Starting this week, Google will use a new performance evaluation process called grad, which is short for Google comment and development. According to the internal documents reviewed by CNBC, this is part of the effort to simplify the evaluation process, limit the review to once a year rather than twice, and put more responsibility in the hands of managers rather than relying heavily on peer review.
One of the documents said: "under this new program, we expect most Googlers to receive higher salary than under the old perf system, and the total amount paid will also increase."
Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Google search, reiterated this at the company's plenary meeting on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.
A Google spokesman said in an email that the company "has no other information to share".
Employee compensation has always been a sensitive topic for Google. In the annual "googlegeist" survey, which CEO Sundar Pichai believes is a key indicator of employee satisfaction, employees gave a particularly poor score for Google's salary compared with that of similar jobs in other companies. Employees also reduced their evaluation of the performance evaluation process and career development opportunities.
The survey results, released in March, highlighted the challenges facing Google in the "great resignation", with workers leaving their jobs at a record pace and technology companies competing for talent.
Google employees have been expressing their concerns directly to management, not just in the annual survey. At a staff meeting last December, Frank Wagner, Google's vice president in charge of compensation, answered questions about whether the company would offer a raise to deal with soaring inflation, especially when Google's revenue boomed during the pandemic and its share price hit a record in November.
Wagner said that even if executives get a raise, Google will not implement a comprehensive raise to cope with inflation.
Google is now making fundamental changes to the way workers are paid and promoted. As part of the new grad system, promotion will be mainly decided by management, rather than a consortium of managers and colleagues. However, the documents show that employees can still ask for promotion twice a year.
How to get promoted
The company also abandoned its long-standing practice of a lengthy promotion process, a large number of forms that employees need to fill out, including comments from bosses and colleagues. Managers will make promotion decisions as a group, rather than asking employees to consult them alone.
Google said in March that it would try to modify its long-standing "perf" process, which has been copied by other companies in the industry. The information previously reported some details of the performance appraisal reform.
An internal note said that as part of the new system, Google employees will be given a new tool to set goal expectations, or goals and key results (okrs). The document points out that employees will also have "regular inspections" with their managers every quarter to discuss career development and other issues, which solves a core complaint of employees.
For employee rating, Google is introducing a new scale with five different levels. Most employees will be in the middle, which "reflects the significant impact they are making". The two levels below the middle are "moderate impact" and "insufficient impact", and the two levels above are "outstanding impact" and "transformative impact", which are used for those who "perform above or below this high standard".
There is also a new promotion system. In it, the employee's manager will fill out a form to assess whether the person shows the skills required for improvement.
"We don't expect Google to have done the next level of work to prove their ability to achieve the next level of success," a document said However, there is a business need for promotion.
"If Google shows signs of success at this level, they will be considered for promotion," the company said