Amazon delays office return until 2022

Amazon is postponing the return to its office by four months.

The e-commerce giant had planned for its corporate staffers to return in early September. But it now plans to start bringing back corporate employees in the U.S. and other countries starting on Jan. 3. The move comes as other companies, including Microsoft, have also delayed their return-to-office plans amid the surging COVID-19 delta variant.

The news was delivered in a memo to workers in which Amazon human resources head Beth Galetti also said that the company continues to “closely watch conditions related to COVID-19.”  The company said that its return-to-office timeline will "vary globally in accordance with local conditions."

Amazon’s delay affects approximately 60,000 people working in the company’s offices in Seattle and Bellevue (Washington) and tens of thousands more corporate Amazon employees worldwide, according to the Seattle Times. 

In March, Amazon said its goal was to return to an “office-centric” culture and that it expected some U.S. employees to return to the office this summer, with most back by early fall. In June, however, the company revised its policy and said it would allow a mix of working at home and in the office. 

Unlike some tech companies, including Facebook and Microsoft, Amazon has not said its staffers will need to be vaccinated when they return to the office.  

[Read More: Walmart to require all HQ staffers to be vaccinated]