Charter has partially backed away from its strict rules against working from home during the coronavirus pandemic and will let up to 40 percent of call-center employees do remote work.

Charter Executive VP Cliff Hagan sent a memo to employees today, explaining that employees will have to meet certain conditions before being allowed to work at home:

A balance of “In Center” and “Remote Work” will be maintained. We’ll begin offering remote work opportunities to those who are at higher-risk from a health standpoint, and then open the option to additional employees who are tenured, taking into account performance, the home infrastructure to support remote work, and agreement to the terms and conditions of a remote work assignment. During this time, we anticipate up to 40 percent of call center employees could be working remotely. These actions will further our ability to create greater physical separation and reduce the overall on-site staffing levels in our call centers.

The memo was shared with Ars by Charter employees. A Charter spokesperson told Ars that the memo was sent “to our Customer Operations organization, which includes our customer service call centers and related activity, but not the whole company.” The Charter spokesperson did not tell us how many call-center workers it has or how many non-call-center workers will be allowed to work remotely.