Twitter has become the first major US corporation to instruct its employees to work from home in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. This decision was announced on Monday.
In a blog post shared by Twitter’s human resources chief, Jennifer Christie, the social media company revealed that it was mandatory for staff in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea to work remotely.
The blog post also stated that the company is “strongly encouraging” all of its 5,000 employees worldwide not to come to their offices.
The announcement emphasized the global goal of reducing the probability of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus:
“Beginning today, we are strongly encouraging all employees globally to work from home if they’re able.
“Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus for us — and the world around us.
“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.”
The announcement came just one day after the company withdrew from this month’s South by Southwest media conference in Austin, Texas, and implemented a ban on all non-essential business travel and events for its workers.
Other large tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Salesforce have also implemented travel restrictions to and from various countries in response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Furthermore, many companies with offices and retail outlets in China have temporarily closed them or requested employees to work from home, including Apple, Google, and Facebook.
It is worth noting that Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has long been supportive of remote working and in November announced plans to live in Africa for up to six months of this year.