Twitter tells employees: You can work from home ‘forever’

Twitter will allow its employees to work from home ‘forever’ after an announcement by its chief executive officer Jack Dorsey in a company-wide email sent on May 12.

The social media giant has made working from home mandatory for its employees since March 11 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And it is now set to be “one of the first companies to go to a work-from-home model” on a permanent basis, a spokesperson told Guardian.

“We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralisation and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere,” the company added in a blogpost.

“The past few months have proven we can make that work. So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen.”

Twitter also added that those who want to return to the office will probably need to wait until at least September.

“When we do decide to open offices, it also won’t be a snap back to the way it was before,” the company said. “It will be careful, intentional, office by office and gradual.”

Meanwhile, other tech giants such as Facebook and Google have extended their work-from-home policies to the end of the year, and it remains to be seen if they will follow Twitter’s lead in allowing their employees to work from home ‘forever’.