Tech firm employees work from home after advice from Chinese partners
Jordan Schidlowsky started thinking seriously last week about asking his employees to work from home.
He made the decision Wednesday night, hours before Saskatchewan reported its first presumptive case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has swept around the world over the last several weeks.
“It’s not a panic thing,” said Schidlowsky, the founder and chief executive of Noodlecake Studios Inc., a Saskatoon-based mobile game developer that currently has about 14 employees in the city.
“Honestly, it just seems like the responsible thing to do. We’re set up to so easily work remotely that it just doesn’t make sense not to at this point.”
Noodlecake Studios has more insight into the global pandemic than many local companies, as its majority owner since 2017 has been Zplay Information Technologies Co. Ltd., which is based in Beijing, China.
Schidlowsky said he has been in constant communication with Zplay staff, who have been working remotely under a state-imposed quarantine for weeks, since the outbreak was first reported in China’s Hubei province.
“After talking with my partners over there, they were very clear to me that this thing has a two-week incubation period and a lot of people are going to be transmitting the disease (but) don’t show symptoms,” he said.
“That just made sense to me — we don’t have to wait until the severe cases start hitting the news here,” he said, noting that while not every company can send its workers home, it makes sense for those that can to be proactive.
Other local technology firms are also taking precautions against COVID-19. Aaron Genest with Mentor Graphics Corp. said hightech companies are “uniquely situated” to continue working during a pandemic.
“We’re not particularly affected, nor do we believe that we will be in the event that we can no longer come in to work,” Genest said.
One challenge both he and Schidlowsky pointed out is that internet infrastructure is often less robust in residential situations, which can create challenges — in Mentor’s case, when it comes to contacting customers.
7Shifts Inc., which makes an app used for scheduling workers’ shifts in the restaurant industry, has its Toronto-based employees working from home and has given its dozens of employees the option to work remotely if they choose.
The company also announced that any employees who travel for personal reasons will have to work from home for seven days after returning.
Schidlowsky noted that many businesses simply do not have the option of asking employees to work from home, but encouraged those that do to consider it.