Starbucks is stepping up efforts to enforce its return-to-office mandate with a warning: Comply with the policy or risk termination.
The company will be instituting an “accountability process” in January to ensure corporate employees comply with requirements to work in the office three days a week, according to an internal message obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The message notes employees may face termination if they do not meet in-office requirements.
Bloomberg previously reported the news Monday. Starbucks said that the company’s expectations for hybrid corporate employees haven’t changed, but it’s reminding workers they must follow them. Starbucks isn’t increasing the number of days employees are back in the office.
Starbucks’s new chief executive, Brian Niccol, has a hybrid work arrangement himself. The former CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill who took the helm of Starbucks in September, Niccol maintains a home in Southern California and commutes to the Seattle office by corporate jet. Starbucks has said Niccol would meet or exceed Starbucks’s in-office mandates; some workers have expressed skepticism of Niccol’s arrangement.
For about two years, the company has required corporate employees to come to the office three days a week. The message sent this week said the company will also no longer be requiring employees in the office on Tuesday—leaving individual leaders to determine the best common day for the teams.
The move comes as a flurry of companies reassess their in-office requirements years after the coronavirus pandemic prompted shutdowns and normalized remote work. Executives have said they seek to rebuild an office culture that existed before the pandemic.
Read full story at The Wall Street Journal.
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