CBS is telling their employees don’t expect to be returning to the office this year.

Due to the pandemic, CBS is making the right call by keeping most of their employees home.

In a memo sent to staff, ViacomCBS president and CEO Bob Bakish wrote “While we were hopeful we’d be able to bring a small number of employees back to U.S. office locations beginning in August, due to recent spikes it’s clear this will not happen. In fact, at this point, we are assuming the majority of employees will not be returning to U.S. offices this year.”

Bakish went on to say that employees in the company’s international offices will evaluate their situations based on local conditions as they develop.

Here is the full memo sent to the folks at CBS:

Team,

As we all know, there continues to be significant complexity, disruption, medical issues and uncertainty around COVID, and, unfortunately, we have seen recent spikes in infection rates in many areas across the U.S. This obviously makes our facilities-related planning difficult, despite the fact that we are in constant contact with a whole range of constituents, including governments, medical advisors and more.

At the same time, we know everyone is juggling a lot of uncertainty — including around schooling in the fall, caring for family members, the prospect of commuting, and more — so we feel it’s important to provide you with the best information we have at this point about our return to offices and productions. As we do so, know that we continue to hold the health and safety of our employees as a critical priority of ViacomCBS.

First, on our offices:

While we were hopeful we’d be able to bring a small number of employees back to U.S. office locations beginning in August, due to recent spikes it’s clear this will not happen. In fact, at this point, we are assuming the majority of employees will not be returning to U.S. offices this year.

If you need to make decisions that won’t allow you to return to the office this year even if the outlook for office return changes (e.g., relocating to a different city for the fall school semester), we completely understand—please just discuss with your manager and HR.
We are providing this update for a few reasons:

Given the continued trajectory of the virus, we believe having fewer people commuting and gathering is best.

H/T Variety