Coronavirus may lead to world’s largest work-from-home experiment: Report

Representative image

The coronavirus outbreak has forced several people in China to work from home, Bloomberg reported.

This may be the world’s 'largest work-from-home experiment', the news agency said.

With over 350 deaths and 17,000 confirmed cases, the Chinese government is struggling to handle the situation. China has locked down two cities – Wuhan and Wenzhou – in an attempt to contain the spread of the virus.

The situation has also impacted daily business in major financial centres such as Shanghai, Beijing and even neighbouring Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China.

Companies based in the central business districts of these cities often have employees based out of multiple locations. “It’s a good opportunity for us to test working from home at scale,” the article quotes Alvin Foo, Managing Director at a Shanghai-based advertising agency, as saying.

Foo said it does create a challenge since advertising agencies do a lot of brainstorming in person. Working from home will lead to more video conferences and phone calls, he added.

The number of people who work from home will only increase as people return from their Lunar New Year holiday, the report said.

Companies will increasingly relying on video chat apps and other productivity platforms such as WeChat Work and Lark, which is similar to Slack.

“Usually going back to work from holidays feels a little weird, but working from home this time with such short notice feels even more unusual,” Tiko Mamuchashvili, a Senior Event Planner at a hotel in Beijing, told the news agency

The report also suggested that the hike in number of people working from home could hurt the co-working spaces business.