Corporate America Steps up to Deal With COVID-19

Janet Fouts — March 16, 2020

You might be wondering how companies are taking care of their people during the COVID-19 crisis. Here are a few of the many companies who have stepped up to care for and protect their teams, customers and vendors.

Zoom is offering free services and technical support to nonprofits, medical institutions, and NGOs as well as schools for online education.

Comcast and T-Mobile upgraded everyone to unlimited data for the next 90 days. Comcast made their Xfinity hotspots open to anyone for free. And T-Mobile is working with Lifeline, a federal program that provides service to those with low incomes to add free data up to 5GB for the next 60 days.

AT&T instructed employees who can work from home to do so and is providing limited paid time off for those who need to self-quarantine, have children home from school and daycare or are at higher risk.

Dropbox is sharing tips for Preparing for Distributed Work and offering free Dropbox business subscriptions for 3 months for nonprofits and NGOs fighting the virus.

Nike Closed its stores in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand through to March 27 and instituted work from home and staggered work schedules and safety measures in the workplace.

Apple shut down their retail stores, offered expanded its sick leave policy to cover family issues, set up work from home guidelines. and donated $ 15 million to a global fund for COVID-19 response.

Kaiser Permanente plans to prevent treat the homeless for COVID-19. They’ll be partners with the advocacy group National Health Care for the Homeless Council to fund at least four housing activist groups in California, Seattle, and Portland, Ore.

Patagonia closed its stores and online sales until March 27 and will pay all employees regular pay for the next two weeks.

Target instructed those who could do so to work from home at headquarters until the end of April and is working with the federal government to offer testing in their locations as soon as possible. All employees are eligible for free back-up ca=re through partner Bright Horizons.

Microsoft announced Asked workers to stay home until March 25 in Seattle and San Francisco, and agreed to pay hourly service providers their regular pay even if they are not needed to work.

Warby Parker retailer closed all stores to March 27 and will pay retail team members as though they were working.

General Motors sent workers around the world home if their jobs allow it, and adjusted schedules to allow for more deep cleaning.

Ford handled it in a similar fashion, even after the union in Louisville called for a shutdown.

Proctor and Gamble instructed all North American employees who are able to work from home to do so, and canceled all in-person gatherings.

Google advised all employees in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Canada, and US to work from home. They’ve also created a host of resources to get solid information and reduce disinformation.

Cisco is offering free Webex to employees and customers who have employees who work from home to have 14 days of service.

Amazon sent workers home in and will continue to pay hourly workers (estimated at 10,000) including security to food service and janitorial workers on the Washington campuses and subsidize small businesses on campus that rely on Amazon employees for income.

Twitter sent everyone home globally and will cover the wages of contractors and hourly workers who are not able to work from home. They are also reimbursing daycare costs for parents and for the costs of setting up home offices.

Both MGM and Wynn resorts shut down their operations in Las Vegas. Layoffs and furloughs are said to begin in the coming days. MGM said in a statement they would continue to pay employees eligible for Flexible Time Off and Paid Time Off accrued.

Facebook gave employees free Portal devices so they could stay connected while working from home through April 10, but contractors whose jobs require them to be in the office are still apparently required to come in or take PTO.

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