Apple Asks Staff to Head Back to the Office- For at Least Three Days a Week
In this Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2020 file photo, the logo of Apple is illuminated at a store in the city center in Munich, Germany. Apple said late Wednesday Sept. 1, 2021, it is relaxing rules to allow some app developers such as Spotify, Netflix and digital publishers to include an outside link so users can sign up for paid subscription accounts. 
Mary ManleyApple employees were first sent a memo in June of last year, with the company proposing a return to the office for three days a week in an attempt to reconnect employees with each other. Apple’s push for a return-to-office policy has already cost them a top executive who left the company for Google, citing a need for “more flexibility.” Apple has told employees to head back to the office at least three times a week starting in September. Employees who work at the company’s headquarters named “Apple Park,” which is located in Cupertino, California, will be heading back for Tuesdays, Thursdays and a third day that is to be chosen by the employees themselves.“For all that we’ve been able to achieve while many of us have been separated, the truth is that there has been something essential missing from this past year: each other. Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate,” said Apple’s CEO Tim Cook.”I know I’m not alone in missing the hum of activity, the energy, creativity and collaboration of our in-person meetings and the sense of community we’ve all built,” he added.
US-China Tensions Over TaiwanApple Reportedly Warns Suppliers to Avoid ‘Taiwan’ Labeling Amid Fears of ‘Trade Barriers’6 August, 08:00 GMTIan Goodfellow, who worked as Apple’s director of machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), quit Apple and began working for Google’s DeepMind division shortly after. Goodfellow said he left Apple after Cook sent a memo pushing for employees to return to the office.“I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team,” Goodfellow wrote in a goodbye note to his coworkers.Despite losing one of their top executives, Apple is still pursuing their three day work week policy as the multibillion dollar company, which creates handheld gadgets such as the iPhone— which are used by more than 113 million persons in the United States alone—may view meeting in-person as their preferred approach in familiarizing their employees with the products they create.Over the summer, Apple was requesting employees to meet just two days a week. The plan to bump those meetings up to three times a week was delayed in May because of rising COVID-19 cases.Still, Apple’s request to have employees enter the office just three days a week is less demanding when compared to other tech giants such as Tesla, whose chief executive Elon Musk told employees to spend a “minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” or else they would be fired.
