Starbucks threatens corporate staff over return to office mandate

Starbucks is telling its corporate staff they could be fired if they don’t come to work at the office three days a week.

Starting in January, Starbucks will implement a “standardized process” to hold workers accountable if they don’t abide by the coffee chain’s return-to-office policy, according to a memo sent to one of the company’s divisions that was seen by Bloomberg News. Consequences are “up to, and including, separation,” the email said.

The message marks an escalation in enforcement of the company’s hybrid work rules less than two months since Brian Niccol took over as chief executive officer. He told employees last month that they should work wherever they need to in order to get their jobs done, but that he thought that place was usually the office.

Starbucks said its expectations for hybrid workers hadn’t changed and that vacation, sick time and business travel are excluded from the calculation. Workers can request an exemption from the mandate due to physical, mental, sensory impairment or another disability, the company said. The policy applies to about 3,500 corporate employees. Most of the company’s workers are employed at its stores.

“We are continuing to support our leaders as they hold their teams accountable to our existing hybrid work policy,” the company said in a statement on Monday.

Starbucks is the latest company to shift from carrots to sticks in the ongoing return-to-office battle that has been playing out at workplaces. Last month, Amazon.com Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy surprised employees with a memo ordering them to start reporting to their desks five days a week, beginning in January. Amazon currently lets many of them work from home two days a week.

Earlier this year, Dell Technologies told workers who chose to remain remote that they wouldn’t be eligible for promotion, and Wall Street banks have also warned that working from home could jeopardize employees’ career prospects. Still, offices in the biggest U.S. cities remain half empty compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to security firm Kastle Systems.

At the same time, some firms have realized that a return-to-office mandate can serve as layoffs in disguise. In a survey from BambooHR, one in four executives admitted they hoped for some voluntary turnover.

in the wake of an RTO push. Research has shown, though, that the workers who quit due to the policies are often the more experienced staffers that companies can least afford to lose.

Early last year, when Starbucks tried to enforce its hybrid-work mandate, dozens of corporate workers signed an open letter pushing back.

Niccol’s own work arrangement, which allows him to live in California and travel 1,000 miles to Seattle on the company’s corporate jet, sparked backlash by some workers and outside critics. Starbucks has said that Niccol will spend most of his time in Seattle or visiting stores. Several staffers had said they didn’t care where the CEO was based, as long as he didn’t crack down on in-office requirements.

Starbucks is also moving away from requiring Tuesday as a common attendance day for all workers at headquarters, instead setting the expectations at a team level, according to the memo.