Google Work Culture, Innovation, And Recruitment Strategies

History of Google

Question:

Discuss about the Recruitment and HRM in Google.

Google is well known all across the globe. It is known for its unique work culture. The company believes in keeping the work environment free and stress relieving for their employees. Just by taking a look inside the building it is evident that the complex looks more like a playground than any place of work, moreover, that of such a huge corporate giant like Google. Their main aim is to keep their employees happy and keep up the standards of productivity at the same time. They always look for new employees who can bring innovation and life experiences to the teams.

Google is one of the best known and widely recognized companies all around the globe. What started as a small student project by two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the year 1996 has now become the most widely used search engine on the internet. It also has several innovative applications like Gmail, Picasa, Google maps etc. Their main motive is to gather all the information and data available about everything around the globe and make it easily accessible to all the people living in different corners of the world.

It is unique in the way in which it treats its users (Sabaté, 2016). They pay very much importance on the satisfaction level of the users and it is for this reason that they have also resisted the pop up as they thought it to be too annoying for the users and they also made it sure that their advertisements come only as sponsored links. They mainly aim at improving the user experience.

 It is a company that is not partaking within the rat race of fame and money making, unlike the several other companies. They put the happiness and satisfaction of their employees before everything as they believe that a happy employee can give a better and improved product both in terms of quality and quantity (Peters, Jackson, & Daly 2014). Allowing generous parental leave policies, savings after retirements, death benefits etc are all parts of their employee benefit programs and schemes.  Employees can even bring their families to work in some instances.

Google is involved in CSR activities as well; they are involved in works of charity where they give good amounts of donations.

                          

Figure1: Google and its CSR

(Source: careers.google.com.2016)

Google Work Culture

Many of the offices have on site fitness centers and kitchens providing the employees with healthy meals and boost them up for the work all throughout the day(Youngs et al., 2015).

It is basically the function within an organization focusing on the recruitment, management and for providing the direction for the people who are working in the organization. They are mainly in charge of finding, conducting the interviews, recruiting and training the employees and also advertising the employee benefit programs.

There four different stages of HR development in Australia. They are the welfare state, the welfare and administration stage and the human resource management and strategic human resource management stage which is followed by the final stage that of the SHRM into the future.

It was a time when Australia had a stable economy and society and the trade unions were also very active, ideas of job design and scientific management. Prior to the Second World War, Personnel management was mainly used but the functions under this system were largely scattered and were often managed by the line managers (Bonevski et al.,2014).

The drawbacks of the welfare stage led to the formation of this stage where efforts were made to make the functions much more organized. But on the other hand, there was the scarcity of labor which led to poor performance ( Corbière et al.,2015). A large number of welfare services for the employees were introduced and there was also a rise in the structure of the pay scale.

HRM and SHRM

Dimensions	Personnel management	HRM
Philosophy	Employees are made for rules and regulations	Rules and regulations are meant for employees
Nature	Confined to procurement and training of personnel	Also integrated with corporate management
Communication	Slow and downward	Fast and both upward and downward
Decision making	Slow	Fast
Approach	Work oriented	Welfare of People and also work oriented
Job design	Division of labor	Team work
Management’s role	Transactional	Transformational
Level of trust	Low	High

Figure3: distinction between HRM and Personnel management

 (Source: Author)

There are new methods of globalization and technology which also in initiates new emphasis on performance and human capital.

Figure4:  HRM model

(Source: www.scribd.com.2016)

The key features of this model led more emphasis on employee commitment rather than compliance with the rules. The employees must be very carefully recruited that is the right person for the right job.

Managing the work culture is much more important than managing the procedures and system, which is evident from the fact that Google being such a gigantic business house pays maximum importance on the happiness and satisfaction of its employees and not on money making only (Baert et al.,2016).

It mainly is concerned about the scarcity of the resources of organizations. It seeks to find ways of how to compete effectively while maintaining high standards of employment practice.

Google Employees Benefits

 Individualistic society is one, where people are much more inclined towards living alone rather than in families as a result of which the need for the job is also increasing.  (Vossen & van Gestel, 2015). As there is a decline of trade unionism there is an increased need for individual consultation mechanism. There is the need for honesty and fairness in all activities.

The strategy for the recruitment must be planned and targeted towards the right person, not all the posts in a company are strategic, strategic recruitment is useful for hiring the right person for the right job ( Evans-Lacko & Knapp, 2014). This process is used for the hiring of the employees for those particular job positions which are needed for the accelerated growth of the company (Pit et al.,2014). It is different from the commonly used method of recruitment and strategic method of recruitment is generally used in order to react to the changing market trends (Jain & Bhatt, 2015).  This method of hiring is way too expensive and cannot be used all throughout the year. The HR has to act independently and set the priorities right.

Google is very much well known as an employer (Ruchika & Prasad, 2017). It is perhaps because this company does not only believe in hiring people based on their grades and their academic brilliance, rather it believes in recruiting people based on their capabilities of innovativeness and their uniqueness ( Bock et a., 2014). Google treats their employees as intelligent adults (Leekha Chhabra & Sharma, 2014). Google also allows ten of their engineers their full freedom to create and to carry on their experiments and to bring some sort of innovations in the work of the entire business.

There are several problems that the recruiters are facing nowadays ( Barsoum, 2015). There is a constantly increasing pressure to meet the objectives efficiently and effectively. There is the pressure for increasing the flexibility of the business environment. There is a vast competition existing on a global scale.

The problem that the company faces mostly during the time of recruitment is also because of the homogeneous nature that it has imbibed its work culture. It is not always prudent to think that the employees will fit to a particular mode. It prevents the company from bringing any significant changes within the existing work flow. It carries on the same monotonous methods of working and prevents the employees from taking any risks and this in turn also prevents innovation. It makes it tough for the company to think differently or think out of the box and bring new innovations. As a result of which, they also fail to respond to the changing market trends. It is necessary for the company to open more opportunities and arenas for the employees.

Google CSR Activities

Retaining the fabulous young talents often becomes a major problem. The company has to keep a sharp eye upon the activities of each worker whether they are working at optimum level and with their maximum potential to drive the company forward. Google might offer a huge amount of money in order to retain employees so that they do not switch company but Google has to realize that money is not the ultimate thing, as the companies evolve, the workforce needs to evolve too.

There are also several evidences that show some of the severe problems existing in the recruitment process of Google.

Don Dodge who was an employee of the Microsoft company at the post of a startup evangelist, thought of changing team and while being recruited at Google, he had to face some problems like even after having twenty years of experience, he was asked for his degrees, SAT scores. Google is poaching employees and trying to look for competitors. As a result of which, they are unable to bring newness and diversity in the workforce. In spite of trying a lot to create new products in several other markets, it is deriving its revenue from the same market only.

The workforce is changing rapidly; the population in Australia ranging within the age group of 65 years is expected to exceed the age group of children between 0 to 14 years, which shows that the company must stop this practice of employee poaching and must allow the employees to switch job if they feel like.

The companies can also use the method of mixed economy model as has been planned by the Government action, which initiates fair competition among the companies. There is an increasing need for recruitment form the economically backward groups and from women.

Conclusion

Thus, it is seen from this paper that Google is a unique company and follows several new and unique methods of recruitment. They often follow the modern and strategic methods of recruitment like strategic recruitment and employment branding. Unlike the other companies, it does not take part on any tiresome quest for money but they pay due attention to the satisfaction of their employees as well.

Reference list

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Evans-Lacko, S., & Knapp, M. (2014). Importance of social and cultural factors for attitudes, disclosure and time off work for depression: findings from a seven country European study on depression in the workplace. PLoS One, 9(3), e91053.

Jain, N., & Bhatt, P. (2015). Employment preferences of job applicants: unfolding employer branding determinants. Journal of Management Development, 34(6), 634-652.

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Pit, S. W., Vo, T., & Pyakurel, S. (2014). The effectiveness of recruitment strategies on general practitioner’s survey response rates–a systematic review. BMC medical research methodology, 14(1), 76.

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