Recent USA Today article reports that Google is planning on giving every employee a 10% pay increase at year end. If this report is true, I caution Google’s leadership to consider alternative investments and avoid using “pay” as an engagement or retention tool. Increasing everyone’s salary the same percentage will not reward high performance and will have a short term engagement benefit. Google should avoid building engagement on things ( like pay and free lunches) and re-allocate resources towards sustainable engagement initiatives such as building a world class learning culture, investing in corporate social responsibility activities, or investing in innovation.
