In light of the outbreak of Coronavirus in India as well as worldwide, top online firms including Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon are asking its employees to work from home.
Amazon has asked its employees to work from home if their jobs allow it, through the month of March. The policy will exclude the warehouse workers and drivers.
“We continue to work closely with public and private medical experts to ensure we are taking the right precautions as the situation continues to evolve,” maintained an Amazon spokesperson in a statement.
Earlier, the online retail giant had only asked employees in certain offices including in Seattle and the San Francisco Bay Area to stay back home and work.
Meanwhile, Flipkart too is testing this and has told its 10,000 off employees working at its Bellandur campus in Bengaluru to do their jobs from home for 3 days. This will also stand true for its group businesses – Myntra and PhonePe.
The online firm is still checking system preparedness for working remotely using digital or video tools.
“The company is letting its engineers operate from home, making sure they have the bandwidth and secured connectivity (virtual private network) which can solve problems in the same manner as they are solving at the head office,” said a person in know of Flipkart’s strategy.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Karnataka health department had asked companies to not send their employees for overseas trips.
The decision by the two firms came as the positive cases for Coronavirus continue to climb globally. Amazon maintained that it is encouraging all employees to work from home, if possible, in order to enable social distancing and also to lessen the impact on public transportation.
Coronavirus was declared as a pandemic by World Health Organisation on Wednesday.
