Twitter has informed its employees that they can work from home "forever" if they want to as the company plans for what's to come after the coronavirus pandemic.
Social media company Twitter announced that it will allow employees to work from home permanently after it said that its work from home measures during the lockdown had been successful.
How it started
In March, Twitter asked its employees to work from home to help stop the spread of the virus and that it was mandatory for staff in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea to work remotely.
The social media firm claimed that it was “strongly encouraging” all of its 5,000 employees around the world to not to go into their offices.
Jennifer Christie, the company's head of human resources, said: "Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus for us - and the world around us."
"While this is a big change for us, we have already been moving towards a more distributed workforce that's increasingly remote. We're a global service and we're committed to enabling anyone, anywhere to work at Twitter," the company claimed.
Twitter's announcement coincided with the decision of several other tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook, to allow staff in Canada and the US to work from home to prevent the virus from spreading further.
Google sent a memo to Washington State staff to work from home but has now expanded the request to employees in the US and Canada. The memo will cover almost 100,000 workers across 11 offices in the two countries.
Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president of global security, wrote an email to workers saying: “Out of an abundance of caution, and for the protection of Alphabet and the broader community, we now recommend you work from home if your role allows.”
However, Alphabet said its offices in North America will remain open for those whose work require them to come in.
Permanent work from home option
While working from home is an option, Twitter workers may still return to the office if they prefer to when it reopens.
In a blog post, Twitter stated: "The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen."
In the post, the company noted that for those who want to return to Twitter's office the company "will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions".
Sree Sreenivasan, a Loeb Visiting Professor of Digital Innovation at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism, described the move as "era-defining news".
"Some people may not take this seriously as its Twitter but we can learn a lot from Silicon Valley about workplace flexibility. There has been a mentality that working from home was stealing from the boss and facetime in the office was more important," Sreenivasan said.
He added: "But people are proving they can be far more productive and get tasks done working from home. A lot of people tell me they are working harder at home and are exhausted."
