Google has recently introduced an internal pay calculator that helps explain the breakdown of the potential cuts to employees’ salaries if they chose to work from home permanently, a hot button topic more than a year after the pandemic revolutionised the workplace.
According to the reports, Google is presiding over an experiment that entails adjusting salaries based on cost-of-living where workers are located rather than their office locations. As a result, a large number of employees working out of the same location may witness varying salaries, based on their remote work locations.
Screenshots obtained by Reuters suggest that long commuters might be hit particularly hard by the new pay calculator. The company may slash the salaries of employees who work remotely, away from cities where the Google offices are.
For instance, employees living within the five boroughs of New York City who chose to work from home permanently will have nothing to worry about as they will have no pay cuts.
However, employees who commuted to Google’s Manhattan offices from nearby Stamford, Conn., would see their salaries reduced by 15% if they choose to continue working from home.
Furthermore, the screenshots also showed 5% and 10% differences for commuters living in the Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas.
The employees of the company have been further warned that moving away from the company’s offices could invite even harsher pay cuts. An employee who left San Francisco for Lake Tahoe would have his salary slashed by much as 25 per cent.
Google employees who move even farther away from the company’s offices have been warned they could face even harsher pay cuts. A worker who left San Francisco for Lake Tahoe, another expensive area of California, would have their pay cut by a whopping 25%.
As per Google, the calculator uses US Census Bureau metropolitan statistical areas or CBSAs.
As Google conducts the experiment of slashing salaries based on employees’ locations, other companies in Silicon Valley are also expected to follow the suit. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have already warned their employees who plan to leave expensive cities like New York and San Francisco that their pay will be reduced.