While Twitter made headlines recently for telling employees they can keep working from home “forever” if they so desire, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company anticipates it will welcome a chunk of its employees back to work by the end of 2020.
The Google parent would have employees return on a rotating schedule in an attempt to maintain social distancing, and curb the spread of the coronavirus. But the bulk of its people will continue working remotely.
“I expect by the end of the year, we’ll be at 20% to 30% capacity. Which may still mean we are able to get 60% of our employees in once a week, or something like that,” Pichai said on “The Vergecast” podcast.
The company will commence the reinitiating process by inviting 10% to 15% of workers in the office at any time, Pichai said. Alphabet will give precedence to employees who need to be in the offices, such as those who need to access certain equipment or products. But Pichai said he believes the company will limit office attendance to between roughly one fifth to one-third of workers at any given time, to maintain social distancing practices.
“That’s what we mean, where a vast majority of employees we think will likely work from home through the end of the year,” Pichai said. Google has the majority of its staff currently working remotely, as shelter-in-place restrictions continue in many locations, and fewer than 5% of global employees are working from the company’s offices currently.
There is some speculation that many technology companies could begin to transition towards working 100% remote operations, potentially saving money and time, although generating other issues. Twitter and Square, both under CEO Jack Dorsey, said in the past week that they will permit staff to work from home on a permanent basis. The majority of Facebook employees will be similarly allowed to work remotely until the end of the year, the tech giant said in early May.
“Our concentration in San Francisco is not serving us any longer, and we will strive to be a far more distributed workforce, which we will use to improve our execution,” Dorsey said at the time.
For investors looking at ETFs to trade Twitter, the Global X Social Media ETF (SOCL) has a healthy allocation of the social media stock. Meanwhile, the Davis Select U.S. Equity ETF (DUSA) and the Communication Services Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLC) are two ETFs with large allocations of Google.
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