According to an email issued to staff on Wednesday and examined by Insider, Google is becoming tighter about in-office work and notifying employees that the business will consider office attendance when evaluating their performance.
WFH only in Exceptional Cases
Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, informed staff in a memo that the business will no longer consider employees who want to work remotely full-time save “by exception only,” reversing a corporate policy that had previously permitted thousands of staff members to migrate away from company headquarters.
According to Cicconi in the email, the majority of staff members are following the company’s previous announcement that starting in April 2022, employees would be expected to return to the office at least three days each week. However, according to Cicconi, the new policy would take into account employees’ in-office attendance when evaluating their performance. She continued by saying that supervisors will recall those who are “consistently absent from the office.”
According to further documents obtained by CNBC, the tech giant would additionally monitor turnout using badge information. The adjustments indicate a shift in big tech corporations’ attitudes towards remote work. Last week, Meta informed the staff that they should plan to work three days per week.
Google announces in-person attendance will be considered in performance reviews
The Need to get together physically
The need of physically getting together was stressed by Cicconi to the workers on Wednesday. Cicconi stated that the company expects employees who have previously been granted permission to work remotely full-time to think about transitioning to a remote schedule. When approached by Insider about the document, Google declined to comment, but it did acknowledge that entirely remote work would only be permitted under exceptional circumstances.
As part of its hybrid plan, Google Cloud instructed its employees to start sharing desks and coming in on different days in February. Along with other recent cost-cutting announcements, it also announced a reduction in benefits. Half of the largest corporations in the world—those with more than 50,000 employees—plan to shrink their office space by 10% to 20% by 2026, according to a study by real estate agency Knight Frank.
