Twitter has announced that it will be “strongly encouraging” all of its employees around the world to work from home “if able,” as the company seeks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. The company hasn’t said how long it will be encouraging employees to stay home.
The request for employees to work at home isn’t a mandatory requirement, and those who prefer or need to come into Twitter’s offices will still be allowed to do so (except in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea, due to government restrictions there). Twitter’s announcement also notes that it’s working to increase deep cleaning and sanitizing, adding additional notices for good hygiene, and pre-packaging and pre-plating food to help avoid spreading the virus.
Out of an abundance of caution and care, both @Twitter and @Square are taking significant measures to help lower the probability of spread of #coronavirus #covid19, including strongly encouraging all of our employees globally to work from home if able. More here:
— jack (@jack) March 3, 2020
The policy comes just one day after Twitter announced that it would be canceling all “non-critical” employee travel and events — the result of which saw the company withdraw from attending SXSW, canceling both an appearance by CEO Jack Dorsey and its annual #TwitterHouse installation. Concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus have already had widespread effects on the technology industry: Mobile World Congress, Facebook’s F8 developer conference, the Game Developers Conference, the Geneva Motor Show, and two smaller Google and Microsoft conferences have already been cancelled or postponed due to concerns surrounding the virus. Also read: US firm helped build firewall to maintain social media ban in Indian Occupied Kashmir