Starbucks is giving corporate employees two options next year: get back to the office or find a new job.
The Seattle-based coffee giant told employees in a memo, first reported by Bloomberg, that it will start enforcing its in-person work policy of three days per week starting Jan. 1.
A Starbucks spokesperson confirmed the new policy Tuesday, saying “the expectations for our hybrid partners has not changed.”
The company has had a hybrid work policy since January 2023, made by then-interim CEO Howard Schultz, a change from the pandemic when corporate employees worked remotely. Under the current policy, corporate employees, most of whom are based at the Sodo headquarters, are expected to come in Tuesday and Wednesday each week with individual teams deciding on a third day.
The company had about 3,750 employees based at its headquarters, as of last year.
Starbucks is dropping the requirement that workers come in on the common days, instead letting teams decide which three days a week they will work from the office. Team leaders will also be in charge of holding employees accountable, a Starbucks spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“We are continuing to support our leaders as they hold their teams accountable to our existing hybrid work policy,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve made updates to our workspaces to make sure they work for the teams who use them.”
Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol addressed hybrid work during his second day on the job, according to a report from Bloomberg last month. On Sept. 10, Niccol told employees that he prefers work in-person but the company wouldn’t create a new mandate beyond the three days per week policy.
He isn’t based in the Sodo headquarters; a stipulation in his offer letter from the company when he took the job in September said he wouldn’t be forced to relocate from his home in Newport Beach, Calif. And it isn’t clear how often he’ll have to travel to Seattle.
Starbucks said it would supply him with a remote office and an executive assistant, and provide a corporate jet for business trips to Seattle as well as personal use.
The ultimatum from the Seattle-based coffee giant echoes one made by its neighbor Amazon, though the policy isn’t as strict. Amazon is shifting to five days per week in January.
But like Starbucks, Amazon has suggested that employees who flout the policy can pack it up. Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman told employees in the company’s cloud division earlier this month that if they didn’t want to return to pre-pandemic expectations that “there are other companies.”
The two companies are taking a much different tact than one of the Seattle area’s largest employers, Microsoft.
The Redmond-based tech giant has had one of the more relaxed attitudes toward remote and hybrid work since the beginning of the pandemic. Its cloud division chief told employees last month a drop in productivity could force the company’s hand to change its remote work policy.
But Microsoft’s actions since the pandemic have signaled it doesn’t plan to shove people back into offices. The company has vacated more than 3 million square feet of office space between Bellevue, Redmond and Issaquah since 2022.
Company leaders often point to culture as the reason for requiring employees to return. Starbucks, which is on its third CEO since implementing the return-to-office policy in January 2023, is in the middle of a companywide culture shift under Niccol.
But others are hoping large corporations set the standard for hybrid work policies. The Broderick Group, a Bellevue-based commercial brokerage, said in a recent office market report that “as Amazon employees return to the office full-time, it is expected that other companies will follow suit, further increasing occupancy.
“This increase in physical office presence may also spark broader changes, such as renewed investment in nearby amenities and services.”
In Seattle, total office worker traffic has increased slightly over the past year, according the Downtown Seattle Association, which uses cellphone data tracked by Placer.ai, a software company that tracks and analyzes location data. In September 2023, a few months after Amazon started its three days per week policy, the downtown neighborhoods had about 84,000 daily office workers. In September 2024, that number grew to 88,000, following a post-pandemic high of 95,000 in June 2024.
Before the pandemic, the city sometimes had more than 200,000 office workers head downtown in a day, according to DSA data.
