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2020.08.07 23:56 GMT+8

Amid COVID-19 pandemic, will remote working ever come to an end?

Updated 2020.08.07 23:56 GMT+8
Mark Niu

As COVID-19 hotspots flare up across the United States, the pandemic continues to put a strain on companies trying to figure out the best way forward.

For many organizations, that means working remotely. Google is telling its employees they can work from home until at least the summer of 2021.

Silicon Valley company AppZen has 250 employees. As co-founder Kunal Verma shows us, these days there are typically just two or three people here. AppZen limits the office to a maximum of ten people who must each work at a designated desk.

"Even though I'm probably spending more hours working, the work-life balance has been very good. Because now like between meetings I can spend ten minutes with the kids which I could not before," Verma said. “There's just so much more work, work keeps on increasing. But if there’s a way in which we can incorporate work-life balance even more, like what we all have been forced to do, I think there is something there.” 

But some other questions pop up like do you wear masks in the office? What happens if someone doesn't want to wear a mask in the office? And what about the ventilation system – how do you clean it and what’s the best air flow for where each employee is seated? With questions like these not having been thought through, a return to business as usual is still a long ways away.

So will remote working ever come to an end?

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