Update 03/16/2020: We know this has been a time of uncertainty for all of us, and the full impact of COVID-19 is still to be determined. We’ve been following developments closely and have decided at this time to move from strongly encouraging our workforce to work from home to mandating it for all but essential infrastructure personnel. This decision was made after reviewing guidance from the CDC and WHO, who recommend aggressive measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, and the shelter-in-place order impacting our SF headquarters and other regions. Protecting our community will continue to be our north star and we want to do our part to help flatten the curve of infection and keep everyone as safe as possible.
This new policy means that all of our offices in North America, EMEA, and Australia will be temporarily closed until at least April 10th. We’ve decided to fully compensate our contractor workforce who cannot work from home or find alternative employment through their agency until then. We are monitoring the situation carefully and are committed to updating our policies as needed. We’re all in this together and we hope that you and your loved ones stay healthy and safe.
There is nothing more important to us than the well-being of our community. We’ve had a dedicated preparedness task force closely monitoring the developments of COVID-19 and continually assessing the best ways to protect our workforce, customers, partners, and the broader communities we live in. This includes following guidance from the CDC, WHO, and other state and local health officials on how to prevent the spread of the virus. Given the rapidly evolving situation, we wanted to share the policies we’ve put in place to reduce the risks to our people and our community.
Global work from home policy
For the past few weeks, we’ve supported anyone with concerns for their health or the health of those close to them working from home. We took the precautionary step on Friday to strongly encourage every employee across our global offices without a critical business reason to be in the office to work from home.
While this is a big change for us, we’re going to stay in close contact with our employees to make sure they feel supported during this time. We're fortunate that our product makes it easy for our own employees to work from wherever they are. With Dropbox and tools like Zoom and Slack that help keep our teams connected, we think our employees have the resources they need to do their jobs securely and effectively while practicing social distancing. We hope others can leverage tools like these to do the same.
Travel policy
We’ve asked our employees to halt all non-critical business travel, both domestic and international. Any travel for business reasons must be approved by a member of our leadership team. In addition, following the CDC guidelines, we’ve encouraged employees to limit personal travel and attendance at events with large groups of people to help limit their exposure.
Visitor policy
Even before we implemented our work from home policy, we began restricting both personal and business visitors from our offices. As we continue to run and grow our business, we’ve moved all candidates interviewing for jobs at Dropbox to videoconferences.
General health and safety
Protecting the health of our community is a priority for us. While we’re taking strong actions as an employer to protect our people and limit the spread of the virus, we’re asking everyone to follow the advice from the CDC and WHO in their personal lives as well.
We’ll update this post as our policies evolve. We believe it’s important to be transparent about these measures in case they are useful to others trying to navigate this situation. Please take care of yourself, and we hope that you and your families stay healthy.
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