For our employees.
From the desk of
Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg.
The world’s coronavirus (COVID-19) response is evolving swiftly. Our customers - whether they’re first responders, teachers, students, families, hospitals, government agencies or society at-large - rely on us to keep them connected. Therefore balancing our employees’ safety against the need to continue to support critical services and infrastructure is paramount.
Verizon is focused on technology and connectivity solutions for the people who are serving all of us during this pandemic -- our first responders, public health agencies, and federal, state and local government. We’ve given these first responders priority access to our network so they can do the jobs required to keep us all healthy and safe.
As a major employer, during this pandemic we are all being encouraged to practice social distancing to slow down the spread and flatten the curve. To that end, we’ve implemented a work-from-home strategy for the majority of our workforce, limiting those in the field to only the essential workers needed to keep our global community connected.
Out of an abundance of caution and to balance the safety of our employees with the critical needs of our customers, we’ve reduced hours and number of Verizon stores open and closed all locations on Sundays. Our customers can still get the support and services they need 24/7 by visiting verizonwireless.com/support/ or using the MyVerizon app.
We know this is a difficult time and to alleviate the impact that some of our customers may experience, earlier this week we announced that until June 30, we will waive late fees our residential or small business customers may incur because of the economic circumstances related to the coronavirus. And we will not terminate service to any of our residential or small business customers because of their inability to pay their bills due to hardships caused by the coronavirus.
Additionally, to help small businesses who are the lifeblood of our society, we’ve launched Pay it Forward Live, a weekly streaming entertainment series on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 8 p.m. EST in support of small businesses affected by COVID-19 8:00 p.m. Events will be streamed on Twitter @verizon and Yahoo Entertainment.
We will continue to address these and other critical pandemic issues impacting our employees, customers and society. You should also know that our networks and our people stand ready to serve our customers at work, at home and remotely—including first responders and those protecting the public—when critical connectivity is needed most.
Hans
