Google’s Plan to Resume Reviews Rankles Employees With Children

Life won’t start looking normal for most Google employees before next July, the earliest the company expects its workforce to be able to return to its offices. Yet Google is resuming some suspended business functions, including a high-stakes review cycle that has made at least one group of employees—parents—particularly anxious.  

Many Google employees who have kids said they expect the upcoming assessments to show that their job performance suffered in recent months as they juggled work with child care, according to an employee-run internal survey of 870 Google workers who are parents. Some are asking Google to allow them to opt out of the reviews, which determine salaries and promotions. The survey results, which were viewed by The Information, show the difficulties facing one of the world’s richest employers in managing a sprawling workforce under the prolonged challenges posed by the pandemic.