Google employees who were hoping to expense food costs while working from home are out of luck.
The company has updated its policy to state that employees cannot expense perks such as lunch, home gyms or laundry even if they have unused funds in other parts of the budget.
Some employees may have seen their expenses go up by as much as 20% as a result.
“This whole conversation about ‘what are my perks at home’ is about whether or not they’re getting the same at the end of the month money that they were before,” says CNET Editor-at-Large Ian Sherr. “For a lot of people who are used to having their lunch taken care of for them, costs just went up.”
Sherr says the perks are intended to offset long hours and expectations that employees are always reachable. “People are expected to work crazy, crazy hours and in exchange these companies say, ‘alright we’ll do your laundry, we’ll do your oil change’.”
Google has seen ad revenue fall during the pandemic.
But the sudden shift to working from home has led to some new benefits. “More paid time off, particularly for parents and people who are taking care of loved ones,” says Sherr. “I’ve talked to a lot of Silicon Valley companies who say that they are pushing managers to be much more thoughtful about possibility of burnout and making sure employees aren’t overworking themselves.”
And Google employees and other tech workers may see some in-office perks disappear permanently, because some might never return to the office even after shelter-in-place orders are lifted.
“A number of tech companies tell me that they are much more comfortable with the idea of working from home then they were two months ago,” says Sherr. “When that happens there’s going to have to be a conversation about. what do the perks look like then?”
That could change the way that tech companies recruit new workers.