In a company notice, Twitter posted that the company will require staff located in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korean to work from home. Twitter also encourages its employees around the world to do the same. Currently, the company staffs around 5,000 companies around the globe.
Just recently, Twitter has also banned unnecessary business travel and company events for its employees. Also, their initial plans to have a presence at South by Southwest has changed. The company also announced the cancellation of this event, which is a yearly event in Austin, Texas. Companies like Facebook and Google have followed suit and canceled their respective conferences in the United States.
In a statement by Jennifer Christie, a spokesman for Twitter’s human resources office stated that their goal is to minimize the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.
The blog also emphasized that the company has been developing workflows to accommodate remote workers. The trend in the technology industry has already been moving in that direction for years. Twitter is a global service company and is actively involved in encouraging their workers to work from anywhere.
Jack Dorsey, the company’s CEO, is setting an example by moving to Africa for six months in 2020. This announcement released last November surely has surprised many business analysts.
According to buzzfeednews.com, the pivot to stay-at-home workers mirrors what other companies in Asia have been doing as the virus penetrates other regions of the world. American businesses are starting to respond to the outbreak in the same fashion.
Google’s European headquarters are also instructing their staff to work from home as they take precautions for the potential outbreak in Ireland. After they have a preparedness program in place, their workers will resume their in-office work soon.
Making these drastic changes is due to the fast-moving epidemic that originated in China and recently has spread to other continents, with hotspots that have been appearing in Europe and the Middle East.
