The UK government has announced plans to minimise the threat of Coronavirus to the UK public, with a list of measures to help stop the spread and ensure public safety.
One proposed measure includes asking employees to work on a roster basis or work remotely from home. Organisations globally are taking the lead and asking employees to consider working from home.
In a blog post, the social media giant Twitter said it was mandatory for staff in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea to work remotely. The company also said it was “strongly encouraging” all of its 5,000 employees around the world to not come into work.
Twitter’s head of human resources Jennifer Christie said: “Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus for us — and the world around us.”
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.
Other leading technology companies, including Facebook and Google, have postponed or cancelled conferences in the US. Facebook has also joined Twitter by pulling out of South by Southwest.
Staff at Google’s European headquarters in Dublin will work from home on Tuesday as the company tests its preparedness for a potential outbreak in Ireland, but most of the 8,000 workers are expected to return to their desks on Wednesday.
At the same time companies, including telecoms operator AT&T and banking giant Citigroup, have restricted international travel, especially to Asia.
Azuronaut are seeing an increase in enquiries from companies looking for tools to assist organisations to be more equipped at working from home, and making the first steps to setting up a culture of remote working now could be a prudent decision. People shouldn’t be waiting until they are told to work from home until they are making the necessary arrangements.
We offer a 30-day free trial of Workplace from Facebook, time which will allow you to get a picture of how remote working enables your people to work seamlessly wherever they are. Some of the advantages offered through the platform are:
- Sharing updates and guidance regularly in channels that employees will be familiar with and checking.
- Set up video calls or conference calls to ensure your meetings still take place when you need.
- Extend remote working capabilities beyond your workforce to all the partners and customers you work with, using Multi-Company Groups.
- Azuronaut also offers several integrations that allow organisations to create interesting bots that meet their specific needs.
Discover more about how Workplace can help you stay connected to your workforce. You can download their guide right here.
Note: If you are looking for the latest news on Coronavirus, please visit the UK Government or the World Health Organisation’s dedicated sites.
