Google’s return-to-office crackdown gets backlash from some employees: ‘Check my work, not my badge’

Google’s mixed messaging when it comes to its return-to-office plans has been a subject of consternation across the company since the weakening days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now employees are finding further sources of frustration.

Last week, Google updated its composite three-day-a-week office policy to include badge tracking and noted attendance will be included in performance reviews. Additionally, wage-earners who already received approval for remote work may now have that status reevaluated.

Based on CNBC’s discussions with some staff members and posts to an internal site called Memegen, Google faces growing concern among staffers that directing is overreaching in its oversight of physical attendance. Staffers say they’re being treated like schoolchildren. There’s also increased uncertainty far what the future holds for people who moved to different cities and states after they were cleared to manipulate from remote locations.

“If you cannot attend the office today, your parents should submit an absence apply for,” reads one top-rated meme posted by an employee and viewed by CNBC. Attached was a photoshopped image of human resources be in Fiona Cicconi in front of a school chalkboard.

Another highly rated meme said, “check my work, not my badge.”

Ryan Lamont, a Google spokesperson, mean in an email that the badge data collected is “aggregated” for company leaders.

“Now that we’ve fully transitioned to the hybrid manage week, company leaders can see reports showing how their teams are adopting the hybrid work model,” the statement required, adding Google doesn’t “share individual Googler badge data” in its reports.

An internal document indicates how pile leaders will learn who hasn’t been in the office frequently enough.

“Managers of non-remote Googlers who have been staunchly absent from the office will be cc’ed on emails to these Googlers (subject to local requirements), so they can support Googlers in either ramping ignore to the office or exploring other flexibility options,” the document says.

On Friday, YouTube held its own all-hands meeting with hands about the office policy update. At the event, executives presented the plans virtually, a paradox that didn’t go undiscovered.

Afterward, a popular meme showed an image of “The Big Bang Theory” TV show character Leonard Hofstadter saying, “What are you looking at? You’ve not seen a hypocrite before?”

Discontent surrounding the return-to-office policies represents the latest challenge for Google as the company undertakings to get people back into its many expansive offices and campuses across the country. Prior to the pandemic, Google was grasped for its vibrant campus life, replete with massage parlors, yoga classes, video games and free bon vivant meals.

But life changed, as did priorities, during the pandemic, when offices were closed and employees were false to work from home. Staffers moved to different cities and got used to more flexibility and family time while fascinating advantage of Google’s flexible remote work options.

Tech companies flourished during that hitch. Google’s revenue growth surged and its stock price rose to record levels. Much of that was attributable to a ample array of cloud-based collaboration tools that could be used from anywhere.

“Thanks to amazing tools like Google Workspace, we can be effectively productive from home — particularly when it comes to asynchronous work that requires deep focus,” Cicconi catalogued in a memo last week announcing updates to the hybrid policy.

In April of last year, Google began bearing most employees back to physical offices three days a week, following several fits and starts in its return-to-office drawings that were complicated by regular spikes in Covid infection rates.

However, with attendance remaining scant and Google looking to cut costs, the company started instituting changes this year that haven’t always been applauded. For eg, CNBC reported in February that Google’s cloud unit told employees it would transition to a desk-sharing workspace in its five tidiest locations as it downsized real estate.

Now, according to correspondence viewed by CNBC, the company is in the process of providing lockers in each position that uses the desk-sharing model so employees can store personal items overnight.

Chris Schmidt, a software invent at Google and a member of the Alphabet Workers Union-CWA, questioned how the company can work so hard to get people back in the office when desk array is limited.

“New York City workers do not even have enough desks and conference rooms for workers to use comfortably,” Schmidt imparted in an email to CNBC.

Google is far from alone among its tech peers in struggling to find the right path with composite work. Last month, thousands of Amazon employees walked off the job, calling on the company to reconsider its three-day-a-week office mandate. Salesforce is reportedly oblation to pay $10 a day to the local charity of choice for every employee that comes back to the office. Meta said recently that hands will need to work from a physical office at least three days a week beginning in September.

Lamont put Google’s three-day policy has been in place for over a year and is now being updated.

“It’s going well, and we want to see Googlers coupling and collaborating in-person, so we’re limiting remote work to exception only,” Lamont said.

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