Twitter is one of the major tech companies of the internet, and the novel 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic has affected it in a bad way, just like almost any business out there.
The pandemic has infected million of people globally, and has led to strict lockdowns in many countries. Along the way, social distancing and work from home have slowly become a norm for some people.
With the culture somehow changing, Twitter wants to embrace that fact.
The social media company said it has no plans for reopening most of its offices before September 2020, and employees can choose whether or not they want to come to the office to work, and also when.
“Opening offices will be our decision,” a Twitter spokesperson said. “When and if our employees come back, will be theirs.”
"When we do decide to open offices, it also won’t be a snap back to the way it was before. It will be careful, intentional, office by office and gradual."
What this means, Twitter wants to allow its employees to expect a "permanent" work from home, even after health authorities allow people to return back to their normal lives, as the danger of coronavirus recedes.
A Twitter spokesperson continued by saying that:
"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. If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return."
"We’ve been very thoughtful in how we’ve approached this from the time we were one of the first companies to move to a work-from-home model."
"We’ll continue to be, and we’ll continue to put the safety of our people and communities first."
Twitter has in fact urged its employees to work from home since May 2020. But since the pandemic has yet to see its end, it needs to extend that plan.
What's more, the company is also canceling all in-person events for the rest of 2020, with very few exceptions, and reassess its plan for 2021. And finally, Twitter is also increasing all of its employees' allowance for work from home supplies to $1,000.
The suggestion was made by Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey in an email to his employees.
He informed that they will be able to continue working from home as long as they see fit. The CEO noted that Twitter was an early adopter of a work-from-home model, and that push has been accelerated by COVID-19 stay at home orders.
Twitter human resources head Jennifer Christie added that the company would “never probably be the same” in the structure of its work.
“People who were reticent to work remotely will find that they really thrive that way,” Christie said. “Managers who didn’t think they could manage teams that were remote will have a different perspective. I do think we won’t go back.”
Twitter follows other major tech firms, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc., that have extended their work from home policies until at least the end of 2020.
Twitter however, is the first tech company to say that employees can choose to do so, "permanently" if they want to.
But of course, the policy does not apply to all staffers, and workers whose job mandate that they should be present on the site. These people will have to report back to work. But for the rest of Twitter employees, work from home could become the new reality for them.
Twitter's new policy comes as businesses across the nation are struggling to adapt to social distancing guidelines and rethinking how they will operate in a post-pandemic world.
"We've been very thoughtful in how we've approached this from the time we were one of the first companies to move to a work-from-home model,” the Twitter spokesperson said. "We'll continue to be, and we'll continue to put the safety of our people and communities first."
