After-life benefits of being a Google employee amazes Kipp

After-life benefits of being a Google employee amazes Kipp

The US tech giant has been known to treat their employees ridiculously well, but the most recent perks surviving spouses and children receive from Google have garnered a whole new level of respect from Kipp.

August 12, 2012 2:14 by Eva Fernandes

Everybody knows Google treats their employees unbelievably well. From having some of the best offices where pets are allowed to encouraging their employees to spend 20 percent of their time working on personal projects, the company has made headlines for its efforts in human resources. Having followed the company’s unbelievably generous activities (with much envy) over the past few years, there is little Google can do that can surprise us—well, that is what we thought, before we read about the company’s recently revealed after-life perks.

Speaking to Forbes magazine, Google’s Chief People Officer Laszlo Bock recently disclosed that the company pays the surviving spouse of a deceased U.S Google employee 50 percent of said former employee’s salary for ten years after the death of the employee. The rule, which was officially implemented in 2011, includes a $1000 monthly payment to any children of the deceased employee until the child is 19-years-old or 23-years-old if the child is a full time student.

“One of the things we realized recently was that one of the harshest but most reliable facts of life is that at some point most of us will be confronted with the death of our partners. And it’s a horrible, difficult time no matter what, and every time we went through this as a company we tried to find ways to help the surviving spouse of the Googler who’d passed away” says Laszlo Bock.

So how long do you have to work for Google to be entitled to such a generous pay off? Interestingly, there is no tenure requirement for an employee to qualify for after-life benefits—just when Kipp thought the company’s human resourcing policies could not get better…