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What are companies doing to help employees working from home?

13 Mar 2020

Some companies are setting up relief funds and covering set-up costs for at-home offices, new study from Blind suggests.

Company communications platform Blind has shared the results of its crowdsourced study of the policies that businesses around the world are implementing in response to coronavirus.

In less than 12 hours, Blind collected 600 responses from employees at a variety of companies. The results are included in this spreadsheet, through which Blind is hoping to “let the public take a transparent look” at the protocols being put into place.

It said that its aim is to “empower individuals and organisations with information that makes them make better-informed decisions”.

The results demonstrate which of the companies involved are cancelling events, making it mandatory for staff to work from home and restricting work-related travel, for example.

The study also delves into some of the individual policies being acted on in different organisations.

These range from hosting interviews over video conferencing, disinfecting all work and retail areas and splitting operations to facilitate social distancing, to setting up relief funds, adapting food and beverage offerings in canteens and providing financial assistance for any at-home office needs.

Concerns over job security and salary

Blind also posed two questions to its users. Firstly, it asked, ‘Are you concerned your job security will be negatively affected by the economic trends stemming from the coronavirus?’

And secondly, ‘Are you concerned your total income is going to be negatively affected by the economic trends stemming from the coronavirus?’

Blind received more than 7,000 answers to the outreach, with 54pc of respondents saying they’re worried about their job security. That was found to be a strong sentiment in the tech and finance sectors, where more than half of workers expressed concerns.

Of the people surveyed, almost two-thirds believe that their total income will be negatively impacted by emerging economic trends stemming from the coronavirus. According to Blind, Cisco, Uber, Facebook and Expedia employees are the most worried about their incomes, while 67pc of employees at Google anticipate adverse effects to their salary.

Lisa Ardill
By Lisa Ardill

Lisa Ardill joined Silicon Republic as senior careers reporter in July 2019. She has a BA in neuroscience and a master’s degree in science communication. She is also a semi-published poet and a big fan of doggos. Lisa briefly served as Careers Editor at Silicon Republic before leaving the company in June 2021.

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