Internaut

Yesterday was our last day at the office before full WFH, and some VP authorised some randoms to turn up for a meeting....

In an office where every freakin’ cat in the herd wants to use a different collaboration tool, this has at least driven uptake of Teams. Just a few more strays left to herd.

Edit: Bit that got deleted earlier: We have offices in China and banned all travel in and out of the country very quickly. All other travel has been discouraged for the month or so. Anyone who can work from home is strongly encouraged to do so.

Jon_R

My company has banned non essential travel. My current project has been deemed essential travel so I leave for the DC area in a week. Probably CA, CO, and NY in April / May.

l etoile

Moderator note: I’ve deleted several off-topic and/or argumentative posts, and there are likely more I have missed. Please note this is not a place to debate whether or not you believe there are over/under reactions to the pandemic. This thread is to discuss corporate travel band.

l etoile
forum moderator

username

Yes, US. I don't know what our customers have asked of us. We have implemented WFH. Let's just say our software is mission critical - especially when things get worse. I would expect our customers to not want any system changes and outside visitors during this time. However, the more important thing is our numbers... I guess this is an example of "it is not about you, it is about me" on the corporate level...

finlandia

​​​​​​Earlier this week, I submitted a two page-long list of trips and justifications for my office's travel throughout the WESTPAC and CONUS regions. I'll be interested in seeing what my SES chooses to accept as mission critical.

SamirD

Wife told me that her sister-in-law in Toronto working at a major Canadian bank just got WFH starting Monday.

And apparently everyone loves my wife's WFH setup because she's been using mine while I'm staying with my dad out-of-state.

678flyer

I work for a large (200k+ employees) global business. All travel to & from East Asia was stopped in Jan itself with a ban on all international travel from Mar 1. Any exception requires senior management approval - if an employee falls ill / is travelling to an affected area for business, then self quarantine at full pay without affecting personal leave balance. All personal travel outside the base country to be reported - if returning from an affected area / falls ill, then the quarantine comes out of the leave balance if the employee is not able to work.

We rolled out Teams on a very large scale late last year, switched off a few other legacy tools in Jan and this is finally forcing people to starting using the new stuff.

84fiero

So far our SES doesn't consider TDYs we have scheduled currently as mission critical. Which, we are a HQ staff office so most of our work is oversight and policy-related - nothing that can't wait by any means. We do have a couple of folks deployed but IIRC they're not scheduled to return for several months anyway. Most of our base is weapon system acquisition though so I'm curious whether some of their organizations might have some exceptions - haven't heard from my friends in those offices yet what they're doing.

LondonElite

Haha! As I said in another thread, my main concern is getting stuck somewhere with no easy way back or with quarantine requirements. No real interest in finding out the hard way!

invisible

We have a new thread for that.

invisible

Back to work related restrictions:

All travel, regardless how essential it is, now is banned after we had positive case in our office:

ng1265

Update for me:
All business travel suspended immediately
work from home for the UK office starting now.
All personal travel back from APAC and Schengen area implies a 2-week quarantine at home

yosithezet

Malaysia has announced a lockdown of the country from Wednesday. Malaysian citizens will not be able to leave the country. 300k people cross the bridges every day to work in Singapore. They have 24 hours to decide where they will be for the next two weeks at minimum. Will be interesting as these are commuters and don’t have residences to stay at in Singapore.

MSPeconomist

For Singapore, all travel and all international travel are the same.

Will Singapore let them stay as long as necessary? And do they risk losing jobs if they don't stay?

AFAIK many Malaysians working in Singapore would have domestic and service sector positions. They generally wouldn't pay well but would be better than jobs at home with similar qualifications.

One example is that Raffles Hotel proudly operates with a primarily Malaysian staff.

yosithezet

There is domestic business travel in Singapore. But when your employer says you are only allowed to work in your primary work location, you are not allowed to hop in a taxi to visit a customer. That is what our company policy has come to.

But I think his point was even business critical travel is forbidden now.

Unknown. Singapore declares that even ASEAN citizens are now prevented from entering Singapore without prior clearance from the Singapore embassy in their home country which will include providing health information. But they explicitly excluded the land bridge crossings with Malaysia. Those who have jobs will have a work pass for Singapore so they should have no issue staying in Singapore until their pass expires or is renewed. Generally these are issues for 2-3 years. There are Malaysians of all socioeconomic levels and even some Singaporeans who live in Johor and commute every day. Like Hoboken.