According to a tweet by Adrian Weckler, a report for the Irish Independent, it seems that Google Ireland could be sending 8,000 of its employees home where they will be working remotely. No, this isn’t some kind of massive work-from-home experiment that the company is conducting, but rather it is due to health reasons.
This is because an employee at Google Ireland has been reported to have come down with flu-like symptoms, which is one of the signs that they might have been infected by the coronavirus. While it could possibly be just a regular flu, it seems that Google isn’t taking any chances and will be exercising an “abundance in caution” by instructing its staff to work from home for the day.
Google Ireland: “We continue to take precautionary measures to protect the health and safety of our workforce, and as part of that effort we have asked our Dublin teams to work from home tomorrow.”
— Adrian Weckler (@adrianweckler) March 2, 2020
This is also expected to serve as a test of sorts, where Google wants to see if they are still capable of performing at full capacity should this drag out any further. Like we said, remote working isn’t new and hopefully Google’s employees don’t slack off without direct supervision, or if they are planning to slack, at least don’t get caught.