Most Google employees will work from home until 2021, CEO says |Tech.News1143

Most Google employees will work from home until 2021, CEO says

A select few may return in June or July

Most Google employees will work from home until 2021, CEO says |Tech.News1143

Why it matters: After several months of handling the Covid-19 crisis, Google has made the unsurprising decision to increase its current employee work-from-home policy. While early versions of this policy were expected to expire as soon as last month for North American workers, Covid-19's continued spread has forced Google to change its plans.

Moving forward, the search behemoth's employees are going to be working remotely through the rest of 2020. This announcement came from Google CEO Sundar Pichai during an "all hands" meeting yesterday, consistent with a report from the knowledge .

This move will likely have a big impact on Google's operations over time, but it's certainly the acceptable path forward. Given what percentage people Google employs, one could argue that the corporate has an inherent responsibility to play a task in curbing the spread of Covid-19.

Of course, the choice is additionally a win-win for the tech firm either way. Should Covid-19 resolve itself (or a minimum of become a less serious threat) before 2021 kicks off, nothing is stopping the corporate from backtracking. Of course, if the other occurs, and therefore the coronavirus situation only gets worse over the vacations , the new end date is way enough off that Google could easily extend its timeline if necessary.

During his announcement, Pichai informed workers that some might be allowed back to the office of June or July, but as long as their job requires their physical presence. Examples weren't given, but we suspect Google is pertaining to maintenance workers or those in similar roles.

Regardless, even for those workers, the in-office experience won't be business as was common . Google is reportedly getting to implement strict Covid-19 protection measures across its campuses locations, though we're unsure what those measures are going to be .

For everyone's sake, we hope that Google's announcement will prove unnecessary down the road , but only time will tell.