Apple is telling employees to work from home this week if their job allows for it. Workers at Apple Park were told not to come to work on Friday, and now this policy has been expanded to cover Apple offices in California, Seattle, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. This represents most — but not all — of Apple’s corporate locations.
The new policy was first reported by Bloomberg, and has now been confirmed by Apple itself. In line with announcements from other tech companies, Apple says it will continue to pay hourly contract workers their normal wages.
Apple is also rolling out managerial changes to reduce human density in order to best prevent the spread of coronavirus at its retail stores and for employees who still have to come in due to the demands of their work.
This includes reducing the number of people in Apple retail stores; the company is temporarily reducing availability of places at Today at Apple session and lowering Genius Bar occupancy.
On the corporate side, Apple is rolling out initiatives to let employees to continue to carry out their work safely.
The coronavirus outbreak has affected Apple on the demand and supply side. The company announced it will not hit its quarterly revenue guidance due to supply chain disruption, and lower retail traffic in China. Analysts see supply constraints on the horizon, as inventories dry up. It’s also not clear if progress on Apple’s in-development products have stalled to the point where their launches will need to be delayed.
