Google will offer a day off for its workers to compensate for the exhaustion caused by remote work from home, a modality that was imposed worldwide by the crisis of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. In this way, May 22 will be a free day for employees of the technology company, according to a statement sent by Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, which was quoted by Reuters agency.
In this context, Google foresees a partial and restricted opening of its offices worldwide, but the vast majority of employees will only be able to rejoin at the end of 2020. A similar measure was also announced by Facebook, which will keep its workers at home under remote mode until December.
With the implementation of various measures of isolation and social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic, both governments and companies, and educational establishments had to implement different work and teaching mechanisms remotely. In many cases, technology allowed to continue classes in schools and universities thanks to video calls, a resource that was also adopted by professionals and companies to continue their activities.
However, the extensive use of video calls also had negative effects on people who were not used to using this tool. This is how fatigue by Zoom began to be identified, in reference to the popular group meeting service, due to the additional stress generated by these virtual meetings, with unusual exposure in front of colleagues, family, or friends.
Even Eric Yuan, the founder of Zoom, also admitted that he hates video calls that he must attend on his own platform. For this reason, among others, Google decided to give its employees a break to adapt to this new way of working from home.