Twitter has told its employees to work from home as this will help curb the spread of coronavirus. In a post, Mr. Jack Dorsey who is the co-founder and CEO of Twitter, mandated all staff in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea to work remotely.
The company also maintained and encouraged all of its 5,000 employees around the world to work from home, it comes a day after the firm banned all non-essential business travel and events for its workers.
The company had already announced that it was pulling out of this month’s South by Southwest media conference in Austin, Texas.
Mrs. Jennifer Christie who is the Twitter’s head of human resources said that, “Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the coronavirus for us and the world around us.”
The post also made known that Twitter has been developing ways to work from home for some time: “While this is a big change for us, we have already been moving towards a more distributed workforce that’s increasingly remote. We’re a global service and we’re committed to enabling anyone, anywhere to work at Twitter,” it expressed.
Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey has long-supported remote working and in November announced plans to live in Africa for up to six months of this year.
Many companies in Asia had earlier adopted same measures in order to control the virus escalating the region but goes further than most big American businesses as they respond to the outbreak.
Other leading technology companies, including Facebook and Google, have postponed or cancelled conferences in the United States. Facebook has also joined Twitter by pulling out of South by Southwest media conference in Austin, Texas.
At the same time companies, including telecoms operator A&T and banking giant Citigroup, have restricted international travel, especially to Asia.
The announcement comes as deaths due to the coronavirus around the world have passed 3,000 as the outbreak spreads from Asia to the United States, Europe, Middle East and Africa.
