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Summary
- Google has reportedly offered a calculator to employees to know how their salaries will be affected.
- Facebook and Twitter have also reduced the pays of their employees who shifted to less expensive places.
- A survey has found that two in three Americans are ready to take pay cuts in exchange for remote work.
The work-from-home regime has gathered much prominence since the emergence of COVID-19, as the pandemic restricted people’s movement amid lockdowns.
This brought in a paradigm shift in office workplaces, as a rising number of employers, especially tech companies, shifted to remote work in the hopes of convenience.
Now, about 17 months since the pandemic struck, companies are deliberating on how to create a defined framework around the work-from-home regime.
Also read: What to Expect in Reimagined Office Space Post-COVID
Source: Pixabay
Tech giants apply pay cuts for remote workers
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), for one, is reportedly enforcing a pay cut for its employees who continue to work from home.
Also read: Is Google imposing pay cuts on its remote employees?
The new arrangement is expected to have no impact on employees who live near their offices and can commute for work. Employees who choose to work from home to avoid travelling, on the other hand, are likely to face a pay cut.
Other tech giants like Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) have also enacted similar changes in the past. These companies reportedly reduced the salaries of workers who shifted to less costly places amid the work-from-home regime.
Reports say Google has provided a calculator to its employees that can help them understand how much pay they could lose based on the commuting distance between the workplace and their homes.
In May 2021, Google had said that 20 per cent of its employees could continue to work remotely after offices reopened. CEO Sundar Pichai, in a letter to employees, said that Google will ‘develop more remote roles’ for this purpose.
Mr Pichai had also hinted at ‘adjustments’ in pay in this letter.
What do employees want?
A survey by insurance startup Breeze points at some interesting findings in terms of employee expectations regarding remote working.
The report found that of the 1,000 employees interviewed, 65 per cent were willing to give away five per cent of their salary for the remote working option.
One in seven participants, on the other hand, were ready to take as much as a 25 per cent pay cut in exchange of a permanent work-from-home arrangement.
Apart from pay cuts, nearly half of the participants said they were also willing to work for 10 more hours a week if allowed log in from home.
Other interesting findings of this survey included people willing to give up social media and streaming apps, and even their voting rights, for remote working privileges.
What’s in store for remote working?
As employees get habituated to the practice of blending work with home affairs, it is likely most of them will want to stick to working from home. This could result in more companies taking a cue from Google’s move and adopting a pay cut framework around remote working.
As to how this development could impact salaries in various sectors will only become clearer in the future. But as the pandemic subsides and offices reopen, employees may have to face a day of reckoning.
