Google has asked all of its North America employees to work from home
“Out of an abundance of caution, and for the protection of Alphabet and the broader community, we now recommend the you work from home if your role allows,” the Wednesday email from Chris Rackow, Google’s vice president of global security, reads in part.
All 11 of Google’s offices in the United States and Canada are affected by the new work-from-home directive, with the San Francisco Bay Area and New York offices upgrading from a voluntary work-from-home status to recommended.
“The goal of businesses moving to work from home (WFH) arrangements is to significantly reduce the density of people and lower the health risk in offices, and also reduce the burden on the local community and health resourced, enabling those in need to get quicker support,” the Google email states.
Rackow’s email says Google is “carefully monitoring the situation and will update the timeline as necessary.”
Last week, Google announced it would compensate hourly employees affected by reduced office hours, such as cafe workers, for all of the hours they would have worked without the coronavirus disruption.
“Google is establishing a COVID-19 fund that will enable all our temporary staff and vendors, globally, to take paid sick leave if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19, or can’t come into work because they’re quarantined,” the company said. “This fund will mean that members of our extended workforce will be compensated for their normal working hours if they can’t come into work for these reasons.”