Google employees in Cambridge will return to the office April 18

Google offices at 150 Broadway in Cambridge.Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff

Google told its 2,000-plus employees in Cambridge that they should return to the office April 18 on a hybrid schedule.

The company said Wednesday that employees will now have “six weeks to help transition,” and most will work from the offices three days a week.

The announcement is part of a broader plan at Google to bring more people back to its offices two years after the company sent employees home at the start of the pandemic.

Google told workers in its San Francisco Bay Area offices that they’ll be expected to come back into the office April 4, a timeline that will also apply to other offices in the United States, Britain, and Asia, a spokesman for Google said.

Google’s hybrid approach stands in contrast to other tech companies, such as Twitter and Slack, which have said they will allow remote work indefinitely. But it mirrors recent announcements from other Boston-area tech employers, such as Wayfair and Akamai Technologies, which plan to return in hybrid fashion in the coming weeks.

The tech giant has been expanding its offices in Kendall Square. As of last March, the company said it planned to have more than a million square feet in Cambridge, which would allow it eventually to double its workforce in the area.

Google was one of the first major US companies to send workers home in March 2020 and is seen as a corporate leader when it comes to workplace policies. The model of three days in-office and two days at home has been adopted by many other companies. Google has spent billions of dollars before and during the pandemic on massive offices in New York, London, and Silicon Valley.

"We believe that most of our teams collaborating together in the office for part of the week, and having the flexibility to work from home for the rest, is what's best for our products, customers, people and culture," John Casey, Google's vice president of global benefits, said in a letter to employees. Many workers have also applied for and been granted the right to work fully remotely, Casey said.

The pandemic prompted a massive shift in where Google's workforce lives and works. More than 14,000 Google workers around the world moved to a new office or went fully remote during the pandemic. Many of them left the Bay Area, where the company's headquarters is, and spread out across the United States.

Material from The Washington Post was used in this report.