{"id":35771,"date":"2020-07-01T14:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-01T14:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/?p=2630509"},"modified":"2020-07-01T14:44:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-01T14:44:00","slug":"alphabet-owned-verily-suspended-employee-bonuses-to-fund-diversity-initiatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/07\/01\/alphabet-owned-verily-suspended-employee-bonuses-to-fund-diversity-initiatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Alphabet-owned Verily suspended employee bonuses to fund diversity initiatives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"119\" height=\"40\" src=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/4000-logo.jpg\" class=\"webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" style=\"display: block; margin-bottom: 5px; clear:both;max-width: 100%;\" link_thumbnail=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"image1\" title=\"verily\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/lMgqgHnILcjLT1Bg05D0fAx3x3M=\/42x0:662x413\/1310x873\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/67002890\/Screen_Shot_2015-12-07_at_5.32.39_PM.0.0.png\" width=\"626\" height=\"417\" data-pre-sourced=\"yes\" data-sourced=\"yes\" data-original=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/lMgqgHnILcjLT1Bg05D0fAx3x3M=\/42x0:662x413\/1310x873\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/67002890\/Screen_Shot_2015-12-07_at_5.32.39_PM.0.0.png\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/lMgqgHnILcjLT1Bg05D0fAx3x3M=\/42x0:662x413\/1310x873\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_image\/image\/67002890\/Screen_Shot_2015-12-07_at_5.32.39_PM.0.0.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Verily Life Sciences, the Alphabet-owned healthcare company, is suspending employee spot bonuses,&nbsp;as reported by&nbsp;<em>Business Insider<\/em>. The money will be funneled instead to fund diversity and inclusion initiatives. The move frustrated workers, many of whom have been working grueling hours on the company&rsquo;s COVID-19 testing projects.<\/p>\n<p>In a letter to management obtained by&nbsp;<em>Business Insider<\/em>, employees said the decision implied these initiatives are not a priority. They wrote: &ldquo;The use of spot bonuses to subsidize social justice programs such as Healthy@Work for HBCUs [Historically Black colleges and universities], clinical trial recruitment of underrepresented populations, and an internal Product Inclusion group implies that these efforts are charity causes not worthy of their own investment.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside><q>Because of Alphabet&rsquo;s strong financial position, diversity and inclusion shouldn&rsquo;t be hard to invest in<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p>Employees asked that spot bonuses be reinstated and called for the creation of a board of executives and employees to measure progress toward diversity goals. Alphabet, Verily&rsquo;s parent company, made&nbsp;$46.07 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019. Because of Alphabet&rsquo;s strong financial position, diversity and inclusion shouldn&rsquo;t be hard to invest in, the employees wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Since March, Verily has been scrambling to roll out Project Baseline,&nbsp;a website for people across the United States who want to get tested for COVID-19.&nbsp;President Trump announced the project in a press conference on March 13th,&nbsp;wrongly stating that Google was behind the initiative. The announcement put Project Baseline in the national spotlight, at a time when it was just getting off the ground.<\/p>\n<p>The pressure from this announcement &mdash; along with the very real need for COVID-19 testing and screening &mdash; resulted in long work hours for Verily employees. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not working on the weekend, you&rsquo;re seen as slacking off,&rdquo; an employee told&nbsp;<em>Business Insider.&nbsp;<\/em>That made the news about bonuses sting beyond the company&rsquo;s implied message that diversity didn&rsquo;t deserve its own investment.<\/p>\n<div>\n<aside><q>&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not working on the weekend, you&rsquo;re seen as slacking off.&rdquo;<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p>&ldquo;Verily taking away employee spot bonuses after what many consider to be the most grueling and difficult time of our careers show a lack of recognition,&rdquo; employees wrote in the letter.<\/p>\n<p>Verily CEO Andrew Conrad is set to meet with staffers from Project Baseline to discuss the letter on Wednesday. Verily did not immediately return a request for comment. In a statement to&nbsp;<em>Business Insider<\/em>, Verily spokesperson Carolyn Wang defended the company&rsquo;s decision.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;At this time, we think it&rsquo;s important we put our money where our mouth is, and direct some of our discretionary funds &mdash; such as those typically used to fund a spot bonus program (which is separate and distinct of our annual bonus program) &mdash; to bolster our efforts to ensure our products and services are accessible to the people who need them,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;This requires making a few small sacrifices, but why wouldn&rsquo;t we do that?&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p class=\"tags\">\n<div><strong>See Campaign: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/6\/30\/21309306\/alphabet-verily-suspended-employee-bonuses-diversity-ini\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2020\/6\/30\/21309306\/alphabet-verily-suspended-employee-bonuses-diversity-ini<\/a><br \/><b>Contact Information:<\/b><br \/>Zoe Schiffer<\/p>\n<p><b>Tags:<\/b><br \/><a href=\"\"><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/news-category\/artificial-intelligence-newswire\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Artificial Intelligence Newswire<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/news-category\/wire\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Wire<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/global-regions\/united-states\/\" rel=\"category tag\">United States<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/category\/language\/english\/\" rel=\"category tag\">English<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"image\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"cwdfimg\" \/><\/div>\n<div>\n<h3>Contact Information:<\/h3>\n<p>Zoe Schiffer<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"119\" height=\"40\" src=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/4000-logo.jpg\" alt=\"\">Verily Life Sciences, the Alphabet-owned healthcare company, is suspending employee spot bonuses,&nbsp;as reported by&nbsp;Business Insider. The money will be funneled instead to fund diversity and inclusion initiatives. The move frustrated workers, many of whom have been working grueling hours on the company&rsquo;s COVID-19 testing projects. In a letter to management obtained by&nbsp;Business Insider, employees said &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/icrowdnewswire.com\/2020\/07\/01\/alphabet-owned-verily-suspended-employee-bonuses-to-fund-diversity-initiatives\/\">Continue reading <span>Alphabet-owned Verily suspended employee bonuses to fund diversity initiatives<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/07\/01\/alphabet-owned-verily-suspended-employee-bonuses-to-fund-diversity-initiatives\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3,22,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence-newswire","category-english","category-united-states","category-wire"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Alphabet-owned Verily suspended employee bonuses to fund diversity initiatives - Business<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/ipsnews.net\/business\/2020\/07\/01\/alphabet-owned-verily-suspended-employee-bonuses-to-fund-diversity-initiatives\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alphabet-owned Verily suspended employee bonuses to fund diversity initiatives - Business\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Verily Life Sciences, the Alphabet-owned healthcare company, is suspending employee spot bonuses,&nbsp;as reported by&nbsp;Business Insider. The money will be funneled instead to fund diversity and inclusion initiatives. The move frustrated workers, many of whom have been working grueling hours on the company&rsquo;s COVID-19 testing projects. 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The money will be funneled instead to fund diversity and inclusion initiatives. The move frustrated workers, many of whom have been working grueling hours on the company&rsquo;s COVID-19 testing projects. 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