Even so, the coronavirus has moved faster than their preparations. Amazon said this week that two employees in Europe, who had been in Milan, were infected with the virus and that one employee at its Seattle headquarters had also tested positive for it. HSBC said on Thursday that an employee at its global headquarters in London had been diagnosed with the coronavirus. And AT&T said a retail employee at one of its stores in San Diego had also tested positive. The challenges faced by workplaces have become a new front in the battle over the coronavirus, which has spawned more than 90,000 cases and more than 3,000 deaths around the world. While factories in China had already been closed by the outbreak and are now just ramping back up, global white-collar companies have rarely grappled with this scale of disruption — or the level of fear that has gripped workers. "No one has a playbook for this," said Dan Levin, who runs a small company outside Chicago, Cain Millwork, which makes furniture and wall panelling. He said he was planning to have some of his office employees work from home. Deep cleaning, self-quarantining Many corporate memos, including those from HSBC and Facebook, now mention deep cleaning of office spaces and self-quarantining. Face-to-face job interviews have been all but banned by some firms, in favour of interviews conducted by teleconference.

At Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, near a cluster of coronavirus cases, employees swapped stories this week about the outbreak in internal chat rooms. In one online conversation on Wednesday, which was reviewed by The New York Times, a Microsoft employee wrote of a rumour that someone at headquarters had been infected. "Could it be true?" he wrote. "FWIW," he noted, the corporate emails telling employees to work from home "don't mention that NO Microsoft employees had been infected." Frank Shaw, Microsoft's chief spokesman, said the company was not aware of any verified cases in its workforce. He said Microsoft had tried to communicate clearly to its employees that "we are using the advice being given from local officials and public health officials." Much of this situation is new — not only for Uber, but for the world. We won't get everything right from the start. Uber senior vice president Andrew MacDonald Inside Amazon, while some workers emailed each other about whether masks provide effective protection, many were scrambling to deal with business problems caused by the virus, according to four employees who were not authorised to speak publicly. Those included whether Amazon will have enough products to offer for Prime Day, its summer sale event, or have enough drivers to handle a surge in online grocery orders as the virus spreads.

The depth of employee anxiety has forced senior executives to take calming measures. Uber sent out a memo to staff on Wednesday saying it had formed an internal task force to handle its response to the virus, according to a copy viewed by The Times. The ride-hailing company urged employees to have empathy for one another, to make "data-driven decisions" and restrict all nonessential travel until April. Uber added that it was working with an epidemiology consultant for further guidance. "Much of this situation is new — not only for Uber, but for the world," Andrew MacDonald, a senior vice president at Uber, wrote in the memo. "We won't get everything right from the start." Hand sanitiser is in kitchens and conference rooms at Google's headquarters. Credit:AP At its headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google also increased the amount of hand sanitiser available to employees, putting it in conference rooms and kitchen areas.

Other companies have tightened their travel restrictions. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase have said senior managers must approve international business trips. Walmart said on Thursday that employees could travel internationally only for "business-critical trips" and that it was limiting their travel to conferences and trade shows within the United States. And at CNN, the chief executive officer has begun personally vetting all intercontinental travel. How companies have altered their response to the coronavirus over time has been evident with Twitter. On Sunday, the San Francisco social media company said it was suspending all nonessential travel for employees. A day later, it encouraged all of its employees — it has just over 5,000 — to work from home if they were able to. Everything happening in the world, particularly with coronavirus, I have to reconsider what's going on and what that means for me and for our company. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Then on Thursday, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive, appeared at a financial conference in San Francisco and said he was rethinking a plan he had formulated to work remotely from Africa for three to six months this year. "Everything happening in the world, particularly with coronavirus, I have to reconsider what's going on and what that means for me and for our company," said Dorsey, who is also facing a challenge from activist investors.

The measures that companies are taking in response to the virus may shift workplace behaviour over the long term. Telecommuting, which has been in and out of favour for decades, may become more ingrained. The use of digital tools for remote collaboration may also rise. Yet in the near term, having workers stay home could be devastating for some smaller businesses. Robert Luft, who runs a company in Cincinnati that installs technology in health care facilities and distribution centres, said an outbreak that prevented his technicians from showing up to work would put his business in a precarious situation. "If it's unsafe for people to have them on site, that definitely impacts my business," Luft said. "Unfortunately there isn't any type of contingency plan." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video At Facebook, the company has been working on contingency plans for the impact of the coronavirus since January. Executives have tried to walk the line of hewing closely to advice from public health officials while trying not to cause a panic among employees, two Facebook employees said.

The social network quickly cancelled its participation in a half-dozen events — from its annual F8 developer conference to its presence at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas — and has worked to use its products to help health experts study the spread of the virus. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in a post this week the company was giving unlimited free Facebook ads to the World Health Organisation to distribute information to users. Loading When one of its contractors was diagnosed with the virus on Wednesday, Facebook shut down two of its four offices in the greater Seattle area — in Bellevue and Redmond — for a deep cleaning, according to two employees. An Amazon employee who was later diagnosed with the virus had also separately visited one of Facebook's Seattle offices last month, prompting fresh concerns among employees. Facebook said it carried out "targeted deep cleaning and enhanced sanitation measures" at the office building that the Amazon employee had visited. The company has also tried to keep its 44,000 employees sticking to business as usual. On Wednesday, it held a training session for managers on how to supervise teams of remote workers, the two employees said. And the social network was staying on course with a weekly question-and-answer session led by Zuckerberg on Thursday, which would be live streamed from Facebook's Silicon Valley headquarters.