Tech Companies That Lay Their Employees Due To COVID-19

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JAKARTA - The coronavirus or COVID-19 outbreak not only worries the world community. Not a few companies and the world's technology industry have laid off their employees, as a precaution against the spread of the corona virus.

This policy is the first step so that the spread of COVID-19 does not become more widespread due to reduced outdoor activities. It's just that, by allowing employees to work from home, it's clear that some technology companies that have a business selling electronic devices will falter.

As a result, in the next few months there will be no supply of equipment from the cellphone or computer manufacturer. Then who are the technology companies that lay off their employees?

Sony

This Japanese technology company, urged all employees to work at home and avoid commuting during rush hour. This is because Japan is one of the countries with the most cases of COVID-19 outside China.

If a Sony employee chooses to remain in the office, the company applies shorter working hours from noon to 3:30 p.m.

WHO calls on industry and governments to increase manufacturing of personal protective equipment by 40% to meet rising global demand due to # COVID19👉🏼 https://t.co/XM7RlcivuV#coronavirus pic.twitter.com/c5JTXdpQm7

- World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 3, 2020

Samsung

Samsung's smartphone factory in Gumi, close to Daegu, where most of South Korea's COVID-19 cases have been confirmed, will be closed indefinitely, temporarily disinfection.

According to a Samsung report, the employee tested positive for the virus on February 29. Samsung said the company would implement all necessary steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in its company, including ordering its employees to work from home if necessary.

Amazon

In January, Amazon also banned its employees from visiting China until further notice regarding the spread of COVID-19. They also advised employees who had recently returned from China to work from home for at least two weeks.

But now, Amazon is starting to enforce new rules regarding official travel for its employees in the United States (US) regarding the increasingly widespread spread of COVID-19.

"We ask employees to cancel trips that are not very important at this time," said a spokesman for Amazon, as quoted by CNBC.

This notification was distributed by Amazon last Friday. On another occasion, Dave Clark from Amazon's retail operations division, also reminded his employees to cancel meetings that require long trips, at least until next April.

Google

The Irish-based company Google asks its 8,000 employees to work from home. Of course, this is not a mass-scale experiment of remote working (working from home), but has to be carried out for health reasons.

This was done because an Irish Google employee was reported to have experienced flu-like symptoms, such as the initial sign of someone being infected with the corona virus. As a precautionary measure, Google Ireland also urges its employees to work from home.

This policy is also not known how long it will take effect. But on the other hand, the decision could also serve as a kind of trial and error, where the tech giant wants to see if its employees are still able to work at full capacity under these conditions.

Facebook

Unlike the others, Facebook is still opening its office and will order its employees to bring guests to its office. In addition, they will also conduct job interviews via video conferencing.

"We are taking steps to reduce the risk to our employees from the escalating COVID-19 situation, including temporarily stopping social visits to all of our offices," Facebook spokesman Anthony Harrison was quoted as saying by CNBC.

The company, which is located in Menlo Park, USA, will still welcome guests who come to his office for business and meetings. But social visitors, such as friends or family of employees, are temporarily prohibited from visiting Facebook's offices.

Twitter

The social media networking company Twitter is appealing to around five thousand of its employees worldwide to work from home, for fear of expanding the infection of the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-19. This Twitter policy is considered the bravest of any other technology company.

Twitter said that their goal of asking employees to work at home is to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the world and within the company. However, some of his companies in the US will still be open to employees who feel the need to come to the office.

📢 We're stepping up internal & external efforts to protect the public conversation & help people find authoritative health information on #Coronavirus / Covid-19. https://t.co/sajbTsOCmV

- Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) March 4, 2020

The impact of the spread of COVID-19 is not only about laying off employees who work at the technology company, but also canceling important events such as Google and Microsoft which ensure that two of their conferences will be canceled, namely the Google Cloud Next conference and the Microsoft MVP Summit.

Cloud Next is planned to be held in San Francisco, USA on April 6 to 8, at the Moscone Center to be precise. While the actual MVP Summit will be held in Redmond, Seattle, USA. Actually, the two conferences were not canceled, but turned into digital conferences, which were conducted online

For information, data reported in real time shows the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide has reached 92,100 people with a death rate of 2,979 people. But the rate of the number of patients who recovered had a total of 42,334 inhabitants.