Google extends work from home policy till September 2021

Search-engine giant Google has announced to extend its work from home policy till September 2021. Google had earlier planned to reopen offices by summer next. But it has now allowed those employees who don't need to be in an office to work from home till September.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has sent an email to staff wherein he communicated that the company is mulling a fully hybrid workforce model. He said that the company is "testing a hypothesis that a flexible work model will lead to greater productivity, collaboration, and well-being".

According to Google, its employees may rejoin the workplace for three days a week and work from home on the rest of the days when offices reopen.

Notably, the tech giant is in the process of laying out a series of changes that will affect how its staff and people at other tech companies will work after the pandemic.

The latest announcement by Google to extend the work from home policy will apply to its all 200,000 employees.

Google had earlier set January 2021 as a tentative timeline for its workers to return to the office. It revised the work from home policy later till May 2021 if their roles permit.

Several tech companies around the world have allowed their employees to work from home due to the pandemic. While many of them have already announced to extend the policy till the middle of next year, Twitter has said that it will allow its employees to work remotely 'forever' if they so wish.

Another technology giant Microsoft has also decided to throw open an option to its employees to work from home permanently. Microsoft will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50 per cent of their working week, or for managers to approve permanent remote work.

Recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has told his more than 50,000 employees that they will not be required to get vaccinated before returning to work when the company reopens offices in July 2021. Zuckerberg said that he also working on a detailed remote-working plan to make half of his workforce work from home by 2030. According to him, about half of Facebook employees would work from home five to 10 years from now.

Meanwhile, Google also said that it is looking for opportunities in mid-to-late 2021 to help make Covid-19 vaccines available to its workers, but only after high-risk and high-priority people globally have received the vaccines".