By Nathalie Voit
Google executives told employees pay won’t be raised to counter inflation at an all-hands virtual meeting held on Dec. 7.
“We don’t have any plans to do any type of across-the-board type adjustment,” said Frank Wagner, the company’s vice president of compensation, in response to a question related to rising costs and worker pay that had received 400+ upvotes.
The question, submitted to an internal forum called Dory ahead of the meeting, was graded by management as a topic of company-wide concern based on the number of “upvotes” it had received.
“With the U.S. inflation rates being as high as 7%, some companies are doing blanket salary adjustment to cover just the inflation,” the question stated, according to audio and a transcript of the meeting obtained by CNBC.“Is there any plans for Google to do the same thing?”
The question was read aloud by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who then yielded the floor to Wagner.
“Inflation does seem to be atop of mind for a lot of folks, and I think one of the reasons is that people are pretty eager to get their compensation awards,” Wagner replied.
While Wagner acknowledged the effects of inflation on the company’s 140,000+ full-time workers, he said Google would not introduce blanket inflation-adjusted pay hikes just yet.
“As I mentioned previously in other meetings, when we see price inflation increasing, we also see increases in the cost of labor or market pay rate,” Wagner said. “Those have been higher than in the recent past and our compensation budgets have reflected that.”
Instead, the tech giant will dole out performance-based compensation awards, the VP said.
“Employees receive bonus and equity as part of their total compensation, which also includes generous benefits and flexibility,” a spokesperson for the company reiterated in a statement, according to the CNBC report.
Google parent Alphabet announced a record $65.1 billion in third-quarter profits in October, up 41% from one year ago.
