Google has been one of the first companies in the tech industry to say that their employees will be allowed to work from home for the rest of this year. However, it was later announced that all of their employees will have to only work from home since their offices are not going to be opened this year. Now, we are seeing that the second wave of Coronavirus has started in the US with the fact that more than 50,000 cases are coming from the country every day. This is the reason why Google has made a big decision once again regarding their employees and offices.
The Silicon Valley giant has announced that their employees will continue to work from home at least until June of 2021 which is till the end of Summer in the US. It means that the company has decided that they will not open their offices for the next 12 months suspecting things to not get normal before that. Google CEO, in his statement, wrote that “To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021, for roles that don’t need to be in the office,”
While Google is extending their work from home advisory for employees, Twitter has revealed that they are allowing employees to work from home on a permanent basis which is a decision they took after the pandemic situation came. Now, it makes sense for companies to let most of their employees work from wherever they want so as to save office space and expenses if the output is the same or better. Now that Google has announced their decision quite early, it is expected that others like Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and others will follow with their decisions soon. But we might see some companies even closing some of their offices for a short term.