Google Encourages Employees to Work from Home Because of Coronavirus Concerns
All Alphabet (Google parent company) employees that are based in North America received an internal memo from the company advising them to work remotely from home at least until April 10 to limit the spread of coronavirus. Earlier, Google also advised workers in Dublin, Seattle, and San Francisco Bay Area to work from home, taking into account the current situation.
The email from Google read, “The goal of businesses moving to work from home (WFH) arrangements is to significantly reduce the density of people and lower the health risk in offices, and also reduce the burden on the local community and health resourced, enabling those in need to get quicker support.”
The offices of the company will still be open because there are people who need to be physically present there to get their job done. In a recent tweet, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai also advised people to “contribute to social distancing” as much as they can:
Contributing to social distancing if you are able to, helps the overall community spread and most importantly, will help offset the peak loads through critical healthcare systems and also saves it for people in need. (based on expert advice). Please contribute if you are able to https://t.co/RNUh2kSyIJ
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) March 10, 2020
Chris Rackow, a vice president of global security at Google, says that the company is monitoring the situation and will provide updates when needed.
Google is also planning to provide all its temporary staff and vendors around the globe with paid sick leave, if they get infected with the novel coronavirus, through a newly-established fund. “This fund will mean that members of our extended workforce will be compensated for their normal working hours” if they are quarantined or have symptoms of COVID-2019, the company stated in a blog post.
Google is not the first company to encourage its employees to work from home.
Previously, other tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook have been advising their workers in Seattle to do their job at home if possible. Such measures are aimed at protecting people from the new disease caused by the novel coronavirus.