With the world gradually accepting a reality that we might have to ultimately live with COVID-19 as yet another infectious disease, companies are now crawling back to usual office work. Of course, the crawl back to normalisation is a long crawl, but we are now seeing some of that happening now.
After Facebook recently announced that some of its workforce would return to office, its now Google parent Alphabet Inc., that has talked about return of 10% of staff to offices. The company further added, that it may scale that number to 30% by September, if the circumstances permit.
In an email to employees, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said, “Beginning July 6, assuming external conditions allow, we’ll start to open more buildings in more cities. This will give Googlers who need to come back to the office—or, capacity permitting, who want to come back—the opportunity to return on a limited, rotating basis (think: one day every couple of weeks, so roughly 10 percent building occupancy).”
The work from home structure is of course still here to stay as most tech giants look towards inculcating the same as a permanent practice. Google on its end, said that it will pay each employee an allowance of $1,000, or the equivalent value in their country, to expense necessary equipment and office furniture.
Pichai further added, that there are a limited number of Googlers whose roles are needed back in office this calendar year. Presumably, these could be largely around maintenance of data centers and other critical technology infrastructure that essentially requires manned interventions.
Similar to Mark Zuckerberg’s recent address on making work from home a more permanent affair, Sundar Pichai too talked about making similar flexible working place provisions at Google. Pichai added, “we are very familiar with distributed work as we have many offices around the world and open-minded about the lessons we’ll learn through this period. We continue to study all the data and feedback you’re sharing on your current experience.”
