Amber Neely
Employees at Apple's California campuses are told to work from home as an "extra precaution" during the ongoing outbreak of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus.
Apple has begun encouraging it's Apple Park and Infinite Loop-based employees to work from home if possible, attempting to prevent unnecessary spread of COVID-19, according to Business Insider.
Apple has not made a public statement regarding the move, so it's not clear what percentage of employees would be telecommuting for the time being. Currently, it is believed that this is only a suggestion rather than a requirement.
The report comes shortly after Thursday's announcement from the Santa Clara public health department warning about the risks of large public gatherings. As COVID-19 spreads in the United States, Apple's WWDC is likely in jeopardy.
Specifically, companies operating in the county are asked to suspend nonessential employee travel, minimize close employee contact at work, cancel large meetings and conferences, and urge employees to stay home when they are sick, among other measures.
Apple is taking additional steps to curb potential COVID-19 fallout and has restricted employee travel to Italy and South Korea. The company also withdrew from SXSW 2020, where it planned to premiere three Apple TV+ originals.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
12 Comments
i have friends who work in Cupertino. One of them (who works in one of the Mary's, not Apple Park or Campus) said she was biking to work this morning when an email came through saying to work from home. She got to the office, the lot was empty, and was told by security to work from home until told otherwise.
We are doing a telework from home exercise today for my work. It just practice for the real deal. Like, making sure the VPN can handle the load.
Telecommuting is not for everyone, in fact for most people, even in computer based activities. Some people just need that face to face interaction to do a decent day’s work.
For the larger team that process claims of assistance, the database and interface is old. I have driven a few upgrades as budget allows over the last five years, but workflow will has to change quite significantly, and some of the accountability requirements loosened considerably if the processing is to be totally sans paper at remote locations. An option is to have an earnest young courier trucking around wads of peoples’ personal details about, but that is a security issue, let alone the personal contact wrecks the whole reason for working from home in the first place. We are running WFH tests over the next two weeks, but will have to get auditor sign off on the workflow and payment systems.
And that is before you start on the myriad WH&S issues HR (and no doubt lawyers) can dream up.