Tech companies in Silicon Valley and Seattle, including Salesforce and Twitter, were among the first to allow employees to work from home before local governments issued guidelines and orders.
In an update on salesforce.com, the Chief Legal Officer Amy Weaver revealed: “Salesforce employees will have the option of continuing to work from home until the end of the year.”
Acknowledging the need to prepare for reopening and returning to normal, Ms Weaver said the timing of when Salesforce will bring back employees into offices will be unique to each office.
“We will make those decisions on a city-by-city basis, in a way that’s consistent with local government guidelines and in line with the advice of our medical experts”.
Guided by our cultures and values, we’ll continue to work together to reopen our businesses and restart the economy safely on our way to a better future.
Regardless of whether their local office has reopened, Salesforce employees will have the option of continuing to work from home until the end of the year.
Work.com
Salesforce announced the launch of Work.com, “a hub of new technology, expert perspectives, and insights, to help companies and organizations reopen safely.”
We’ll continue to innovate around Work.com as we learn from our own efforts and those of our customers.
Salesforce says Work.com includes new solutions to accelerate private and public sector response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including employee wellness assessment; shift management; contact tracing; emergency response management; and grants and volunteer management.
The Work.com Command Center brings all data streams together so that businesses and communities can make more informed decisions.
And in just a week since it launched, Ms Weaver revealed: “We have heard from companies and governments at every level seeking to learn more about it”.
Twitter employees can continue to work from home as long as necessary
Much before the COVID-19 outbreak disrupted normal life in Silicon Valley, CEO Jack Dorsey said Twitter would strive to be a far more distributed workforce.
“We have to build a company that’s not entirely dependent on San Francisco.”
Jack Dorsey, CEO Twitter
Jennifer Christie, Chief HR Officer said on Twitter: 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.
Twitter however appears to be adopting a cautious approach toward returning to work. Ms Christie laid out Twitter’s plans:
- Opening offices will be our decision, when and if our employees come back, will be theirs.
- With very few exceptions, offices won’t open before September. 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.
- There will also be no business travel before September, with very few exceptions, and no in-person company events for the rest of 2020. We will assess the 2021 events later this year.
Despite the size and scale of the operations of these organisations, the developments are not only indicative of the accommodating approach but also a harbinger of the times ahead.
