If Microsoft has partially re-opened its Redmond campus this week to give more flexibility to its employees in the Puget Sound area, the company has now delayed its plan to fully reopen its headquarters on July 6. In a note sent to employees yesterday (via ZDNet), Microsoft’s head of Corporate Strategy Kurt DelBene said that the company has now chosen September 7 as the new reopening date for its Redmond campus.
The two months delay will give “flexibility for employees to make summer plans,” the exec said in the internal note. Last week, a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet that the company would “continue to monitor the situation” after choosing July 6 as the earliest date for a “full opening” of its Redmond campus.
The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic is far from being over, and Microsoft previously unveiled a Hybrid Workplace Dial detailing six stages of the COVID-19 hybrid workplace. The company is currently at stage 4, a “soft open” stage where employees are still encouraged to work remotely, with stage 6 being the “full opening.”
Microsoft currently employs over 57,000 people in the Puget Sound area, and the company is still in the middle of a massive re-architecturing effort of its Redmond campus that will take an estimated 5 to 7 years to complete. Even though the company is now experimenting with a hybrid workplace model, the construction project will lead to the creation of 2.5 million square feet of new office space to welcome more employees at the company’s headquarters when the pandemic is over.
