Google is the first big tech company to announce a vaccine requirement for returning to its offices. The decision may push other tech companies to follow with similar moves.
Google will now require employees who work in its offices to be fully vaccinated and is pushing back its start date for when they need to report back to the office in response to the highly contagious delta variant spreading across the United States and around the world.
Google made the announcement in a note sent to employees from CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday.
In it, Pichai says the company has seen high vaccination rates for Google employees so far and that is why it is comfortable in bringing workers back into the office.
Currently, there are some early volunteers who are already working at various Google campuses.
“For those of you with special circumstances, we will soon be sharing expanded temporary work options that will allow you to apply to work from home through the end of 2021,” said Pichai in the note.
In the spring, Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon started rolling out their return-to-office plans which largely involved a hybrid approach — three days of work in the office and two at home, starting for most employees in the fall.
For the most part, wearing masks was not going to be a requirement for vaccinated in-office workers at most companies, and getting vaccines was not mandated. Now the companies’ plans appear to going through another round of revisions.
Apple was the first company to change its fall 2021 return-to-office date, announcing in July that workers would not be required back until October instead of the previously announced date in September.
