In a move that will affect most of Alphabet’s 200,000 employees across the world, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has told employees that they can continue working from home till June 30, 2021 for roles that do not need them to be in office.
“To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through 30 June, 2021 for roles that don’t need to be in the office,” Pichai said in an email sent to employees, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Google had in May announced that most of its employees would work from home until the end of the year, having begun advising employees to work from home early in March.
Facebook too is looking at making work-from-home arrangements a permanent fixture, announcing that half of all its employees worldwide (over 50,000 at present) could work remotely by 2030.
“We are going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale, with a thoughtful and responsible plan for how to do this,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told NBC news.
Pichai's email comes amid a resurgence of infections across the US, one that began after many states lifted lockdown measures. Despite the surge in new cases in states that were not as heavily affected earlier, the current wave is not considered a "second wave" but a continuation of the first.
Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the TB Alliance on July 22 that the coronavirus may never truly be eradicated, with no “end in sight” to the pandemic as of now. President Trump, on the other hand, was confident that the virus would disappear.
Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s emergencies programme, has said while good progress was being made on COVID-19 vaccines, vaccinations for the public at large were likely only by the first part of 2021.
This means that many arrangements to minimize the spread of the virus, such as work-from-home, are likely to continue into 2021 and possibly beyond, as companies embrace the cost-savings from no longer needing costly real estate to keep their employees working.
