Google CEO defends desk-sharing policy, says some offices are like a ‘ghost town’

Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended the cloud unit’s new desk-sharing coverage for workers, describing a number of the firm’s workplaces as virtually empty and reminding staffers that actual property is expensive.

“To me it’s obvious that they are trying to be efficient and save money but at the same time also utilize resources,” Pichai mentioned in a companywide assembly final week, in keeping with audio obtained by CNBC. “There are people, by the way, who routinely complain that they come in and there are big swaths of empty desks and it feels like it’s a ghost town — it’s just not a nice experience.”

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Pichai’s feedback comply with a CNBC report final month about Google’s plan to ask cloud staff and companions to share desks on the division’s 5 largest areas, which embody New York and San Francisco. The firm is asking the downsizing effort Cloud Office Evolution (CLOE).

On Alphabet’s fourth-quarter earnings name in early February, executives mentioned they anticipate Google to incur prices of about $500 million within the present interval associated to lowered world workplace house, as the corporate reckons with slowing income development and ongoing recession considerations.

Pichai indicated that there are a lot of folks coming to the workplace “only two days a week,” which he mentioned makes for an inefficient use of present house.

“We should be good stewards of financial resources,” Pichai mentioned. “We have expensive real estate. And if they’re only utilized 30% of the time, we have to be careful in how we think about it.”

At the same all-hands meeting, Anas Osman, Google Cloud’s strategy and operations vice president, said about one-third of employees were coming into the offices at least four days a week, citing data from a pilot the group conducted in regards to returning to physical locations.

As part of the pilot, Osman said, employees were given the option of having a dedicated or a shared desk.

“Those one-to-one desks truly have been utilized roughly 35% of the time at 4 days or extra,” Osman mentioned. “We assume this can be a good stability of each discover efficiencies and create a greater expertise.” 

In some ways, sharing also led to more productivity, he said.

“The data from the pilot shows that Googlers reported significantly better collaboration when they had assigned days in the office even if that was in a rotational model and a shared desk,” Osman said.

Pichai said the new policy is just for cloud employees at the moment, and added that the company is “giving groups freedom to experiment.” The cloud division makes up roughly a quarter of the company’s overall workforce.

During the meeting, Pichai addressed employee concerns regarding the rollout of the desk-sharing policy and how it was communicated to the workforce. CNBC previously reported that memes started showing up in the internal Memegen system criticizing the messaging from leadership. One popular meme said, “Not each cost-cutting measure must be phrase mangled into sounding good for workers.”

In responding to questions and comments submitted by employees, Pichai read one that said, “double converse is disrespectful and irritating,” and “unhealthy issues occur, no have to make each unhealthy factor sound like a miracle.”

Pichai mentioned in response, “I agree with the sentiment here. The feedback is valid.”

“We should always strive to be as straightforward as possible,” Pichai mentioned. “I think it’s important to understand at our scale, pretty much all communication are public in nature. You’re speaking to the world and there are many, many stakeholders and so at times, nuance is important and words can have a material impact and I think sometimes you see that reflected in some of the communications.”

A Google spokesperson did not instantly reply to a request for remark.

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