Update on Red Hat's COVID-19 actions: Training and Certification

March 30, 2020

Ken Goetz, Red Hat's vice president of Global Learning Services, has posted an update about how Global Training + Certification is evolving the way Red Hat works with customers and partners.

Original post: What Red Hat is doing to address coronavirus (COVID-19)

March 13, 2020

As the new coronavirus, COVID-19, evolves, we continue to prioritize the health and well-being of both Red Hat associates and the communities where we live and work. In the spirit of transparency, we thought it would be useful if we shared measures Red Hat is taking as a company:

New guidance on March 13, 2020

Starting today, we have asked Red Hatters to work from home, regardless of where they are based. We believe there’s no need to put our health, well-being, families, and business at risk when working from home and defaulting to virtual meetings is an option. Red Hat already has a strong remote work culture and our IT infrastructure has been built to enable this for both associate mobility and business continuity purposes.

We recognize that there will be some business-critical exceptions that warrant limited access to our facilities, even as we work from home. Our facilities team is following recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) to help keep these Red Hatters safe.

Similar to the guidance we have given Red Hatters, we are defaulting to virtual engagements with others where possible, including customers, business partners and suppliers.

Additional guidance previously given to Red Hatters

We are restricting Red Hatter travel outside of their home countries unless there is a business-critical travel exception.

We are requiring any Red Hatter who travels to restricted areas, comes into contact with anyone who developed virus-like symptoms, or develops possible virus-like symptoms, to self-isolate for 14 days.

Outside of COVID-19 cases, Red Hatters who feel sick in any way should contact their healthcare provider, stay at home, rest, and be symptom-free for 24 hours before returning to work.

We previously announced our plans to rebuild Red Hat Summit 2020 as a virtual event and cancel the physical event at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. We also previously moved our 2020 Sales Kickoff events from physical events in Singapore, Prague and Dallas to virtual events. Beyond that, we are currently not permitting Red Hatters to attend external events or conferences with 1000+ attendees.

We have suspended all building tours and our hosting of non-essential group visits to our facilities, including Red Hat Tower, our headquarters in Raleigh, N.C.

We are cancelling group volunteer events through the end of May and have asked Red Hatters to reconsider any planned group or team volunteer events, or volunteering as an individual at an event where large numbers of people will be gathered. Red Hatters are passionate about volunteering and we have encouraged our associates to consider remote volunteer opportunities if they can.

Even if there are temporary changes in how Red Hatters engage with each other, our partners, our customers and our communities, we do not expect COVID-19 to impact the availability of Red Hat’s products, services or support. Our global support team already uses a "follow the sun" model from geographically-distributed locations to allow for 24x7 customer support and to enable Red Hat’s business continuity. The global support team has fully tested its work-from-home approach and we don’t expect any disruption. As always, there are several ways customers can engage with our Customer Experience and Engagement team at https://access.redhat.com/ and you can keep up to date on the availability of our sites at https://status.redhat.com/. If you have to escalate a critical situation, please follow guidance at https://access.redhat.com/support/escalation.

Red Hat has a comprehensive business continuity plan down to the business functional level and we regularly test business resiliency across our core functions to enable us to serve our customers and partners.

There are specific points in time that remind us of our humanity and that we are all part of a larger global community—this is one of them. With the steps above, we are working to protect our associates, customers and partners, support their well-being, and do what we can to help support containment efforts.

We are following developments related to COVID-19 closely, including recommendations from the CDC, WHO and other health authorities, and will keep this blog updated as we have new developments to share. In the meantime, know that our thoughts are with all those around the world who have been affected by COVID-19. We are all in this together.