April 4, 2023: Google’s finance chief Ruth Porat expressed in a periodic companywide email that the group is cutting employee benefits.

“These are significant-year efforts,” Porat said in a Friday email titled: “Our companywide OKR on durable savings.” The Wall Street Journal previously reported elements of the email.

In separate records, Google stated it’s cutting back on fitness classes, tape and the frequency of employee laptop replacements.

OKR stands for objectives and key results. One of the company’s essential goals for 2023 is to “deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency.” Porat wrote in an email. “All PAs and Functions are working toward this,” she stated, which refers to product areas.

The latest cost-cutting measures come as Alphabet-owned Google continues its most severe era of cost cuts in its almost two decades as a public company. The company said in January that it was eliminating 12,000 jobs, representing about 6% of its workforce, to reckon with slowing sales growth following record headcount growth.

Cuts have shown up in other ways. The company had previously declined to pay the remainder of laid-off employees’ maternity and medical leaves.

In her recent email, Porat said the layoffs were “the hardest decisions we’ve had to make as a company.”

“This work is particularly important because of our recent raised, the challenging economic environment, and our incredible investment opportunities to drive technology forward, particularly in AI,” Porat’s email stated.

Porat refers to the year 2008 twice in her email.