MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota-based retailer Target, whose downtown Minneapolis offices once drew thousands of employees into the city for work, announced it's moving toward a hybrid model for HQ workers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement shared with KARE 11 on Tuesday, a Target spokesperson said, "We’ve designed the future of HQ work at Target to be hybrid – blending onsite and virtual work to give our team flexibility in how they collaborate and do their best work."
"While we won’t ask team members to be in the office with a set schedule or percentage of time, we know our physical offices will play an important role in how we work moving forward. Throughout the spring, our teams will continue testing new ways of working and will start to develop more regular hybrid work routines," the statement continued.
The announcement that hybrid work, a mix of in-office hours and remote work, tracks with the plan Target shared with KARE 11 last year.
In March 2021, Target announced it would shut down its City Center location in downtown Minneapolis and relocate 3,500 employees to other locations in the city or in Brooklyn Park as the COVID pandemic kept people working from home.
Then in May, Target told KARE 11 it had pushed the original return-to-office plan from the summer to the fall, but said long-term plans for their headquarters employees would include a hybrid model.
The surge of COVID-19 cases related to the omicron variant at the end of 2021 and early 2022 forced many downtown businesses to reconsider their in-person work plans.
In December, Target, which is the largest downtown Minneapolis employer, said some hybrid spaces had opened for employees, but the company wouldn't "have any hard deadlines for when team members will need to come back to the office."
Across the Twin Cities metro area, Target currently has more than 30,000 employees working at its 56 store locations.
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