Facebook employees won't return to offices until at least the end of May, and is cancelling events until June 2021

• Facebook employees won't be back in the office until the end of May at the very earliest.
• CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company wants to be slow about returning to work to help others in its local communities who can't work remotely so easily.
• And employees who don't feel comfortable coming back yet will be able to work remotely through the summer.
• Zuckerberg's post is one of the first statements from a major tech company discussing how it will attempt to return to normality.

Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is taking a deliberately slow approach to having its employees return to its offices.

In a post on Facebook on Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company's tens of thousands employees would not return to its office until the end of May at the very earliest.

"We will require the vast majority of our employees to work from home through at least the end of May in order to create a safer environment both for our employees doing critical jobs who must be in the office and for everyone else in our local communities," Zuckerberg wrote.

Facebook has been able to transition to working remotely relatively smoothly, given its sophisticated digital infrastructure, and the company now says it wants to ensure people who have been more severely disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic are able to make use of public infrastructure first.

"We know that most people can't work from home as easily as many of our employees can. We also know that when society does eventually start re-opening, it will have to open slowly in staggered waves to make sure that the people who are returning to work can do so safely and that we minimize the possibility of future outbreaks," Zuckerberg added.

And employees who don't feel comfortable coming into the office will be able to continue to work remotely at least through the summer of 2020.

The post represents a significant step in how businesses are responding to COVID-19, and is one of the first statements issued by a big tech company that addresses how they plan to restore some modicum or normality to their workforce.

Facebook is also cancelling all major real-world events it was intending to host until at least June 2021 - which will presumably include Oculus Connect, its annual virtual reality conference normally held in the fall, as well as F8 2021, its developer conference that is typically held in April or May. (There may be virtual versions of some events instead.)

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