Twitter will be giving its employees the day off on Election day starting this year. The company announced in an internal email to all staff on Tuesday.
What We Know:
- Moving forward, all national election voting days will be paid days off, the company said in the staff email. However, teams responsible for work related to elections, including the security of Twitter’s services, will continue to work on those days.
- Employees around the world will also get paid time off to vote in their respective national elections, the company said.
- There has been a rising debate surrounding the day that the U.S. holds election dates. In fact, the U.S. is a bit of an outlier among industrial democracies in holding elections on a weekday, according to the Pew Research Center, which said in 2018 that 27 of the 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development hold their national elections on the weekend so people have more time to vote.
- “For all other elections, if you do not have enough time outside of working hours to vote or your country doesn’t already have a process in place to address this, you should take the time you need to do so and you will be compensated for the time off,” the company said in the email.
- This policy change will also apply to its contract workers. A Twitter spokesperson said it would also let its third-party partners know of its closures so that they can plan a similar day or other work for their teams.
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Previously, Twitter gave its employees up to two hours of paid time off to vote. Other companies have previously announced they’d give employees the day off to vote, including Patagonia, which first did so in 2016.
Earlier this month, Twitter made Juneteenth a paid holiday. The June 19 holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the US, and a growing number of companies also gave employees the day off this year for the first time. Twitter also announced in May it would allow some employees to work from home “forever”.
