Facebook staff to work from home until July 2021
Facebook has said its employees will be allowed to work from home until July 2021, and will be given $1,000 towards the cost of building a home office.
It follows in the footsteps of other big technology firms, after Google said last month it would permit those who do not need to be in the office to work from home until the end of June 2021.
Meanwhile Twitter has proposed remote work indefinitely for some of its staff members.
“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,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
“In addition, we are giving employees an additional $1,000 for home office needs,” they added.
Facebook said the company intends to continue reopening offices in a restricted capacity, but only where government guidance permits and where deep-cleaning and virus mitigation practices have taken place for about two months.
However, Facebook added that it was unlikely many locations will reopen in the US and Latin America before the end of the year, due to the high number of Covid-19 cases in those regions.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has previously said as many as 50 per cent of its employees could be working from home in the next five to 10 years.
Zuckerberg said on a livestream in May it could allow for a “more broad-based economic prosperity” within its staff base, with living costs around its San Francisco headquarters being among the most expensive in the world.