Twitter has told its employees to work from home to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. It is mandatory for staff in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea to work remotely, but they said they were ‘strongly encouraging’ all of its 5,000 employees world wide to not come into work. This comes a day after the company banned all non-essential business travel and events for its workers.
The post also highlighted that Twitter has been developing ways to work from home for some time: “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.” Twitter’s Chief Executive Jack Dorsey has long-supported remote working and in November announced plans to live in Africa for up to six months of this year.
The move is similar to measures put in place by many companies in Asia as the virus sweeps the region, but goes further than most big American businesses as they respond to the outbreak.
www.bbc.co.uk/technews (3rd March)