The big (and not so big) technology has started to move in to prevent the coronavirus from spreading among your templates. Companies like Google have just announced that they are sending all their workers in North America to their homes to work from there, and the same had been raised by others like Apple, Microsoft or Twitter in recent days.
In Spain, the impact of the coronavirus is also being felt by several companies of varying sizes that are sending their workers home in whole or in part. Among the large operators such as Telefonica, Orange or Vodafone, which have also begun to activate measures that allow their staff to telework. The clear precedent is in China, where millions of professionals have been teleworking for weeks in an exceptional situation.
The greats of technology are preparing to fight the coronavirus from home
Google had already sent home their staff in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Dublin, and now they have done the same for all their employees in North America, which they have confirmed to Business Insider. Most of Google’s 100,000-plus employees worldwide are in this region, making it clear that Google wants to tackle the problem at its root.
This is the latest move in a series of events that have confirmed the concern of technology giants about the spread of the coronavirus. Tim Cook offered Apple employees worldwide teleworking.
Microsoft made the same move a few days ago when it encouraged all its employees in the San Francisco and Seattle offices to work from home until March 25 next year. Twitter made an announcement on March 1 that all of its workers were eligible for teleworking, and that this was mandatory in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.
Facebook also began activating these measures on March 6, while Amazon began evaluating the use of VPNs in its Seattle offices so that its workers could take advantage of this type of measure. The company confirmed that one of its employees in those offices had tested positive for coronavirus.
In China, millions of teleworkers, Spain begins to activate measures
In Spain, several companies have also activated this type of measure. Vodafone was one of the first large companies to activate this protocol, and last week sent its 2,200 workers from Madrid home.
Others like Telefónica and Orange have taken the same measure and, according to CincoDías, the former “has decided to facilitate teleworking for all employees with school-age children” following the cessation of school activity decreed in Madrid last Tuesday. Orange has taken the same decision and has facilitated these measures so that parents who work in this company can look after their children while they do their jobs from home.
As they pointed out in Expansión, the coronavirus is causing the biggest teleworking experiment in history. In China, millions of people started working from home when radical quarantine was declared in this country.
Tencent, JD.com or Huawei were some of the big ones to apply these measures, which caused historic traffic peaks in video conferencing tools such as WeChat Work, DingTalk or Zoom.
The other unsuspected consequence: the increase in traffic in online games such as Arena of Valor and PUBG Mobile, by Tencent, or TikTok, by ByteDance, which have multiplied their use now that many are at home and need to be entertained. The impact at all levels is being exceptional, and in the coming days and weeks, it is likely that these measures for teleworking will go further both in our country and in many others.
photo from freepik
