Microsoft said Wednesday it's looking to refresh its flexible work guidelines, in response to media reports that it may be getting serious about in-person work.

A new policy, that could go into effect in January, would tighten up in-person requirements for Redmond-based employees requiring them to work from the office three days a week, Business Insider reported on Tuesday.

No decisions have been finalized yet, Microsoft said.

Currently the company preaches a no one size fits all" approach to hybrid work. Roles and job postings are usually designated as either 100% in-person, 50% in-person or fully remote, though enforcement varies by team.

Throughout the pandemic and over the past few years, the company has tweaked its hybrid work policies.

Microsoft has lightly poked employees about in-person work, telling some that they may lose permanent desks if they don't work from the office and tracking how often they come in.

While Microsoft has been lax with in-person work, the tech industry has gotten stricter. The company's neighbor and rival, Amazon, implemented a return-to-office policy in May 2023 that required employees work from the office three days per week. Amazon ratcheted up that requirement to five days in January.

Other tech companies like Google and Meta require three days per week in the office.

If Microsoft shifts its policy, remote workers will be coming back to a much more contracted company since the pandemic began.

Microsoft embarked on a multibillion renovation of its main Redmond campus in 2017. It flattened older buildings and raised new ones. But in 2022, after hybrid work took hold, the company began jettisoning most of its Seattle-area offices outside of the Redmond headquarters.

In downtown Bellevue alone, Microsoft vacated about 1.9 million square feet of office space, leaving all but a couple of floors in one office tower. The company also shed hundreds of thousands of square feet of space in office parks in suburban Bellevue, Issaquah and Redmond.

Microsoft once had roughly 9,300 employees based in Bellevue, according to city data. Now it's not even one of the top 10 employers in the city.

Microsoft has almost 53,000 employees based in the Seattle area, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. The company said in July that it had 228,000 employees companywide as of June 30, the same as the year before.

The report of Microsoft potentially tightening up in-person work policies comes after multiple waves of layoffs over the past three months. The company has laid off more than 15,000 employees globally so far this year, more than 3,100 of whom were based in Washington.

The company's layoffs are not chalked up to artificial intelligence-driven efficiencies but are rather the result of a broader restructuring within the workforce. Microsoft wants a streamlined company to tackle the AI boom and rising costs from the technology have the company looking at certain roles to cut to reduce pressure on margins.

The changes at Microsoft is leading to a vibe shift within the company, with current and former employees remarking not only on the subtle change in culture but also the disconnect they feel between mass layoffs and the company's record financial success.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed that last month, noting the "incongruence" of a thriving company that's letting go of thousands of employees.

"This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value," he said. "Progress isn’t linear. It’s dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always demanding.

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