Technology giant Google has extended its working from home policy to 30 June 2021 to support the health and wellbeing of its 200,000 employees during the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.
The voluntary benefit gives employees the option to continue working from home, even if restrictions from the pandemic are lifted, and not return to an office-based style of working until at least July 2021.
However, Google is beginning to reopen some of its offices globally despite predicting that a significant majority of the workforce will take up the working-from-home option.
To ensure that employees have the right equipment to work from home effectively, in May 2020 the organisation gave employees a $1,000 (£812) payment to cover the cost of any equipment to set up their home office.
Japanese technology firm Fujitsu introduced a similar policy earlier this month.
A spokesperson at Google said: “To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through to 30 June 2021 for roles that don’t need to be in the office. Sundar Pichai, chief executive at Google, made the announcement today (28 July 2020) in an email to employees.”