Ruth Porat, Google’s finance head, recently announced in a rare companywide email that the company is cutting employee services.
“These are large, multi-year initiatives,” Porat said in an email headlined “Our company-wide OKR on durable savings” on Friday. The Wall Street Journal has already reported on aspects of the email.
Google stated in other documents obtained by CNBC that it is reducing staff access to fitness courses, staplers, tape, and laptop replacements.
One of the company’s major goals for 2023 is to “achieve long-term cost reductions through increased speed and productivity.” Porat wrote in an email. With reference to product categories, she stated, “All PMOs and Functions are working toward this.” OKR is an abbreviation for objectives and key outcomes.
The most recent cost-cutting initiatives come as Alphabet-owned Google continues its most severe cost-cutting period in its almost two decades as a publicly traded corporation. The business said in January that it will eliminate 12,000 positions, or around 6% of its staff, in response to sluggish revenue growth and record headcount expansion.
Cutbacks have manifested in different ways. CNBC previously reported that the corporation refuses to pay the balance of severance packages for maternity and medical breaks.
In a recent email, Porat described the layoffs as “the most difficult decisions our organization has ever had to make.”
The email from Porat stated, “This effort is especially important due to our recent expansion, the hard economic climate, and our amazing investment possibilities to advance technology, notably in AI.”
Porat made two references to 2008 in her email.
“We’ve been here before,” stated the email. In 2008, our costs grew more quickly than our revenues. We increased machine utilization, reduced our real estate investments, reduced spending on T&E, cafés, micro kitchens, and mobile phones, and eliminated our hybrid car subsidiary.”
“Similar to what we did in 2008, we will examine data to discover other areas of spending that are inefficient or do not scale to our size.”
In a response to CNBC, a spokeswoman said, “As we’ve openly said, our company’s objective is to achieve sustainable cost reductions through increased speed and efficiency. As part of this, we’re implementing a number of practical measures to help us continue to be good stewards of our resources.
