I recently came across one of the more alarming reports I’ve read since COVID-19 began. Naturally, there have been many upsetting reports during the pandemic (I mean, COVID should’ve been enough, and now we have the Taliban back?), but this news is something a little more in my sphere of control and influence as a business owner myself. The report stated that Google plans to cut the salaries of all its remote employees.
According to Forbes, Google plans to enact a policy where employees who move out of the city and into the suburbs to work remotely will have their pay reduced. The pay reduction supposedly doesn’t affect those who stay in the city and work remotely, but reports suggest that it does affect even those who move out but are still able to commute to the big city. The pay reduction can go as high as 25% of an employee’s current salary, which – let’s be real – is incredibly steep, especially given the current health situation.
While I don’t want to argue against Google down a slippery slope, I think there are some reasons Google shouldn’t go down this path, and why others should avoid following suit.
Here are my three big, personal reasons for why decreasing the pay of remote workers is a bad idea:
1) Workers Are People Too
As a business owner myself, I pride myself on maintaining a humanist perspective on my staff. Some might find this naive, but I think business has spent too long being impersonal and cutthroat that it’s taken away our sense of productivity based on collaboration, creativity, and empathy. Those things can drive people to do their best just as much as competition does, and arguably even more so.
Take Dan Price, for instance, the Gravity Payments CEO who significantly decreased his own salary to the thousands and raised his workers’ minimum wage to USD70,000. To some, this might seem like an unsustainable business model, but it only improved productivity for Price and made him a cult hero among the youth. The reason for this is Price saw what Google is failing to see – a business is nothing without its workers, so we must treat our workers properly.
Google’s plans to reduce pay for workers is – to be brutally honest – verging on inhumane. We can’t limit our workers’ freedom to move, especially with costs getting higher as the pandemic continues to roll on. It’s important to understand that our employees have lives outside of the office, and punishing them for engaging in that life is, in my opinion, just wrong.
That being said, cost-cutting measures can’t be avoided with the pandemic. We’ve seen so many businesses close down and struggle to pay their employees due to the economic effects of this global catastrophe. But as with anything, if you do need to cut costs, at least talk to your employees first. Integrate with them and figure out first-hand how you can continue to pay them despite the costs.
In my case, before we tightened our budget, I made sure to discuss with my staff about the strategies that we can employ despite the global recession. At the end of it, we all realised that not only can we still pay our workers, but we remembered that we have to. And for a billion-dollar company like Google, I have no doubt they could do the same if they wanted to.
Ultimately, I don’t know how to truly explain that you have to care about your employees as people, because it’s something so simple and rudimentary to being alive. And I firmly believe that if big companies like Google could put their employees first, instead of imposing anti-worker policies like drastic pay cuts, workers would be even more motivated to succeed than ever.
2) If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It
Aside from just the moral reasons, however, I think one of the biggest reasons Google and other companies shouldn’t do this is simply that if something isn’t broken, there isn’t any need to fix it.
Granted, there are many workers itching to get back in the office. And yeah, sure, the work-from-home life isn’t for everybody. Admittedly, I was sceptical of the transition too. I need to be in an office to be at my utmost productive, because that’s the environment where I’m able to compartmentalise life and work. But that isn’t true for some of my staff, and I’ve found that the work-from-home setup has actually improved productivity among a lot of them. And I don’t doubt Google’s seen the same in some of their employees, which to me, should be seen as a huge plus!
We shouldn’t punish workers for wanting to improve their working conditions, even if it means keeping them away from the big city where all the operations are. The current program seems to work for Twitter and Facebook, so why can’t Google take the same route?
3) It’s a Small World
Finally, I think one of the more abstract and moral reasons we shouldn’t reduce pay cuts for workers who choose to work from home is that – let’s be real – the world is getting smaller and smaller with the digital age. This much should be obvious, but there’s a real implication to it when it comes to limiting where our employees work – if you limit your employees by location, you’re limiting yourself from the best workers in the world.
There is real talent that lies in different time zones that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach if you were solely limiting yourself to people who work in a big American city. There’s untapped talent in every continent, and companies need to start heavily considering looking for them.
I know it’s not as easy as finding people who live within proximity to each other, but the work-from-home setup has proven that physical distance is just an illusion for having a well-oiled team. All that matters is good, motivated workers. And if we limit ourselves and our employees by location, we’re failing ourselves as entrepreneurs to look outside of the conventions of cities and the industries that inhabit them.
To your success,
Mario
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