Google employees will work from home through June 2021, according to the tech giant’s announcement.
“To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021 for roles that don’t need to be in the office,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees. The company had previously said Google employees may return to the office in January 2021.
The decision to allow Google employees to work from home will affect “nearly all” of the company’s 200,000 employees. These include contractors and full-time workers, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
Most technology firms have announced that most of their employees can work from home until the end of 2020 or have not yet issued a definite timeline. Amazon and Apple said their employees can return in January. Meanwhile, Twitter also allowed employees to work from home “forever” if they want to.
Facebook, like Google, is considering a more long-term approach to how employees can go back to work. In May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook will begin allowing many of its 50,000 employees to start working from home on a permanent basis. Within the next five to 10 years, Zuckerberg said he sees half of Facebook’s workforce to work remotely.
Online certificate programs
Aside from its efforts for its employees during the coronavirus pandemic, Google also announced 100,000 scholarships and online certificate programs. It will also award over $10 million in grants to nonprofit organizations.
The Google scholarships 100,000 are need-based and offered to individuals enrolled in any of the tech giant’s career certificate programs.
The three new online certificate programs of Google are in data analytics, project management, and user experience design.
These fields were chosen because they can lead to “high-growth, high-paying careers.”
Google employees will be providing and teaching the certificates. Future students do not need to have a college degree to participate in the programs. They can complete the programs in three to six months and take them through the online learning platform Coursera.
According to Google, it will treat all of its certificates as the equivalent of a four-year college degree for relevant roles at the company.
“This is not revenue-generating for Google,” says Google vice president, Lisa Gevelber, who manages Grow with Google and Google for Startups and serves as the company’s Americas chief marketing officer. “There’s a small cost from the Coursera platform itself — the current pricing is $49 a month — but we want to ensure that anyone who wants to have this opportunity, can have it.”
Google will also award over $10 million in grants to YWCA, NPower and JFF. These are nonprofit groups that work with Google to offer workforce development to women, veterans, and underrepresented Americans.
Like Google, Twitter announced that its employees can work from home “forever” if they want to as the company plans for what is to come after the coronavirus pandemic.
In March, Twitter asked its employees to work from home to help stop the spread of the virus and that it was mandatory for staff in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea to work remotely.
The social media firm claimed that it was “strongly encouraging” all of its 5,000 employees around the world to not to go into their offices.
Jennifer Christie, the company’s head of human resources, said: “Our goal is to lower the probability of the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus for us – and the world around us.”
