AN INSIDE LOOK AT GOOGLE

An Inside Look at Google
People Management 520
June 1, 2014 Abstract
Being named the top company to work for, for the last four years is no easy feat. But Google has created a recipe for success in how they recruit, manage, evaluate and motivate their 33,100 employees. By utilizing their data analysis systems and empowering their employees, Google has been able to create a successful workforce that focuses on work/life balance and transparency for all of their employees.
An Inside Look at Google
Out of thousands of employees surveyed, Google has been named the Best Company to Work For by Fortune Magazine for the last four years (Surwood, 2013). The survey is based upon factors such as work life balance, pay, benefits and additional perks. Their streak of success comes from their creation of the Googleplex at their corporate headquarters, their reputation for their work environment and philosophy on developing their employees that makes it a great place to work. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. The basis of the company was to create a search engine that would return reputable sources of information, quickly and accurately (Blumenstein, 2002). Through the years the company has used data analysis and strategic positions to help them perfect their people management skills and culture. Google is a very transparent company to all of their employees; they are a very free company that encourages risk taking, goal setting and open innovation. Jack Welch explains that once you have the right players, you have to get them to work together steadily improve their performance, be motivated and stay with company and grow as leaders (Winning, 2005). The Google approach to management is to lead with your ideas and not with your authority. Management teams are encouraged to be cross functional and the executives work closely with management and their employees to get obtain results. Their open communication policies are what give their staff a sense that they contribute to the business objectives (Frenz, 2014). “Google keeps a pipeline of innovative ideas by tapping its employees and letting ideas percolate up (Bock, 2013). Where at most large companies the ideas and concerns are passed through numerous different channels, Google allows their employees the ability to talk directly to executives through weekly sessions called TGIF. Employees have the ability to send direct emails to company executives. In an effort to share ideas amongst the many campus locations, Google utilizes Google Café to encourage interactions between teams to spark conversations and share best practices.
Google focuses on four main factors in recruiting and hiring their employees: cognitive problem solving, leadership, culture fit and role related expertise (Bock, 2012). The company looks for those that think outside of the box and are able to step up and solve a problem without being asked. Also, does the person have the ability to work and navigate in a big amorphous organization? One of the on-going issues that Google has faced is losing its top talent to flourishing companies. In 210 they lost the founder and CEO of Youtube, Chad Hurley, AdMob co-founder Omar Hamoui and Google Maps and Wave creator Lars Rasmussen to other companies such as Facebook (Goldman, 2010). A great way to retain your top talent is to ensure that the company does not shield their employee’s talents. One way that Google does this is by allowing their engineers to partake in a 20% Rule; where 20% of their work week is spent on projects that interest them. In addition, management allows employees to change the parameters of their job roles when needed. They are encouraged “think out loud” and inform their managers of ways that their jobs could be done better (Walker, 2012).
Google created a strategic position that focuses on employee engagement and motivation. Stacy Sullivan is currently the Culture Czar. Her job is to “strip away everything that gets in our employee’s way” (Google, 2009). Each employee is provided with a standard benefits package upon joining the company, accompanied with a host of additional perks such as free dental and health care. All employees have access to first class dining facilities that provide a free gourmet lunch and dinner every day, along with free dry cleaning, a gym, salon, massage parlor, a car wash, bike repair shop, laundry rooms, an on-site doctor and commuting buses. Additional perks include 18 weeks off with 100% pay for maternity leave with includes $500 for new parents, tuition reimbursement, up to $5000 for adoption assistance and $5,000 for when employees purchase a hybrid vehicle. Employees also obtain vacation packages and Google will match up to $3000 per year for charitable contributions. These additional benefits are perhaps their strongest strategic capability and their largest competitive advantage in retaining employees. Another strategic capability is that employees have access to a product manager for career and management purposes. This manager will teach them how to negotiate better salaries, improve their presentation skills and talk them through the reasons why they should or they shouldn’t leave to start their one company (Walker, 2012). A disadvantage is that once a person has been with company and learned these practices, they can leave the company and attempt to replicate the same advantages in their new company. Another disadvantage is that it is incredibly costly to maintain these benefits. Google utilizes a system called OKR (Objectives and Key Results), to evaluate their employees. This system was adopted in the first year of Google being launched and was brought over from Intel by a Google investor. OKR has the company/employees to first set an objective and then set up a number of quantifiable ways in which they will meet the objective. The evaluations occur every quarter and annually. At the end of each quarter, the employees grade themselves on a scale of 0-1. The goal is to not get a lot of 1s as a rating; because that means the goal you set was too easy. Instead a worker should strive to make a 0.60 or 0.70. If an employee scores a 0.40 or below, it indicates that they have done something wrong. Once completed, the information is placed into a system where it is readily available for whenever the employee needs it. It’s a great way to see what all you have accomplished for the company, in the event a person is up for a promotion. Google utilizes the 20-70-10 differentiation rule when evaluating, promoting and terminating employees (Frenz, 2014). At any time, an employee can see everyone’s OKR scores no matter what department or level they are. Even the founders, OKR scores are available. The purpose is not to intimidate employees, yet to have a transparent way to see what everyone in the company has been working on (Bock, 2012). When adopting new perspective or policy, Google will take a small fraction of their workforce and test it and review it before rolling it out to their entire workforce. This allows them to see if the new process will work before impacting an entire organization. Bock states that this is the most common mistake that is made by organizations. A company will decide to make a change based on someone’s idea, without considering if the new process will or will not work (Bock 2012). Development is one of Google’s strategic capabilities. They have created a formalized learning system entitled, GoogleEDU. Through employee reviews, surveys and data analysis from former and current and former employees, Google has created a formalized system for developing and educating employees. They insure the courses provided are specific to an employee’s job role, for example, an engineer will have different courses from sales representatives. The courses are also specific to the employee’s career’s stage, such as junior or senior level courses. “The more targeted training is the better because it is actionable. The downside to the leadership development is that too often it is amorphous and doesn’t speak to people in the language that they need at a specific time” (Walker, 2012). Google also works to ensure the training is timely. In 2011 they hired over 8,000 employees. When training the employees on different aspects of the business they did not do it all at once. Instead they wait until a process or event is about to take place and then they conduct the training. For example, for new managers that come from outside the company; they will receive training on the evaluation process right before the evaluations take place instead of during the first 30 days of being hired. These best practices incorporated a few of the critical components that are needed in talent management. Google is able to manage the quantity and quality of their high potentials, allows employees to create individual development plans and has the ability to test candidates in the dimensions of ability, engagement and aspiration (Martin, 2010).
Google has done a great job tapping into the demographic of workers they employee to meet their needs and create a free work environment with a work/life balance. They have done an excellent job creating facilities that meet their employee’s personal needs and ambitions. Their workforce has done a great job displaying a differentiated organization with the use of their evaluation system that is completely transparent and shows the organization’s ratings. A recommendation for their workforce strategy would be to allow the managers to be more candid. The articles spoke about the managers leading through ideas and not being a force of authority. If you remove the manager’s ability to be completely candid about an employee’s performance for fear that they will demotivate the employee then they are putting their managers at a disadvantage. Candor allows more people to get involved in the conversation, it generates speed and it cuts cost (Winning 2005). The final suggestion that I would make is to ensure that all employee benefits are accessible across the board. The Googleplex is only offered at their headquarters location in California, yet they have large facilities in other states. In an effort to not demotivate or show favoritism to those that work at the headquarters, Google will need to work to ensure all or the majority of the same perks are offered at other locations.
Conclusion
Google has done a phenomenal job engaging their workforce and putting innovative strategic capabilities in place to help them attract and retain top talent in today’s industry. By empowering their workforce to take risk, utilizing transparency with evaluations and organizational decisions and impeccable perks and incentives; Google has created a recipe for success that other companies are noticing and replicating.
References
Becker,B., Huselid, M., Beatty, R.(2009). The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent Into Strategic Impact. Boston, MA. Harvard Business Publishing.
Bock, L. (2012, November 13). Lessons in Leadership. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from: http://live.wsj.com/video/how-google-decides-on-hires/8416D5A3-EDDF-45D0-88B0-731D074FE767.html#!8416D5A3-EDDF-45D0-88B0-731D074FE767
Bock, L.(2013). Google’s Secrets of Innovation: Empowering Its Employees. Retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurahe/2013/03/29/googles-secrets-of-innovation-empowering-its-employees/
Blumenstein, R., Fowler, G. Sandberg, J., Buckman, R., and Maher, K .(2002, March 21). "Beyond Global," The Wall Street Journal, p. B6. Retrieved from: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/history2/9/Google-Inc.html#ixzz33Onf65pH
Cook, J. (2009). How Google Motivates Their Employees with Rewards and Perks ThinkingLeader. Retrieved from: http://thinkingleader.hubpages.com/hub/How-Google-Motivates-their-Employees-with-Rewards-and-Perks
Frenz. R.(2014, April 17). Google’s Organizational Structure. Ehow. Retrieved from: http://www.ehow.com/about_6692920_google_s-organizational-structure.html Goldman, D. (2010, Nov. 10). Google’s Fight to Keep Its Top Minds. CNN Money. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/10/technology/google_brain_drain/ Martin, J. and Schmidt, C.(2009). How to Keep Your Top Talent. Harvard Business Review.
Surwood, A. (2012). Google Named Best Company to Work For, For Fourth Year. CBS News. Retrieved from: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-named-best-company-to-work-for-for-fourth-year/g.
Walker, J.(2012, July 5). Schools in Session at Google. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303410404577466852658514144.
Welch, J. 2005. Winning. New York, NY. Harper Collins Publishers Inc.

Yarow, J.(2014, Jan.6). This is the Internal Grading System Google Uses for Its Employees And You Should Use It Too. Business Insider. Retrieved from: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-ranking-system-okr-2014-1