Ford Asks Salaried Workers to Return to Office, 4 Days a Week by September

Ford Motor Company is joining numerous leading companies from Silicon Valley to Wall Street that are asking their salaried employees to return to the office four days a week, ending a pandemic work arrangement that allowed employees to work remotely, The Epoch Times has learned.

“Many of our employees have been in the office three or more days per week for some time now. We believe working together in person on a day-to-day basis will help accelerate Ford’s transformation into a higher-growth, higher margin, less cyclical, and more dynamic company,” a Ford spokesperson told The Epoch Times via an email statement, confirming an earlier story by Reuters.

Currently, Ford has operations across North America and 125 countries around the world. The legacy U.S. automaker has 186,000 employees working in manufacturing plants and offices worldwide.

The new return-to-work mandate will affect only the company’s salaried employees across global operations, but the Detroit automaker did not disclose specific numbers of employees required to return to the office. Employees impacted by the updated return-to-office policy were notified on June 25, the company spokesperson confirmed. The new four-day, in-office work arrangement takes effect on Sept. 1, the company said.

According to Ford’s most recent 10Q securities filing, the company announced separation programs for salaried workers in 2023 and 2024, primarily in Europe. Those programs will be “substantially complete” by the end of 2027. In addition, in 2024, Ford offered voluntary separation packages to an undisclosed number of hourly workers in North America, and these programs are substantially complete, the filing stated.

Headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, Ford is the latest Fortune 500 company to implement return-to-office policies, joining others such as Apple, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil, Google, UnitedHealth, Tesla, and General Motors.

While earlier return-to-office requirements offered employees some flexibility and hybrid options, recent mandates indicate that some employers are enforcing stricter rules, often presenting employees with a take-it-or-leave-it choice.

Amazon announced in September 2024 that, starting Jan. 2 this year, it would require all 350,000 employees to return to the office five days a week to foster collaboration and strengthen company culture.

Apparel retailer Gap confirmed to The Epoch Times on Feb. 11 that it had begun requiring employees who live nearby to return to the office more frequently starting the same month, with the goal that they work onsite five days per week by the fall.

Besides the corporate sector, the Trump administration is also working to get federal workers back to the office after the pandemic.

On his first day in office in January, President Donald Trump issued his “return to in-person work” executive order, requiring heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch to implement necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and to bring employees back full-time.

In late 2022, President Joe Biden also issued a more moderate return-to-office mandate urging federal staff to spend more time at their offices. However, that mandate triggered a substantial increase in turnover rates among senior and skilled employees, a federal Government Accountability Office report stated.

Juliette Fairley contributed to this report.