Following Google’s decision to allow employees to stay at home until Summer 2021, Facebook has also announced that the company will be sticking to remote working until July next year.
Back in March, along with some 88% of organizations, Facebook made the shift to remote work in light of the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdown. Originally, the social media giant announced that it’s approximately 48,000 strong workforce would remain working from home until the end of 2020.
Facebook has had one of the most “drastic” responses to the pandemic, reports The Verge. The company announced in March that they plan to make thousands of jobs remote post-lockdown, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling The Verge at the time, “I think that it’s possible that over the next five to 10 years — maybe closer to 10 than five, but somewhere in that range — I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently”.
In a statement, spokesperson Nneka Norville told Reuters, “Based on guidance from health and government experts, as well as decisions drawn from our internal discussions about these matters, we are allowing employees to continue voluntarily working from home until July 2021”.
Not only this, but Facebook are also giving employees an extra £1000 to accommodate any home office needs, which will help with any remote working discomfort.
Facebook will continue reopening some offices “where government guidance permits and where virus mitigation has taken place for about two months,” reports Reuters. Although that’s not likely to happen in The Americas anytime before 2021, due to the consistently high number of cases.
