Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told employees in an email on Tuesday that they would be allowed to work from home indefinitely, even after COVID-19 shutdowns end.
In a statement, Twitter said it was “one of the first companies to go to a WFH model in the face of COVID-19, but [doesn’t] anticipate being one of the first to return to offices.”
BuzzFeed News previously reported the announcement.
The company said if employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue doing so “forever,” then “we will make that happen.”
“If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return,” the statement reads.
The company said with very few exceptions, offices won’t open before September. It added when they do open it will be “careful, intentional, office by office and gradual.” It said there will also be no business travel before September “with very few exceptions” and no in-person company events for the rest of 2020.
“We’re proud of the early action we took to protect the health of our employees and our communities. That will remain our top priority as we work through the unknowns of the coming months,” it said.
The company’s acceptance of a mostly remote workforce predates the coronavirus pandemic. On the company’s fourth-quarter 2019 earnings call in February, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey embraced the idea of remote work while expressing dissatisfaction that so many of Twitter’s of employees are based in San Francisco.
“Our concentration in San Francisco is not serving us any longer, and we will strive to be a far more distributed workforce, which we will use to improve our execution,” he said at the time.
Other tech giants have updated their employees on work from home measures for the foreseeable future, as experts expect remote work to become much more common after the pandemic, with business travel rarer.
