Apple continues to crack down on remote work by tracking in-office employee attendance using badge records to confirm that workers are coming into the office the required three days per week, says Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer.
Following the easing of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple employees have been working under a hybrid home/office work policy to ease employees back into the office setting, with workers required to make an appearance in the office at least three times per week.
Employees must come into the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, with most able to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays. However, it appears that some employees haven’t been properly following the policy, so Apple has doubled down on taking attendance.
In a post on Twitter, Schiffer said that Apple is now actively tracking employee attendance using badge records and will give employees “escalating warnings” if they don’t come in the required three times per week.
NEW: Apple is tracking employee attendance (via badge records) and will give employees escalating warnings if they don't come in 3x per week.
ALSO: Elon Musk sent Twitter employees an email at 2:30am saying the "office is not optional" and noting SF was half empty yesterday.
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) March 22, 2023
Schiffer says some Apple offices have warned their staff that failure to comply with work policies could result in job termination, although that “doesn’t appear to be a company-wide policy.”
A recent report by Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman said Apple is enacting several cost-cutting measures, which include managers becoming “as strict as ever” about office attendance. Gurman says some Apple staff believe Apple will fire employees who don’t meet the requirement.
As for retail employees, Gurman also says Apple taking a closer look at their work attendance and hours, even dropping its “special sick time” policy for time missed due to Covid, telling staff to use their normal sick time instead.
The report says Apple isn’t always filling positions when employees leave the company, suggesting the crackdown on staff is in part one piece of its company strategy to cut costs while avoiding the sort of mass layoffs that employees have faced at other tech firms, including Amazon, Google Meta, and Microsoft.
