Technology

Twitter says employees will be allowed to work from home ‘forever’

‘When we do decide to open offices, it also won’t be a snap back to the way it was before’

Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. The company, which also has offices in Dublin and London, employs about 5,000 people. Photograph: iStock

Wed May 13 2020 - 07:43

Twitter will allow its employees to work from home "forever", chief executive officer Jack Dorsey said in a company-wide email on Tuesday.

The company, based in San Francisco and with sites in Dublin and London, employs about 5,000 people and said it was among the first to start a work-from-home model. It employs about 170 people at its office in Dublin.

A spokesperson from Twitter said the company was “one of the first companies to go to a work-from-home model” due to Covid-19, but does not anticipate being one of the first to return to its offices.

“We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralisation and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere,” the company said in a blogpost.

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“The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen.”

‘Strongly encouraged’

Twitter has “strongly encouraged” working from home since March 2nd and mandated employees to work from home starting March 11th. Employees who prefer to work remotely can now do so indefinitely, Twitter said in its statement. Those who want to return to the office will probably need to wait until at least September.

“When we do decide to open offices, it also won’t be a snap back to the way it was before,” the company said. “It will be careful, intentional, office by office and gradual.”

Twitter has suspended almost all employee business travel and all of its in-person events until 2021. It is also giving employees increased allowances to buy home office supplies including desks and desk chairs.

The change comes as companies across the tech industry are weighing how to manage their offices in the coming months. Google and Facebook extended their work-from-home policies into 2021. Amazon extended its work-from-home policy until at least early October. – PA/Guardian

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