embraced hybrid and flexible work practices, allowing workers to have a bigger say in their work environment.
Accenture’s Future of Work Study 2021 showed that 83% of workers prefer a hybrid model and 63% of high-growth companies have adopted a “productivity anywhere” operational model.
