Microsoft is officially sending employees back to the office

Summary

One of Big Tech's last remaining RTO holdouts is officially sending employees back to the office.Microsoft is mandating employees work from offices at least three days a week, according to an internal email the company sent to staff on Tuesday.The mandate will happen in three phases, beginning at the end of February 2026, with Seattle-area employees who live within 50 miles of a Microsoft office. It will then expand to other US offices and eventually internationally, according to the email from Microsoft HR chief Amy Coleman. February 23 was one of the start dates Microsoft considered, but it hasn't been decided yet.Employees can request an exception by September 19. Coleman's email didn't include details about how such exceptions may work.Business Insider reported in August that Microsoft was considering a stricter RTO policy mandating three days a week in the office.Microsoft sells software that enables remote work, such as its popular Teams workplace chat and meeting app. It remained relatively lax compared to some other Big Tech companies when it comes to RTO, especially cross-town rival Amazon. Even Zoom sent its employees back to the office part-time in 2023.Microsoft first introduced a flexible work policy when it brought employees back to the office in late 2020 after pandemic-forced closures. That policy officially allowed employees to work from home at least half of the time without approval, but in practice it was even more flexible and most employees worked remotely most of the time.Now its policy is evolving to be similar to guidelines at Meta and Google, which generally require most employees to work in offices three days a week.Microsoft's new approach is the latest sign of the company increasing performance pressure on employees. It has fired thousands of employees deemed low performers this year and introduced a new performance improvement plan meant to exit low performers more quickly.While working on the new RTO policy, Microsoft appears to have s...