Meta updates RTO policy with stricter mandate, saying workers may lose their jobs if they don't show up 3 days a week

• Meta said in June that it wanted workers to come into the office three days a week.
• Now the company is insisting that most workers come back to the office or face the consequences.

Meta is committing to its return-to-office mandate, telling employees that they will be monitored by management to make sure they comply and that they may lose their jobs if they don't.

The company, formerly known as Facebook, on Thursday afternoon updated employees on its guidance for an RTO policy announced in June. Lori Goler, Meta's head of human resources, wrote in a post to Workplace, the company's internal forum, that all employees "assigned to an office" would be required to work from that office or otherwise participate in in-person work at least three days a week. Employees already approved for fully remote work do not have to comply with the mandate.

"Accountability will be central to making this fair and effective," Goler wrote.

Managers at Meta will be responsible for following up with workers on a monthly basis, making sure they are complying with the policy. Workers may be disciplined or even lose their jobs if they repeatedly fail to comply.

"Managers will review badge and Status Tool information on a monthly basis and follow up with those who didn't meet the requirement, subject to local law and works council requirements," Goler wrote. "As with other company policies, repeated violations may result in disciplinary action, up to and including a performance rating drop and, ultimately, termination if not addressed."

"We believe that distributed work will continue to be important in the future, particularly as our technology improves," a spokesman for Meta said.

"In the near-term, our in-person focus is designed to support a strong, valuable experience for our people who have chosen to work from the office, and we're being thoughtful and intentional about where we invest in remote work," he added.

Meta first informed employees of its RTO efforts in June, saying that beginning after the Labor Day holiday, people who were hired to work in an office should return for at least part of the week.

The internal announcement came after CEO Mark Zuckerberg began to publicly and internally praise the benefits of in-office work. In a March memo announcing a layoff of 10,000 employees, he wrote that a company analysis found that "engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week." The details of the analysis were not shared.

Under the new policy, most new employees, save for those hired for rare fully remote roles, will be required to work in the office. After 18 months, and with positive performance reviews, workers can apply to be fully remote. Being fully remote means Meta will not maintain desk space for such workers, who should not come to an office "more than 4 days every 2 months," Goler's memo said,

While Meta still allows some remote work, the overall shift away from it is a major departure from the pro-remote-work stance it adopted early on in the pandemic. In an interview discussing Meta's long-term strategy on "The Tim Ferriss Show" in March 2022, Zuckerberg said on the podcast that he hoped to have "50% or more of the company" working "distributed and working remotely" by the end of the decade. And Meta's metaverse was supposed to further usher in an era of remote-work options.

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