Slack says offices will remain closed until fall

San Francisco technology firm Slack says it won’t fully re-open its offices until at least Sept. 1 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Since first closing all offices on March 18, the Slack team has successfully adapted to fully remote operations,” Robby Kwok, senior vice-president for HR at the firm, said in a blog post.

Keeping offices shut till fall will provide “greater flexibility in weathering a potential second wave of the virus,” Kwok said in the Thursday post.

Early last month, the messaging-platform company said a San Franciscobased employee had possibly been exposed to the virus while traveling overseas and then returned to the office, but had not been confirmed infected. The company at that point said it was closing its two San Francisco offices for a day for “deep cleaning” and encouraged employees to work from home that day. Separately, Slack two days later cited federal guidance and said it was “strongly encouraging” all employees to work from home through the end of March. The Bay Area’s shelter-at-home orders, including for San Francisco, came March 16.

Kwok said in the blog post that employees whose work can’t be done from home “will continue to be paid as usual — this includes contractors and people paid hourly.”

The pandemic has been good for Slack, it noted this month. Between Feb. 1 and March 25, the firm added 9,000 new paid customers, the company said in an April 7 blog post. “And not only are more people using Slack, they’re using Slack more,” the post said.

In the Bay Area, messages sent per user rose 21% from a five-day period in February to a five-day period in March, and users’ average time connected to Slack rose from nine to 11 hours, the company said.