Major downtown Hartford employer Travelers Cos. is delaying its scheduled return to offices previously planned for January, Chairman and CEO Alan Schnitzer said Tuesday in a company email.
Amidst rising COVID-19 infection rates as the omicron variant continues to spread, Schnitzer in an email to Travelers employees announced that a larger-scale return to the office planned for Jan. 18 would be pushed back indefinitely, but he didn’t provide a new timeline.
“Until we have a better sense of what course the pandemic is going to take, we just don’t have the clarity to answer that question. Given that we’ve had a few false starts, hopefully everyone is pretty well prepared to return to the office when the time is right. Nonetheless, we’ll make sure everyone who needs it has at least a month’s notice,” said Schnitzer, whose company employs thousands of people in downtown Hartford.
Schnitzer said that Travelers’ offices will remain open for employees who prefer not to work from home. For the time being, the company is limiting office access to those who have confirmed they’re fully vaccinated.
The move is a further setback for downtown Hartford, which has been hit hard by the work-from-home trend accelerated by the pandemic.
The Hartford Financial Services Group, which also employs thousands of people in Hartford, also recently announced it was pushing back its office reopening date.
