Earlier Google had announced to elimination or reduction of several perks, including some of the company’s micro kitchens.
This provided employees with free snacks like cereal, espresso, and seltzer water. The company was making changes in its companywide benefits as it seeks to reallocate funds and create cost-cutting measures.
The company has suspended the provision of snacks and staplers to employees and has also asked employees to share desks.
Now, the company will no longer enforce its mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy for employees worldwide. The policy was implemented in December 2021.
Although, the company still encourages employees to stay up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines so that they remain fit.
Additionally, during a conversation with the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company is prioritizing and moving people to its most important areas.
Sundar Pichai said, “We’re very, very focused on this set of opportunities we have, and I think there’s a lot of work left. There’s also an important inflection point with AI. Where we can, we are definitely prioritizing and moving people to our most important areas, so that is ongoing work.”
“We are trying to accomplish that across many different ways. We’re literally looking at every aspect of what we do, and as we said on our last earnings call, we’re thinking about how to re-engineer our cost base in a durable way”, Sundar Pichai added.
Sundar Pichai further said, “We are definitely being focused on creating durable savings. We are pleased with the progress, but there’s more work left to do.”
The CEO however did not deny or confirm the possibility of a second round of layoffs. He did mention the stress that Google’s current focus is on enhancing efficiency and prioritizing critical areas.
In January, Google parent Alphabet announced to sack of 12,000 employees. The company CEO took responsibility for the layoffs.
The development of either layoff or hiring slowdown comes after IT companies, crypto exchanges, and financial firms cut out jobs and slow down the hiring process due to slow global economic growth caused by higher interest rates, and rising inflation. The CEO Sundar Pichai & Senior Executives took pay cuts as part of the company’s cost-cutting measures.
