Twitter has told employees they can keep working from home "forever" if they wish.

In a statement, the company said it was "one of the first companies to go to a WFH model in the face of COVID-19, but

BuzzFeed News previously reported the news.

The company said if employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue doing so "forever," then "we will make that happen."

"If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it's safe to return," the statement reads.

The company said with very few exceptions, offices won't open before September. It added when offices to open it will be "careful, intentional, office by office and gradual." It said there will also be no business travel before September "with very few exceptions" and no in-person company events for the rest of 2020.

"We're proud of the early action we took to protect the health of our employees and our communities. That will remain our top priority as we work through the unknowns of the coming months," it said.

The company's acceptance of a mostly remote workforce predates the coronavirus pandemic. On the company's Q4 2019 earnings call in February, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey embraced the idea of remote work while expressing dissatisfaction with Twitter's concentration of employees in San Francisco.

"Our concentration in San Francisco is not serving us any longer, and we will strive to be a far more distributed workforce, which we will use to improve our execution," he said at the time.

Other tech giants have updated their employees on work from home measures for the foreseeable future, as experts expect remote work to become much more common after the pandemic, with business travel rarer.

Facebook said last week that most of the company's employees will be allowed to continue to work from home through the end of 2020, while Google-parent Alphabet said employees can expect a "staggered" and "incremental" return to the office starting in June, but that some employees would probably be working from home for as long as the rest of the year.

First Published:May 12, 2020 11:03 PM IST