How rising Covid cases are impacting back-to-work plans

Surge in Covid cases has disrupted plans to return to the office. Charter Co-Founder & CEO Kevin Delaney joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss.

Video transcript

As we continue to see the US COVID cases tick higher due to the Delta variant, it's putting US employers in a tricky position if they were already planning on bringing back workers. We've seen a few now delay that decision. Apple among one of the examples we could point to.

And for more on that, let's bring on charter Co-founder and CEO, Kevin Delaney joining us once again here to break down that tricky dilemma that companies are in. And Kevin, I mean, when you look at it, how are you expecting them to-- to kind of navigate the new headwind that is Delta?

KEVIN DELANY: Well, so we have this situation where a lot of companies, probably the majority of companies were expecting to bring the bulk of their workforces back into their offices after Labor Day. So they have their plans, they're preparing to roll them out.

And then we've had this really big surge in infections. You know, the case rates are increasing pretty dramatically up over 100-- over 100% over a two week period.

And so they're having to reassess this do they bring people back into the office, and actually have them start infecting each other. And they don't want to deal with that. They or-- most employers had hoped that with vaccination in the-- the decrease in cases that they weren't going to have to worry about that.

So what we're seeing is that companies. And Apple just we learned last week. Apple had planned to bring its workers back in September now says October is the earliest.

Some other companies include ServiceNow, Pure Storage, they're delaying the returns for their employers while they're seeing this play out basically.

- Kevin, do you think that we could get into this space where essentially some of these companies will reopen their offices? And then as we continue to see these surges and these spikes right now, it's still time. But we've heard of other variants that are out there that are also spiking.

Do you think we can get into space? Or we reopen an office, have to close it back down, reopen it again?

KEVIN DELANY: You know, I think that's a possibility. And so we saw with some of the local mask mandates that's actually prompted some businesses to do that.

So there's the big talent agency. WME in Los Angeles. They had opened up. And then Los Angeles put in an enormous mandate for everyone, including people who are vaccinated about a week ago. And WME we decided to close its office indefinitely.

The thing that we're seeing in some places. And this is how Pure Storage is approaching it is that they're opening their offices on a voluntary basis for people who are vaccinated. And my guess is that we see companies actually increasingly start to make that distinction between vaccinated people being allowed to come back and people are not vaccinated having to wait in particularly given the-- the surge in Delta.

Yeah. We saw that similarly play out. The NFL kind of I guess is the poster child for now being a little bit stricter when it comes to vaccinations. And even talking players and teams that are at the heart of an outbreak. But also New York City similarly moving to-- to kind of--

I suppose there's-- there's might be a little bit less of required mandate because they still offer the option of weekly testing. But I suppose if you're really thinking about weekly testing. Doesn't necessarily sound fun either. I mean, how are you expecting to see maybe that push intensify to almost across the board see required vaccinations?

KEVIN DELANY: I think we're headed more in that direction. And New York is a good example. You know, Mayor de Blasio on Friday said that he thought that business should do-- business they should do everything that they felt comfortable with in terms of mandating the vaccine.

And so far, the laws or the courts are upholding the idea that employers can actually require employees to get vaccinated to come back. There have been a few cases. And so far the courts are upholding-- upholding the ability of employers to do that.

So I think de Blasio comments among other things actually give employers increasing cover for actually requiring vaccines. And then we're starting to see some other measures that short of requiring it that are pretty strong incentives for people to actually get vaccinated.

So there's one company in California Emerald packaging. They have September 1st. They give traditional wages.

If you're vaccinated, you get a 3% raise on September 1st. If you're not vaccinated, you get a 1.5% raise on September 1st. And I think that that's a step further than most companies have been willing to go to date. And I think we'll see more of that even for companies that are not strictly requiring vaccination.

- All right. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on that as we see so many employers wanting to get their employees back into the office. Kevin Delaney, Charter Co-founder and CEO. Thank you so much for joining us.