Workman Publishing is the latest New York City–based trade publisher to announce its return-to-work plan. The independent publisher, which has about 300 employees, said the staff will return to the office September 14, “but we will not be returning to the old way of doing business,” CEO Dan Reynolds said in an email.
Reynolds acknowledged that the publisher did remarkably well while staff worked from home, but added, “I know that it will not serve the long-term health of our company to be 300 individual voices sitting alone in front of their computers.”
To give employees the flexibility they have become used while at the same time encouraging conversation and an exchange of ideas among colleagues, Workman wants all full-time employees, with the exception of remote workers, to work in the office two days a week. The days in the office will be set by an employee’s manager.
Employee are welcomed to work in the office five days a week if the wish, Reynolds wrote. Any employee working in the office will be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Like most other CEOs, Reynolds acknowledged, “these new work rules are subject to trial-and-error and will be reevaluated periodically.”
