Introduction Google is a company that specializes in internet search and online advertising, and an important player in the knowledge-based services industry. Since its very beginnings, this company has focused on innovation and new ways of doing things more efficiently and effectively, and it has paid off for it. Its Human Resources (HR) practices are no exception either. Under the motif “best place to work for”, Google has become one of the best employers to work for, and has won numerous awards and listings from the best industry analysts. It attracts people from diverse backgrounds with its unorthodox methods of rewards and benefits, and using its innovative methods of evaluation, Google recruits employees with the best “innovative potential”, as the company says.
Knowledge-based industries are dependent on its inputs of technology and human capital, so they face some serious HR challenges. Here recruitment and retaining employees are crucial and a major challenge as employees demand a different type of challenges and work environment than other industries, and also fitting the perfect people according to their jobs is also a major challenge here. So, intensive training and development of employees is important. Because employees are highly skilled and knowledgeable, they enjoy a high bargaining power unlike many other industries. So maintaining them requires a lot effort from the HR departments of the companies to retain and motivate them to be loyal, as they know many trade secrets that would seriously jeopardize the company if the employee defected. So, benefits of this industry are extensive, and include:
Many sorts of insurances, medical, dental, group medical, long and short term disabilities, etc.
Savings plans
Work life balance/employee assistance programs
Flexible work schedules
Transportation reimbursement and many more.
Over the next few pages, we shall try to discuss the ways Google has innovated and adopted ways to meet the challenges of HR it faces.

Google’s approach to recruitment:
Google, through its branding, PR, and recruiting efforts, has made itself well known and attractive to professionals from every industry and university that they have essentially changed recruiting forever. The term “disruptive technology” is what has almost overnight changes the entire technology and marketplace to the point where everyone must pay attention to what that firm is doing. Google has created the same phenomenon in the form of a “disruptive approach” to work and recruiting, an approach so different and so compelling that firms must pay attention and attempt to emulate some of the things they’re doing, they might soon lose some of the very best employees you have.
Google has accomplished something that no other corporation has ever accomplished. In less than a handful of years, they have developed what can be called a “recruiting machine.” Recruiting and the need for it permeate the entire organization. Not just the recruiting function or the HR organization, but the entire company — from the key leaders on down to the entry-level employees. As a result of this culture, not only does Google fund recruiting to the point where the function is in a league by itself, but they have also gone to the extraordinary step of changing the way employees work in order to attract and retain the very best.
Google recruiting is the best-funded recruiting function in any major product-driven corporation. Google’s recruitment has a ratio of 1 recruiter for every 14 employees (14:1). Compared it to the typically much larger ratio of employees to all HR professionals, which is about 100:1.
Google does not only rely on traditional recruitment and selection process, instead they use:
Employment branding. The Google culture is one of legend. Categorized in hundreds of blogs as both everything and nothing, they have successfully created an organization capable of delivering a 1:1 employee/employer experience. From homemakers to finance professionals to cutting edge engineers, Google is one of the top employers with regards to desirability. While the company disdains advertising about itself, it considers the number of blog postings discussing Google’s culture a key measure of brand strength.
Retention. Because Google can create such a unique experience for every employee and can provide an opportunity for professionals to focus on what they do best, turnover is less than 5%. While in the early days stock options might have been the dominant retention driver, employees hired recently receive only market-based pay and marginal stock participation via “Google Stock Units.” They embody the rationale that money isn’t the issue. Their employee loyalty is simply phenomenal.
Employee referral program. The program is designed to deliver a world-class candidate experience, be proactive, and to respond to every referral within one week of submission. While many organizations design processes to meet the organization’s needs, Google recognized that a successful referral program must be designed to meet the needs of employees and referrals first.
Data-driven approach to candidate assessment. The latest innovation from Google’s recruiting function is unique. The search engine company implemented a new assessment tool that relies on an algorithm to more accurately identify candidates that resemble existing top performers. While many companies seek to screen out candidates, the new Google candidate assessment approach enables Google to “include” candidates that might otherwise be overlooked. The algorithm evaluates a much wider range of potential success predictors than can normally be discerned from most resumes. This innovation recognizes and resolves a major flaw inherent to typical assessment methodologies that rely too heavily on academic grades, SAT scores, degrees from “top” schools, prior industry experience, and subjective interview results. A Google approach to motivation and rewards
Motivation is an employee’s intrinsic enthusiasm about, and drive to, accomplish activities related to work. Motivation is that internal drive that causes an individual to decide to take action. Every employee has activities, events, people, and goals in his or her life that he or she finds motivating. So, motivation about some aspect of life exists in each person's consciousness and actions.
The trick for employers is to figure out how to inspire employee motivation at work. To create a work environment in which an employee is motivated about work, involves both intrinsically satisfying and extrinsically encouraging factors. Employee motivation is the combination of fulfilling the employee's needs and expectations from work and the workplace factors that enable employee motivation - or not. These variables make motivating employees challenging.
Factors to Encourage Motivation
These are some of the factors that are present in a work environment that many employees find motivating.
Management and leadership actions that empower employees,
Transparent and regular communication about factors important to employees,
Treating employees with respect,
Providing regular employee recognition,
Feedback and coaching from managers and leaders,
Above industry-average benefits and compensation,
Providing employee perks and company activities, and
Positively managing employees within a success framework of goals, measurements, and clear expectations.
As part of Google’s innovative motivating techniques, Google first and foremost focuses on employee recognition, or a communication tool that reinforces and rewards the most important outcomes people create for your business. When people are recognized effectively, their behaviors are reinforced, with the chosen means of recognition, the actions and behaviors the organization most want to see people repeat. Google has changed work with “20% Time”. Many organizations have changed their pay or benefits in order to attract better workers, but no one has changed every professional job in the company just so that the work itself is the primary attraction and retention tool. Rather than letting work, jobs, and job descriptions be put together by the people in corporate compensation, Google’s founders, HR director, and the leadership team at Google have literally crafted every professional job and workplace element so that all employees are:
Working on interesting work
Learning continuously
Constantly challenged to do more
Feeling that they are adding value
The key element of changing the work so that the work itself becomes a critical attraction and retention force and driver of innovation and motivation is what Google calls “20% work.” For professional jobs it means that the employee works the equivalent of one-day-a-week on their own researching individually selected projects that the company funds and supports. Both Google Groups and Google News products are reported to have started as a result of personal 20% time projects. In addition to being an attraction tool, it also keeps their retention rate high. But its greatest value is that it drives innovation and creativity throughout the organization.
At Google, innovation is expected of everyone in every function, not just product development. The 20% time, along with the expectation of continuous and disruptive innovation, has driven the company’s phenomenal success in product and service innovation. Yes, in this rare case, HR activities and policies are actually driving corporate business success.
Google provides extraordinary benefits, which are not only to attract potential applicants during recruitment. Instead, these benefits are also designed to encourage collaboration, to break down barriers between functions, and to stimulate individual creativity and innovation. These benefits do attract some of the “wrong people,” that is, talented individuals who are seeking benefits rather than an opportunity to do their best work, which creates a screening challenge. To encourage innovation also needs a strong “employment brand” and jobs that are designed to continually challenge and grow employees. A partial list of Google’s benefits include:
Flex hours for nearly every professional employee
Casual dress everyday (and this goes well beyond business casual)
Employees can bring their dogs to work, everyday
On-site physician
On-site dental care
Health benefits that begin as soon as an employee reports for work
Free massage and yoga
Shoreline running trails
Stock options everywhere
Free drinks and snacks everywhere (espresso, smoothies, red bull, health drinks, kombucha tea, you name it)
Free meals, including breakfast, lunch and dinner (some have described this as a feast with multiple locations and world-class chefs, including one that cooked for the Grateful Dead)
Three weeks’ vacation during the first year
Free recreation everywhere, including video games, foosball, volleyball and pool tables
Valet parking for employees
Onsite car wash and detailing
Maternity and parental leave (plus new moms and dads are able to expense up to $500 for take-out meals during the first four weeks that they are home with their new baby)
Employee referral bonus program
Near site child care center
Back-up child care for parents when their regularly scheduled child care falls through
Free shuttle service to several San Francisco and East and South Bay locations (San Francisco is 45 miles away from the main campus)
Fuel efficiency vehicle incentive program ($5,000 assistance if you buy a hybrid)
Onsite dry cleaning, plus a coin-free laundry room
A Friday TGIF all-employee gathering where the founders frequently speak
A 401k investment program
A “no tracking of sick days” policy
Employee interest groups (formed by Google employees, these are all over the map and are said to include Buffy fans, cricketers, Nobel prize winners, and a wine club)
An onsite gym to work off all of the snacks
There are also some factors which are not so familiar to all about Google. Like : Transportation system: They provide this system. They use bicycle as their primary mode of transportation. Movie nights: Google can rent theaters for the day . As an extra benefit employees get to bring a guest. Goo-goo googler;s: Google moms enjoy up to 18 weeks of paid maternity leave; dads get 7 weeks. Google’s own Facebook : Google’s internet provides all the corporate information like benefits, newsletters and employee handbook . It provides companies employees photos. Google air : Company has recently installed special environmentally, friendly air filtering system designed to flash out the toxins . Google’s fools : It’s company tradition to design elaborate pranks to play on its users and potential employees in April 1st. Employee class : There are many clubs within the organization like Global Woman Engineers, GLBT . Google’s grand entrances : The entrance to the company’s New York’s head courters are very impressive . Its got a huge all-Lego logo built by a certified Lego designers along with a six foot model of the Empire State Building build by Google engineers. Free food, Google style : Googlers are a well-fed bunch: The company even has a rule - workers can never be more than 100 feet away from food. Conclusion
Though Google is very famous as a great employer there are many pitfalls in the HR practices of this company. Much of its recognition comes as a result of programs and ideas that originated by out of the HR policies. There is a lacking of its ability to follow on the job performance on new employees. Though the functions of Google is innovative but there is no formal strategy. Most of the people comment on its slow screening, recruiting and interview process. Because of hiring too much contingent employees they suffer from less experienced employee.
Though it has made a collegiate atmosphere expert says that “all the perks made provided by Google mean business.” So as it’s a well- known organization to work but it has also some factors which should be deal with care.
Google is in the middle of what is often called a “brain drain” – some of its best and brightest workers are leaving the firm to go join other companies. Google’s plan to try to stem this exodus of talent is a typical Google solution – they’re going to try and solve it by crunching numbers. Unlike many IT firms, Google has both the data and the processing power to attempt this.
Google plans on using data that they’ve collected from surveys and peer reviews in order to discover which of its employees feel underused. This may sound a little far fetched, but eventually all companies will be approaching HR issues this way.
Former employees reveal that people are leaving because many employees don’t feel that their efforts will make the same amount of impact as the company matures from its startup days. Compounding the problem is the fact that Google does not appear to provide much in the way of formal career planning. Often these tasks would be addressed by a company’s Human Resources (HR) department, but it appears as though Google’s HR department is viewed by many as being quite impersonal.
As amazing as it may seem, the answer to Google’s problems is actually very simple – hard to implement, but simple to describe. What they need to do is to put their customer first. By clearly communicating to the entire company that Google exists to serve their customers, a great deal of other staffing problems will fade away.
One of Google’s biggest problems is that they have not found a way to keep their employees engaged. This isn’t surprising because Google dominates its market and so it doesn’t have any big competitors to use as a rallying cry.
Making its customers first would allow Google to focus its staff on a single goal that would extend throughout the company All of a sudden every employee would have a way to measure the value of his/her work. Once again, this wouldn’t necessarily be easy to do, but it’s the right thing to do. If you can figure out how to do this with your IT department then you will have found another way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more