Facebook will now let all its employees work from home through July 2021. Not only this, all employees will also get $1,000 for home-office needs.
The announcement is an extension of an earlier decision, where Facebook allowed to let its employees work from home till the end of 2020.
“Based on guidance from health and government experts, as well as decisions are drawn from our internal discussions about these matters, we are allowing employees to continue voluntarily working from home until July 2021”, a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement to the economic times.
However, Facebook will simultaneously start reopening offices wherever the government policies permit and and “where virus mitigation has taken place for about two months.” That being said, the company added that it is highly unlikely that the offices in America will reopen anytime soon.
A few weeks ago, Google too announced something similar, allowing its employees to work from home till the end of June 2021. Apple, Amazon and Microsoft as well, do not have any plans to reopen offices before early 2021, and from the trend that is being set by Google and Facebook, readers can expect an extension from these companies as well.
Moreover, some companies are allowing their workers to from home even after the pandemic ends. These include Twitter, Square, Shopify, Coinbase, and many more.
In addition to this, Facebook has, ironically, leased the entire Manhattan’s Farley Building to use as its New York office space. This space could hold more than 10,000 employees. To put things in perspective, the current NY HQ can hold only 4000. This also goes against Mark Zuckerberg’s claims where he said that in the coming 5 to 10 years, half of the company can be working remotely permanently.
