Microsoft to open offices on January 19, 2021: Report

San Francisco: Microsoft has reportedly chosen January 19, 2021 as the date for reopening its US offices.

According to The Verge, the tech giant is planning a "hybrid workplace" for a six-phase reopening of its offices.

"Stage six will be when offices are ready to fully reopen for employees to return to work," the report said on Friday.

The six stages are: Closed; Mandatory working from home; Working from home strongly encouraged; Soft opening; Open with restrictions and finally, Open.

"In the US, we have established that the earliest possible date for Stage 6 is now January 19, 2021," read an internal memo from Kurt DelBene, Microsoft's head of corporate strategy.

"Our goal for Stage 6 is to return to normal operations while being prepared to back off to an earlier stage, if a significant resurgence in the virus occurs," the memo added.

Google is planning to keep its employees working remotely until July 2021 while Apple employees will not return to offices until early next year.

With the COVID-19 pandemic hardly showing any sign of slowing down, Google said it would allow employees to work from home till the middle of next year if their roles permit.

"To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021, for roles that don't need to be in the office," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees, according to a CNBC report.

In May, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out a detailed remote-working plan to make half of his 50,000-strong workforce work from home by 2030. According to him, about half of Facebook employees would work from home five to 10 years from now.

While Amazon and Apple expect their employees to return to their respective offices in January, most other tech companies have also allowed work from home till the end of the year.