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Google has employed a high govt from pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca to supervise its personnel insurance policies amid ongoing tensions with many staff who’re upset with the corporate’s insurance policies.
The hiring of Fiona Cicconi additionally comes whereas Google units up plans to permit individuals to proceed to earn a living from home for a minimum of eight extra months.
The Mountain View, California, web search large introduced late Tuesday that Cicconi is leaving AstraZeneca to grow to be its head of individuals operations throughout a gathering with staff.
Cicconi will substitute Eileen Naughton, who disclosed in February she would step down, simply earlier than Google informed its employees to start out working from dwelling to assist cease the unfold of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
London-based AstraZeneca is one among a number of firms rolling out a vaccine to assist put an finish to the worst world pandemic in additional than century, nevertheless it’s anticipated to take many extra months earlier than the well being disaster passes.
That’s one purpose Google has determined to permit its roughly 1,30,000 staff to proceed to earn a living from home till September 1 if they need, extending a earlier plan to permit individuals to avoid the workplace till July.
Cicconi will face the problem of constructing positive these employees have their wants met whereas remaining productive, after which oversee the eventual transition to their return to Google places of work scattered all through the world, along with its Silicon Valley hub.
The firm at present envisions counting on a system that designates sure days that employees on the identical groups will come into the workplace whereas remaining at dwelling or different distant places on different days.
“COVID has modified many points of how we work, and that is one among our highest priorities in 2021,” mentioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who additionally runs its company dad or mum, Alphabet. “The role of people operations is central to this work, and I look forward to working closely with Fiona as we enter the new year.”
Overseeing a large workforce through the pandemic will not be Cicconi’s solely problem. She can be strolling into an organization that has seen its relationship with its workforce change dramatically previously few years as extra staff have grow to be satisfied that it has strayed distant from the “Don’t Be Evil” motto that co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin embraced in its early years.
In 2018, thousands of Google employees walked off the job and staged public protests in a backlash spurred by concerns about how the company had been handling sexual harassment claims against top executives and managers. Google has also faced employee outrage about potential bids on military contracts and, more recently, the murky circumstances surrounding the abrupt departure of a revered synthetic intelligence scholar, Timnit Gebru.
After a dispute over a research paper examining the societal dangers of an emerging branch of artificial intelligence, Gebru said Google fired her earlier this month. Google maintains the company accepted her off to resign. The rift incensed hundreds of Google employees who have signed a public letter of protest.
Pichahi last week told employees that Google is beginning a thorough review into Gebru’s exit, a process that now seems likely to involve Cicconi.
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(This story has not been edited by Newslivenation workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)