CHARLOTTE – Amazon, which as of May had hired some 27,000 employees in North Carolina and invested $2.1 billion across the state, is among the latest companies to push back its planned return to in-person office work. So is Wells Fargo, which employs some 35,000 people across the state.

GeekWire first reported that Amazon changed its plans for returning workers to in-person offices beginning on Sept. 7 to a new date of Jan. 3, 2022.  CBNC also reported the company’s decision.

Wells Fargo, which has corporate offices in Charlotte, will be postponing its plans to return workers to in-person office environments, according to a memo provided to WRAL TechWire.

In that memo, Wells Fargo’s Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell, the company set a new return date of Oct. 4. The bank announced d in mid-July to bring employees back from a planned start date of Sept. 7. WRAL TechWire reported that news last week.

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Josh Dunn, a spokesperson for Wells Fargo, also told WRAL TechWire that the company is not requiring its employees to receive COVID-19 vaccinations. He did note that “we continue to strongly encourage employees to consider getting the COVID-19 vaccine, but we are not currently requiring it.”

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Powell’s memo stated that the company will still plan a phased return:

“We’ll follow the same sequencing we shared, which means that on Oct. 4 our operations and contact center employees will begin returning first over the course of several weeks, followed by our enterprise function and line of business support employees in November.”

The updated policy applies to all U.S. employees, Powell noted, but “does not affect employees currently reporting to work in-person or participating in voluntary early returns.”

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