When the coronavirus pandemic initially struck, Google was quick to shut down all its offices and asked employees in the United States to work from home until April before extending it to July before finally telling them to work from home until the end of 2020. Now, Google plans to keep its employees at home through the summer of 2021 due to the pandemic.
The move is expected to affect all of Google's 200,000 full-time and contractual employees. The decision being taken by Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai himself after an internal debate with other Google executives last week. The report indicates that Pichai's decision was swayed by sympathy for employees with families who had to plan for an uncertain school year.
Below is an excerpt from the internal memo by Sundar Pichai to all Google employees about the extension.
“I know it hasn’t been easy. I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months.”
The work from home extension is applicable for not just Google employees in the United States but also in the U.K., India, Brazil, and other company offices worldwide.
Google is one of the first companies to keep its employees at home until summer of 2021. Twitter is the only other tech company to allow its employees to work from home permanently, with others like Facebook asking employees to return to work from office by the end of 2020.
Source: Wall Street Journal
