Five Tips to Help Employers Return Employees to the Office

By Matthew R. Courtner

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives—both personally and professionally. No doubt about it. For example, I cannot remember ever using Zoom in my legal career before March 2020, but now it is a weekly occurrence.  Just last month, I participated in depositions via Zoom where lawyers located in Tennessee, Georgia, and Illinois deposed expert witnesses who were located in California and Florida without expending the time and incurring the expense of traveling to a central location. 

For many employees, a significant change caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was working from home in lieu of working in an office on the employer’s premise. The extent of this change varies from one employer to the next. Some employers provided remote work short-term and have already returned to employees to the office. Other employers are still letting employees working from home today. And some employers, such as Twitter, have announced that their employees can work from home permanently. 

As our country attempts to return closer to “normal” now that we are more than two years into the pandemic, some employers are grappling with whether to require their employees to return to the office, and if so, how best to return those  employees to the office. For example, Apple initially announced that its employees would return to the office three days a week, but employees opposed such a plan. Apple delayed that plan in May 2022, citing COVID-19 concerns. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has also commented on the struggle to get employees back to the office, stating, “I have been unsuccessful, despite everything I’ve tried to do, to get our people back to work. I’ve plead with them. I said I’ll get on my knees. I’ll do push-ups. Whatever you want. Come back.” See Https://www.businessinsider.com/starbucks-ceo-howard-schultz-begs-workers-return-office-2022-6?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab. On the other hand, some employers are moving forward with returning employees to the office. For example, Telsa CEO Elon Musk has recently called for all Tesla employees to return to the office “for a minimum” of forty hours each week, or otherwise quit. See https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/01/tech/elon-musk-tesla-ends-work-from-home/index.html. 

For employers who attempt to return employees back to work, here are five tips to help employers successfully implement a return to work plan. 

1. Provide sufficient notice before implementing the plan. You should not announce your plan with a quick implementation schedule. Providing sufficient notice will help employees plan for having to work in the office. For example, some employees will likely have to make plans for childcare that they have not needed while working from home. The amount of time needed for each employee will vary. As such, the employer should provide at least several weeks’ notice before beginning to implement the plan. 
2. Consider implementing your return to work plan progressively. You can implement your plan for all employees to return five days a week, but that will be a big change for employees who have grown accustomed to working from home. As such, employers could start with having employees return to work two to three days a week and then transition to five days a week over several months. Alternatively, some employers may decide to implement a return to work progressively by job categories. For example, an employer may prefer to return a couple of job categories and then return the remaining categories in a couple of months. 
3. Keep appropriate COVID-19 safety protocols in place. If employees have been working remotely, you may not have fully developed a COVID-19 policy. As such, you need to determine necessary COVID-19 safety protocols for a return to work and then inform employees of those protocols. Such a plan may help ease concerns that some employees have about returning to work, and it will help employees to be prepared to abide by the policy beginning the first day back at work. 
4. Be prepared for accommodation requests. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for an employee’s disability, unless the accommodation imposes an undue burden.  Whether an employer can provide a reasonable accommodation must be determined based on the specific facts and circumstances of each request. Consequently, the ADA requires employers to engage in an interactive process with its employee “to identify the precise limitations resulting from the disability and potential reasonable accommodations that could overcome those limitations.” Melange v. City of Ctr. Line, 482 Fed. App’x 81, 84-85 (6th Cir. 2012).

Under the ADA, working remotely may be a reasonable accommodation. See e.g., Mosby-Meachem v. Memphis Light, Gas & Water Div., 883 F.3d 595, 605-06 (6th Cir. 2018). As the Sixth Circuit has acknowledged, “The ADA encourages—indeed requires—employers to make reasonable accommodations for its employees, including allowing telecommuting under the proper circumstances.” EEOC v. Ford Motor Co., 782 F.3d 753, 764 (6th Cir. 2015). Whether remote work is a reasonable accommodation will depend upon the essential functions of the employee’s job. Even if remote work is not a reasonable accommodation, employers must consider whether another reasonable accommodation is available, such as a leave of absence, a staggered work schedule to avoid interaction with a large group of people, or an isolated working area. Consequently, when requiring employees to return to the office, employers must consider its obligations under the ADA when appropriate, or otherwise the employer will risk a discrimination claim under the ADA.  

5. Train managers and supervisors before implementing the return to work plan. Many employees will have questions and concerns about the return to work plan. As such, employers should develop a clear plan for responding to these anticipated questions and concerns and then train its managers and supervisors on the plan for responding to the expected questions and concerns of the returning employees. Employers should also train its managers and supervisors on the employer’s ADA accommodation policy to ensure that the employer follows the ADA and applies the ADA consistently.  

With an emerging generation of younger workers and the COVID-19 modifications to work schedules, it may be that we are creating a new “normal” where remote work will have a larger presence in the workplace than ever before. However, as employers continue to determine the right balance of in-person work at the office versus remote work, the above considerations will help employers return employees to work as smoothly as possible.