Coronavirus: Google tells employees across the world to work from home

Google tells staff to work remotely for the next month and promises sick pay for temporary staff

Google has instructed its employees to work from home for the next month as a coronavirus precaution.

In a memo, the company said that it recommended the move "out of an abundance of caution, and for the protection of Alphabet [Google's holding company] and the broader community".

The memo was leaked to CNN. The company becomes one of the first in the US to instruct all workers in the country - as well as across Europe, Africa and the Middle East - to work from home. Last week, Google, along with Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook, instructed workers only in the Seattle region to work from home due to an outbreak in Washington State.

"The goal of businesses moving to work from home (WFH) arrangements is to significantly reduce the density of people and lower the health risk in offices, and also reduce the burden on the local community and health resourced, enabling those in need to get quicker support," Google's memo explains.

In a blog post earlier this week, the company also pledged to pay pay sick leave to all temporary staff it employs, if it is required, "if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19, or can't come into work because they are quarantined".

The fund the company has set-up to support its sick leave policy has also been extended to vendors with staff assigned to Google, following on from a requirement the company introduced last year that all companies with staff assigned to Google must also provide sick leave - sick leave is not mandated by US federal labour laws, and some states do not have laws requiring paid sick leave.

"As we're in a transition period in the US - and to cover any gaps elsewhere in the world - Google is establishing a COVID-19 fund that will enable all our temporary staff and vendors, globally, to take paid sick leave if they have potential symptoms of COVID-19, or can't come into work because they're quarantined.

"Working with our partners, this fund will mean that members of our extended workforce will be compensated for their normal working hours if they can't come into work for these reasons."

Google employs some 120,000 people worldwide. The work-from-home recommendation applies in the UK.

The first coronavirus, or COVID-19, infection has been traced back to Wuhan in China on 1st December but, after regional authorities covered-up the gathering outbreak, China's government only officially recognised it in mid-January. The first quaratines were announced on 23rd January.

By early February, the response to the outbreak was already having an impact on the availability of technology hardware, while Microsoft warned of supply-chain disruption in a trading update at the end of February. New cases of COVID-19 around the world have snowballed since then.