By Paresh Dave and Julia Love
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s Google has seen an increasing number of employees coming in to its offices each week, particularly younger workers, the company’s real estate chief said during an interview at the Reuters Next conference on Friday.
On Thursday, Google indefinitely pushed back the mandated return date for employees due to concerns about the Omicron variant. The company had previously said employees could be required to come in to the office as soon as Jan. 10.
Nevertheless, David Radcliffe, Google’s vice president for real estate and workplace services, said many Googlers are returning to the office on their own volition.
“People are actually showing voluntarily that they want to be back in the office,” he said. “We’re moving in the right direction.”
Younger employees and those who joined Google more recently have been coming to the office at higher rates, seeking opportunities to learn from colleagues and advance their careers, Radcliffe added.
Google was one of the first companies to close its offices at the onset of the pandemic last year, and real estate and human resources experts have considered it a trailblazer in office design and workplace perks for the past 20 years.
(Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif., and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Matthew Lewis)
