- BlackRock Inc. and Wells Fargo Co. are pushing their return to office plans back one month to early October, citing rising rates of Covid 19 across the U.S.
BlackRock let workers choose whether or not to visit U.S. offices after Oct. 1, according to a memo. Wells Fargo, with almost 260,000 employees, will start bringing back staffers who had previously worked remotely starting Oct. 4 rather than Sept. 7, according to an internal memo of Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell on Thursday.
The shift from both the world's largest money manager and the firm with the largest workforce of any U.S. bank signals the financial industry is rethinking its return-to-office plan as the highly contagious delta variant sweeps across the country. While the biggest US banks have so far stopped short of requiring their employees to be vaccinated, BlackRock has only allowed fully immunized workers to come back, joining technology giants such as Google and Facebook Inc.'s Alphabet Inc.
The delta variant raises concerns about returning to the office even for those who are vaccinated and particularly for those of you with dependents at home who are currently ineligible for the vaccine according to the BlackRock memo, signed by executives including Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo has resumed a requirement that all employees currently working in offices wear masks, regardless of their vaccination status, according to a spokesperson.
Since July, the company has undergone a're-acclimation' period, during which it is asking vaccinated employees to start adjusting to office work if they feel comfortable with it.
California and New York City, where BlackRock is located, have said government employees will need to be vaccinated or submit to weekly tests.
The Delta variant does not change the basic facts: vaccinated people are at lower risk of becoming infected with Covid and much less risk to be seriously ill and needing hospitalization if they do become infected, wrote Powell in the Wells Fargo memo. The bank is offering an eight hours paid time off for employee to get vaccines. Don't take advantage of the extra time off and chance that Wells Fargo offers for you to get vaccinated.