Meta will require employees to return to the office three days a week starting in September

Meta employees will have to work from the company’s offices three days a week starting in September.

The social media giant began notifying employees Thursday of its new telecommuting policy, which won’t affect existing workers who primarily work remotely.

“We are committed to distributed work and are confident that people can make a meaningful impact both from the office and at home,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “We’re also committed to continually improving our model to foster the collaboration, relationships and culture employees need to do their best work.”

Tech news outlet The Information first reported on Meta’s updated work-from-home policy.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, first extended its telecommuting policy to all full-time employees in June 2021. At the time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company had learned during the year in the midst of the Covid pandemic , that “good work can be done anywhere, and I’m even more optimistic that remote work at scale is possible, especially as remote video presence and virtual reality continue to improve,” Zuckerberg said at the time.

Since then, however, many companies such as Amazon and Alphabet, the parent of Google, have reversed course on previous telecommuting plans and urged their employees to return to physical offices at least three days a week.

In March, Zuckerberg hinted that he would update Meta’s policy when he said the company had conducted internal analysis that showed engineers who work in person “achieve more.”

“Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then switched to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely Zuckerberg said at the time. “This analysis also shows that early-career engineers perform better on average when they work face-to-face with teammates at least three days a week.”

In May, Meta conducted its latest round of major layoffs, part of the company’s “year of efficiency,” which will see about 21,000 employees lose their jobs.

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