• TikTok will begin to track how long its US e-commerce staffers are in the office.
• The company is requiring eight hours a day, five days a week, according to two TikTok employees.
• Return-to-office mandates have become a hot-button issue across the tech industry.

TikTok is tightening the reins on office attendance, and it's caught some employees off guard.

The company plans to track how long its US e-commerce employees are in the office, requiring eight hours a day, five days a week, two staffers told Business Insider.

It is also asking its e-commerce organization, which runs TikTok Shop, to be at work between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. PT, according to the employees.

The internal messaging around the change seemed to have been tailored to TikTok and ByteDance workers in the company's Seattle office, where much of the e-commerce organization sits. However, the message was shared with e-commerce employees across the US, meaning East Coast employees could end up working as late as 10 p.m. to comply, the staffers said.

TikTok's owner, ByteDance, is based in China. Employees previously told BI that the company requires some US employees to join calls at late hours to accommodate different time zones.

The two staffers said they expected to be tracked each time they used their badge to enter or leave office buildings to keep tabs on their hours. The employees spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the policy change. Their identities are known to BI.

TikTok declined to comment on the policy.

This return-to-office, or RTO, move specifically impacts employees who work on e-commerce, not others within the company.

TikTok Shop is a top priority at the company, which has sought to gain market share in an e-commerce ecosystem dominated by players like Amazon and Shopify. It's grown quickly since launching in the US in November 2023, last year pulling in $100 million in US sales on Black Friday alone. By some measures, such as repeat purchases, it beat retailers like Walmart. But the company has a long road ahead. It could be using RTO mandates to try to drive up performance, as other tech companies have.

While TikTok's e-commerce team was previously required to be in the office five days a week, the increased scrutiny around time on-site caught the staffers off guard. One of the current employees said people were surprised by the sudden rollout of the rule. The person said morale was low after the announcement. Both employees wondered whether the Seattle office looked too empty when company leadership visited last week.

The RTO requirements arrive at a prickly moment for TikTok. The company is reckoning with a divest-or-ban law that caused it to briefly shut down in the US in January. While President Donald Trump has delayed enforcement of the law via executive order, the company has until early April to find a new owner for its US assets.

Return to office has become a contentious topic across the tech industry and the broader US workforce. Many companies shifted to remote or hybrid work during the early years of the pandemic, and workers got used to the flexibility it offered. But some executives have come to view work-from-home as a productivity drain and want their employees back.

While Meta and Google employees are asked to come into the office three days a week, other firms like JPMorgan and Dell are calling staffers back five days a week. Creator platform Cameo recently dangled a $10,000 raise for staffers who returned to its Chicago office full-time.

Are you a TikTok or ByteDance employee with insight to share? Contact Dan Whateley at dwhateley@businessinsider.com or reach out over Signal at @danwhateley.94.