New Delhi: Tech giant Facebook on Friday announced an extension to its remote work policy for its employees till July 2021 owing to the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier, the social media giant had allowed its employees to work remotely till end of 2020.

“Based on guidance from health and government experts, as well as decisions drawn from our internal discussions about these matters, we are allowing employees to continue voluntarily working from home until July 2021,” a Facebook spokeswoman told Reuters news agency.

The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company had its roughly 48,000 employees working from home since March 2020.

Reports also said that Facebook will provide employees with an additional $1,000 to spend on “home office needs”.

According to The Verge, Facebook now joins other companies like Google that have also allowed work from home to its employees until next summer.

‘Work from home’ in Google, Twitter, Apple & Amazon

Google also recently extended its work from home policy until July 2021 while Twitter allowed its staff to work from home indefinitely.

Last month, Google had said it would allow its nearly 2 lakh employees to work from home till the middle of next year if their roles permit.

“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.
Google had earlier set January 2021 as a tentative timeline for its workers to return to offices.

Micro-blogging site Twitter has allowed employees to work from home “forever” if they wish to.

Amazon and Apple have set January 2021 as the deadline for employees to return to their respective offices while many tech companies also expected employees to return by end of year.