Zoom Seeks to Balance Remote and In-Person Work with Part-Time Office Visits

The company that became synonymous with remote work is now embracing the increasing trend of returning to the office.

Zoom, a video conferencing pioneer, is asking employees who live within 50 miles of its offices to work onsite two days a week, a company spokeswoman confirmed in an email. The statement says the company has decided that “a built-in hybrid approach — meaning employees who live close to the office need to be there two days a week to interact with their teams — is most effective for Zoom.”

The new policy, which will be rolled out in August and September, was first reported by the New York Times, which said Zoom CEO Eric Yuan fielded questions from employees unhappy with the new policy at a Zoom meeting last week.

Based in San Jose, California, Zoom exploded in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as businesses rushed to shift to remote work and even families and friends turned to the virtual gathering platform. But this growth has stalled as the pandemic threat recedes.

Shares of Zoom Video Communications Inc. have fallen sharply since peaking at the beginning of the pandemic, from $559 a share in October 2020 to less than $70 on Tuesday. Shares have fallen by more than 10% at the beginning of August. In February, Zoom laid off about 1,300 people, or about 15% of its workforce.

Google, Salesforce and Amazon are among the big companies that have also stepped up their return-to-the-office policies, despite backlash from some workers.

Like Zoom, many companies are asking their employees to come to the office only part-time, because hybrid work is a lasting legacy of the pandemic. Since January, the average weekly office occupancy rate in 10 major U.S. cities has hovered around 50 percent, falling below that threshold during the summer months, according to Kastle Systems, which measures occupancy rates with entry sweeps.