Fortune – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

Companies are monitoring the spread of the delta Covid variant as they adapt return-to-office plans and prioritize giving flexibility to employees, a board member at three Fortune 500 companies told CNBC on Friday.

“I believe there’s going to continue to be hybrid offerings. … Flexibility is here to stay, especially if you want to be competitive for talent,” said Shellye Archambeau, a director at Verizon, Nordstrom and Roper Technologies. She’s also a former CEO of MetricStream, which makes governance, risk management and compliance software.

Archambeau said that business’ reopening concerns are being driven by the highly transmissible delta variant, first discovered in India. It’s now the dominant strain of Covid in the United States and causing cases and deaths to increase again, particularly across largely unvaccinated communities.

“Companies are watching the data very carefully,” Archambeau said. “What I’m seeing is they’re trying to remain flexible, creating the optionality for employees to come back to work but still watching the numbers and how the rates are going.”

Archambeau’s remarks come as major companies try to figure out how to safely return to the office.

Few companies are mandating employees to be fully vaccinated before returning to the office, Archambeau said. Instead, she said companies are strongly encouraging and trying to make it easier for employees to get vaccinated, even making it voluntary to return to the office and encouraging mask-wearing and physical distancing protocols for unvaccinated workers.

According to a survey conducted in April by Arizona State University with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, more than 60% of companies in the U.S. will require proof of vaccination from their employees while 44% will require all employees to get vaccinated and 31% will encourage vaccinations.

Archambeau, a strategic advisor to the president of ASU, said that peer pressure will soon begin to play a bigger role in pushing employees to get vaccinated.

More employees may also return to the office when children get vaccinated, allowing them to continually go to school, participate in in-person activities and rely on child-care services.

“I think as time goes through, companies are absolutely strongly encouraging employees to be vaccinated,” Archambeau said. “The way in which they’ll be able to work, the kinds of roles they’ll be able to play, I think, in time will be affected by whether they’re vaccinated or not. … People will want to be vaccinated in order to actually do well within the company.”

And salaries are rising in North America. The average for a player in the top five of a team has increased from $ 300,000 since 2018 to $ 460,000, Greeley said. The highest-paid players in the United States, Wolf said, could make up to $ 500,000 more than their elite counterparts in a country like South Korea.

Many of the 10 teams in the League Championship Series are backed by billionaires who also own traditional US sports teams. But sport hasn’t become a cash cow yet. To get into League of Legends, teams had to pay Riot $ 10 to $ 13 million.

Riot declined to say how much it made from League of Legends, and analysts don’t believe esports directly benefits it. But SuperData, a research firm, estimated the game itself grossed more than $ 1.8 billion in sales last year.

Just blocks from Riot’s headquarters in western Los Angeles, where games are usually played, is Sawtelle Boulevard, which is where esports stars frequent ramen restaurants and boba shops. Korean transplants often spend their weekends in Koreatown, where they can find foods that remind them of their homeland, said Genie Doi, an esports immigration lawyer.

Work-life balance in the US is another draw for players tired of 18-hour days of training and even developing wrist injuries, said Kang Jun-hyeok, a South Korea-born League of Legends player, the team was Liquid’s coach and general manager. Although South Korea and China have made strides in recent years, the culture is “to work hard and grind until you break down,” said 31-year-old Kang.

North American teams offer these perks to potential players when they do a tricky advertisement to get the best free agents before other teams do. Once a player decides to sign a contract, Ms. Doi helps the team apply for a visa, which she says was normally granted despite the unusual profession.