Google Inc. JT Velasco Dr. Brian Collin BUS302 May 3, 2015

Founded in 1998 by two Stanford University Ph.D. students, the very popular search engine, Google, is a name that plays on the word google- the number represented by a 1 followed by 100 zeroes- a reference to the huge amount of data online. With 200 million daily searches, the company has turned a profit by focusing on searches alone and not adding other services. By focusing on plain text, avoiding ads, and using sophisticated search algorithms, Google provides a fast and reliable service. Perhaps, the ultimate sign of success, the brand is now often used as a verb- “to google” is to search online. Google provides various internet products and services like Gmail, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google News, and Google Books just to name a few. The company’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” (Google History & Trivia).
Today, Google Inc. is awarded as the “Best Company Work For” by Fortune Magazine and the “Great Place to Work Institute” in the year 2014. This certainly describes the importance of Google as the company where people want to work. The company wants it to be a place which brings smart, talented people from diverse background, who could bring whole self to work. There has to be some qualities in the employees that make the company such a success. The qualities are, expertise, taking responsibility for solving complex problems and moving with the team, ability to learn, to pick up new things and fining patterns in disparate pieces of information, leading abilities, who can step in to guide and influence others toward an outcome, whatever their job or title may be. “In People Operations, we find them, grow them, and keep them - bringing the world’s most innovative people to Google and building programs that help them thrive. Whether recruiting the next great Googler, refining our core programs, developing talent or simply looking for ways to inject more fun into the lives of our Googlers, we bring a data-driven approach that is reinventing the human resources field. (Google Careers).
Google’s approach towards leadership has always been laissez-faire policy. In the words of Laszlo Bock, “our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier — they do everything better. So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen.” (Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss, 2011). Leadership is the primary vehicle for fulfilling the directing function of management. Because of its importance, theorists, researchers, and practitioners have given a tremendous amount of attention to unlock the secrets of effective leadership. The qualities that define a leader at Google Inc., are productive and results-oriented; good communicator; helping the employees with career development; maintains a clear vision and strategy for the team and have technical skills to advise and lead the team.
Google is known for its distinctive perks and benefits which shows what extreme lengths the company can go to make its employees consistently happy. Google offers extrinsic benefits like, flex spending accounts, no-cost health and dental benefits, insurance, vacation packages and tuition reimbursements, free on-site medical care for employees and their families, low-cost high quality child care, a fitness center, library, and summer camp for children of employees. The benefits that the company provides to its Googlers: 1. Food, health-care and child care and vacation packages: these are all the non-monetary financial incentives. They are provided to the employees to motivate them and increase their productivity. Often money alone is not sufficient enough to satisfy higher order need like, self-esteem, status, recognition, etc. people working at higher levels do not always work for money. Various other incentives and perks help them to stick to the job. The food has become deeply entwined with the company culture and identity. Various type of food is served at the office campuses. Similarly, healthcare and childcare plans are also provided. These obviously help the employees to believe that the company thinks about their family also. The ways in which services effects an employee’s productivity are: * To ease employees’ conflicts between work and outside of work, organizations may use family friendly policies, like family policies or child care. These program soften have spillover effects who see them as symbolizing a general corporate concern for human resources and these promotes loyalty among employees and improved organizational performance. * An organization’s decision to staff its own child care facility is proven to be very important. It is typically a costly venture with important liability concerns but it reduces absenteeism and enhancing productivity. * Providing quality food to such a larger number of employees, also have a positive effect for the company. Not leaving for meals means the employees work longer hours and the executives accepts that their main aim is to keep workers productive.

2. Insurance benefits, maternity benefits: The payoff helps in increased innovation and productivity, low sickness rates, low turnover, and high employee satisfaction. According to Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations at Google, they believe people who are exceptional and motivated, are driven beyond a good job and a paycheck. * General Insurance, medical insurance and retirement benefits helps an employees get a social security, which motivates employees to take risk and develop innovative products. * Google provides, Maternity benefits of a maximum of 18 weeks off at about 100 percent pay. The parents of the newborn are given expenses of a maximum of $500 for take-out meals in the first 3 months they spend with the baby. This encourages women employees to be a part of such a giant company.
4. It is difficult to define a company’s culture and harder to specify or delineate it. it exists despite one’s desire to have it or not, noticed or ignored and whether articulated or not. It is reflected in how things are done. (Flaganan, 1995). Corporate culture is the pattern of basic assumptions that is invented, discovered or developed by an organization as it learns to cope with its problem of external and internal integration and validated enough to be taught to new members as the correct ways of perceiving, thinking and feeling in relation to these problems. (Schein, Martin and Meyerson, 1986).
The Google culture can be defined as most positive, influential, all-encompassing, productivity-inducing environments. They maintain a casual and democratic environment in the offices. The company maintains a limited number of upper management teams and thus, the middle and low level employees feel free to be innovative. Proper communication and sharing of information in the weekly meetings, helps in creating an environment of transparency. All these factors surly enhance the organizational culture of Google Inc. and thus, to be part of such a great company is surely a chance not to be missed.

References
1. Google History & Trivia. Retrieved from; www.google.com.
2. Google Careers. Retrieved from; www.google.com.
3. Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss. Retrieved from; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?pagewanted=all. 2011
4. Flaganan, P., “ The ABC of Changing Corporate Culture”, Management Review,AMA, July 1995.
5. Schein, E., Martin J., and Meyerson, D., “Organisational Culture and the Denial, Channeling and Acceptance of Ambiguity,”Research reported No. 807R, Research paper series, Graduate school of Business, Stanford University, C.A., 1986.
Additional references: 1. The Google Way of Motivating Employees, http://www.entrepreneurial-insights.com/google-way-motivating-employees/# 2. Tri Noviantoro, “Organizational Culture In Google Inc”. Retrieved from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140904061228-154884582-organizational-culture-in-google-inc 3. Company Information: www.google.com 4. “How the Googleplex Works” by Jonathan Strickland, located at http://computer.howstuffworks.com/googleplex2.htm 5. “Google Employees Reveal Their Favorite Perks Working For The Company” by Kevin Smith, located at http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-favorite-perks-2013-3?op=1 6. “At Google, Hours Are Long, But the Consomme Is Free” by Sara Kehaulani Goo, located at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/23/AR2007012300334.html