At a time when tech industry is grappling with massive layoffs and world is bracing itself for an economic downturn, Google has taken another bold step towards cost cutting measures. The company is reportedly making cuts to employee services like fitness classes, laptop replacements frequency, and phasing out basic things like snackbars, staplers and tape.
A Wall Street Journal’s report shares details of the memo sent from Google’s finance chief Ruth Porat to employees. The memo titled “Our company-wide OKR on durable savings” was shared on Friday elaborating on various steps which the company would adopt to cut down on expenses and achieve company-wide objectives and key results(OKR).
Google is planning to phase out the snackbars and close cafeterias days with less footfall. The company also plans to bring in an internal tool to help pick low-cost third-party service providers.
“Just as we did in 2008, we’ll be looking at data to identify other areas of spending that aren’t as effective as they should be, or that don’t scale at our size,” Porat wrote in the staff memo adding that one of the major goals of Google this year is to “deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency.”
Google’s latest cost-cutting efforts comes at a time when the company is taking some extreme cost-saving measures ahead of the challenging economic conditions. The company in January announced that it was eliminating 12,000 jobs affecting about 6 per cent of its total workforce. Reportedly, the company did not pay the remainder of laid-off employees’ maternity and medical leaves.
The latest cost-cutting measures from Google also affect the frequency of equipment changes at the company. The company is pausing the replacement of laptops, desktops and monitors for employees. Non-engineering employees will now receive a Chromebook instead of Apple MacBooks. “Today’s devices have a much longer lifespan and greater performance and reliability, so we have made changes to what’s available and how often it’s replaced—while making sure that people have what they need to perform their role. Because equipment is a significant expense for a company of our size, we’ll be able to save meaningfully here.”
The cost-cutting is also affecting the availability of basic things like staplers and tapes. These are no longer kept at the printing stations. Instead one has to borrow from the reception desk now in case of need.
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