Google Orders Remote Workers To Return To Office Or Risk Losing Their Jobs

Google is now demanding that its remote workers return to the office if they want to keep their jobs and avoid being made redundant by the company. The tech giant has told staff members in several units that their roles could be at risk if they do not start reporting to their closest office at least three days a week for a hybrid work schedule, according to a report in CNBC.

"As we've said before, in-person collaboration is an important part of how we innovate and solve complex problems," a spokesperson for Google told the outlet.

"To support this, some teams have asked remote employees that live near an office to return to in-person work three days a week."

Remote employees in Google's Technical Services unit are being offered a one-time paid relocation expense to move within 50 miles of an office.

Over five years after the COVID-19 pandemic altered the working patterns across the globe, Google has started to crack the whip. The decision by Google comes in the backdrop of the company and many of its tech peers looking to slash costs whilst pouring billions into artificial intelligence AI) development.

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Google seeks efficiency

At the start of this year, Google started offering some US full-time employees voluntary buyouts as it made cost cuts. In December last year, the California-based company laid off 10 per cent of its managerial staff as part of a long-running campaign to increase efficiency.

Alphabet-owned Google launched its efficiency drive in September 2022 when CEO Sundar Pichai wrote an open letter to employees, taking "full responsibility for the decisions that led us here", but said the company had to fuel preceding periods of dramatic growth".

In the same meeting, Mr Pichai also spoke about a transformation of the corporate culture and the need to redefine its "Googleyness" - a rather vague term that has meant many things over the years, but is commonly understood as expressing what Google looks for in potential hires.