Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, work models like remote working, work from home and hybrid work model concepts have been wildly popularised.
In June 2021, Google had rolled out a new tool for its employees in the US, which allowed them to check/calculate the changes in their pay/compensation on changing their work locations, for preferring permanent work from home.
Google’s ‘Work Location Tool’, launched on June 22 helps an employee calculate the cut in their salaries, shall they choose to work remotely and shift to another location.
Trak.in has covered the entire segment of how this works and more details related to this new tool.
Google employees willing to work from home at a different location, are seeing a salary cut of upto 25%, on changing their work locations.
While other tech giants like Twitter and Facebook are also following suit by cutting pay for employees working remotely in less expensive areas, smaller companies like Reddit have announced not changing the salary compensations of their employees even if they change their work locations and move to less expensive areas.
Google Employees Experiencing Upto 25% Pay Cuts
Employees working at Google are witnessing any cuts, if they choose to work permanently from home, switching to a different city.
The calculator tool designed by Google, uses U.S. Census Bureau metropolitan statistical areas, or CBSAs to calculate the compensation for that area.
A company spokesperson stated that the salary compensation will vary from state to state as well as city to city.
They added, “Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from.”
While the calculator helps the employees check their salary structure if they decide to relocate, some employees have reported that they are experiencing pay cuts despite changing their addresses.
This is especially seen for employees commuting long distances everyday. A Google employee stated that they had to commute to the Seattle office from a nearby county, which would take a long time. Now, choosing to work from home in the same county is leading to a salary cut of about 10% for this employee, despite changing their address of residence.
The employee chose to continue working from the office instead of taking a salary cut of 10%, despite a two-hour long commute.
“It’s as high of a pay cut as I got for my most recent promotion. I didn’t do all that hard work to get promoted to then take a pay cut”, added the employee.
Interviews with Google employees indicate pay cuts as high as 25% for remote work if they left San Francisco for an almost as expensive area of the state such as Lake Tahoe, states Reuters.
Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University states that Google really does not need to cut salaries for employees.
He added, “Google has paid these workers at 100% of their prior wage, by definition. So it’s not like they can’t afford to pay their workers who choose to work remotely the same that they are used to receiving.”
Google also added that it would not cut salaries for employees not changing their locations, be in-office or from home.
This means that employees working for instance, in the New York City office will be paid the same as those working remotely from another New York City location.
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