Finally, someone’s gone and figured it out. Social media company Twitter is letting its employees work from home. Not for the duration of a lockdown or the pandemic but for good.

Speaking to Buzzfeed, Twitter confirmed that it’s allowing staff to get the job done without going into the office. Twitter staff have been at home for the past two months but the change is being made permanent. A Twitter spokesperson said “We’ve been very thoughtful in how we’ve approached this from the time we were one of the first companies to move to a work-from-home model. We’ll continue to be, and we’ll continue to put the safety of our people and communities first.”

Some restrictions apply

The change, communicated to staff by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey earlier this week, sees the company transition to a more futuristic work model for good, but not everyone is included in the work-from-home fun. Not completely. Some folks are needed on site, to take care of servers and so on. You know how it is when it comes to large tech companies. Some meetings will have to be in-person as well, so at least some staff will need to remember how pants work.

Twitter’s made a few other changes to how it does business. In the same announcement, the company announced that all business travel is suspended till September. Their physical offices are also closed at least until there and all in-person events are cancelled for 2020. A decision will be made on 2021 events later this year.

A damn fine idea

But there was one other interesting thing to note from the announcement: Twitter gives its staff an allowance to work from home. That’s now been increased to $1,000 (about R18,500) per month for all employees.

South African employers thinking of switching to a work-from-home model would do well to bear in mind — it’s not a privilege for staff to work from home (and save you money on premises). Passing some of your savings on to staff will result in more productive employees. They’re already working harder than you’d expect.