Politics
- Facebook is blocking employees from bringing social guests to work over coronavirus concerns.
- The company is also switching job interviews to video-conferencing where possible.
- COVID-19 is causing mounting disruption to businesses around the globe.
- Facebook previously cancelled its F8 conference due to the viral outbreak.
Facebook is stopping employees from bringing social guests to work and cutting down on its on-site job interviews as fears mount about the spread of the coronavirus.
On Monday, Facebook spokesperson Anthony Harrison told Business Insider: "We are taking steps to reduce the risk to our employees from the emerging COVID-19 situation, including temporarily halting social visitors to all of our offices. We continue to welcome business visitors as usual." Social guests are visitors to Facebook's offices who aren't there for a work meeting - an employee might bring along a friend or spouse to the office to give them a tour or go for a meal in one of its free cafeterias.
The company is also now conducting job interviews through video conferencing where possible, he added, but there will still be some on-site interviews.
Since its initial outbreak in Wuhan, China in late 2019, COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has spread to dozens of countries around the world, sickening more than 88,000 people globally and killing nearly 3,000. It is also causing increasing disruption for global business, interrupting supply chains and forcing the cancellation of major events.
Facebook recently canceled its F8 developer conference scheduled for May 2020, which was to be its biggest event of the year, due to the outbreak. It has also said that the production of its Oculus Quest virtual reality headset has been impacted by the coronavirus outbreak.
On Friday, Gizmodo reported that Amazon is putting all on-site job interviews on hold due to the coronavirus. Facebook's measures don't go that far, but indicate the company is being increasingly mindful about the risks of virus transmission from visitors to its offices.
Do you work at Facebook? Got a tip? Contact this reporter using a nonwork device via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice) or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). PR pitches by standard email only, please.
Read more:
- A drunken late-night assault allegation has roiled the secretive world of Mark Zuckerberg's private family office. Personal aides are speaking out about claims that household staff endured sexual harassment and racism from their colleagues.
- Instagram's lax privacy practices let a trusted partner track millions of users' physical locations, secretly save their stories, and flout its rules
- Facebook says it 'unintentionally uploaded' 1.5 million people's email contacts without their consent
- Years of Mark Zuckerberg's old Facebook posts have vanished. The company says it 'mistakenly deleted' them.