Google is continuing to impose restrictions on employee remote work, this time by significantly tightening its popular “Work from Anywhere” (WFA) policy, which was initially established during the Covid pandemic.
New Rules for Remote Flexibility
The WFA policy previously allowed employees to work from a location outside of their main office for up to four weeks per calendar year. According to internal documents reviewed by CNBC, working remotely for even a single day will now count as a full week against that balance. A document circulated over the summer, shortly before the change took effect, stated: “Whether you log 1 WFA day or 5 WFA days in a given standard work week, 1 WFA week will be deducted from your WFA weekly balance.”
Google is not altering its established hybrid schedule, which allows employees to work from home two days a week. However, WFA days are separate from this hybrid policy, and the rules explicitly state that WFA weeks “cannot be used to work from home or nearby.”
At a recent all-hands meeting, the confusing nature of the update was highlighted by a top-rated question submitted by employees: “Why does even one day of WFA count as a whole week, and can we reconsider the restriction on using WFA weeks to work from home?” John Casey, Google’s vice president of performance and rewards, addressed the question by stating that the WFA policy “was meant to meet Googlers where they were during the pandemic,” but that it was always intended to be taken in increments of a week, not “used as a substitute for working from home in a regular hybrid workweek.”
Under the latest changes, employees are also prohibited from working from a Google office located in a separate state or country during their WFA time due to “legal and financial implications of cross border work.” Employees working in a different location may also be required to adhere to the business hours of that time zone. These WFA updates do not apply to all Google staffers, potentially excluding data center workers and those required to be in physical offices. The internal document warns that violations of the policy will result in disciplinary action or termination.
Industry Trend of Office Return
Google’s move is part of a broader trend among technology companies to force employees to spend more time in the office, especially since the peak of the Covid pandemic five years ago. Microsoft announced last month that its employees will be expected to work in an office three days a week starting next year, shifting away from a policy that allowed more remote time with manager approval. Amazon has gone even further, instructing its corporate staff to spend five days a week in the office. This office return pressure at Google has been paired with other internal changes, including the offer of voluntary buyouts to some U.S. full-time employees and the notification to remote workers in several units that their jobs could be considered for layoffs if they did not return to the hybrid schedule.
Author’s Opinion
Google’s aggressive move to deduct a full week from the annual “Work from Anywhere” allowance for just a single day of remote work is a transparent, punitive measure designed to make the benefit practically unusable for most employees. While framed as a clarification of policy, the change acts as an implicit termination of true work flexibility, forcing the remaining staff to conform to the on-site hybrid model. This erosion of a once-popular perk, amidst a wider mandate to return to the office, signals a stark prioritization of management’s desire for centralized control over employee autonomy, risking a potential talent drain to firms that still offer genuine remote work options.
Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons
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