Hrm Practices of Google

Introduction

Founded in the year 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google has been ranked among the top most organizations to work for in the past decade. The policies and rules of the company are known to be employee centric and have been formulated to provide the maximum number of perks and benefits to its employees. The company has evolved over time and so has its Human Resource Department that focuses on the growth of the employees while the company is reaching new heights each quarter. The company has offices in 14 states and 36 countries across the globe. Some of these include, India, China, Australia, Israel, United Arab Emirates and Turkey etc. Its headquarters is located in California with the largest number of infrastructure benefits to the employees that the world has ever seen (Matulich and Kuntze, n.d.). Today it can be said that the success of thr company owes to its high quality human resources (Lombardo,2015). Right when in the year 2004 the company went public Sergey Bin stated that for Google people are everything (Matsangou, 2015)

Google’s aim always has been building up an ambience where employees get the opportunity to develop their interpersonal relationship with their employment and with their employer.  Human resource policies well designed and well structured helps creating unique culture that helps the employee and the employer work together to achieve the organizational goals (Nightingale, 2008). Having offered packages which can be considered to be attracted along with friendly and flexible programs, Google has been gaining in the competitive market in relation to recruiting and retaining the best talent.  The plans of human resource are really flexible in this company. Along with helping workers meeting short term challenges Google strengthens the mindset of the employees to meet environmental changes on the organization (Anonymous, 2010). Working hours having flexibility, health care facilities, free meals, on the job fitness encouragements, free day care services, on the job haircuts,  shuttle services free of cost, sports etc are some of the many benefits Google has in store for its employees ( Thomas & Karodia, 2014). “Strategic human capital management is the most powerful lever for innovation and growth in today’s knowledge economy”. (Husser, 2010).

Google has proven to be the number one organization who with its strategies of HRM and corporate management has leaded the market in terms of employment recruitment and retention. “Recruiting and the need for it permeates’ the entire organization, from the key leaders on down to the entry level employees”, (Google Talent, 2006). The company spends billions for the benefit of its employees and for incorporating HRM strategies. The organization also supports its employees for all kind of leadership and educational programs and offers various opportunities for. In this report secondary analysis will be used to ascertain the various HRM policies taken by our organization Gallup to retain employees. All the content, data and information collected has been taken using various online articles, resources and journals.

GAP Analysis of Google

Current HRM Plan of Google

Being a firm which requires continuous innovations and improvisations, Google is always in a need of employees. The focus on managing people here needs special focus as such innovative work comes right from the people. It is only when a company recruits innovators, can it expect innovative works. For such a great dependence on workforce makes practice of traditional HR policies and people management obsolete. Great superior quality business can be expected only if the managers managing people make right and accurate decisions. Recruiting employees of mediocre intellect will only fetch mediocre results. It is similar to a case where you are expecting to get a great financial report, but you are not allowing use of graphs, charts and calculations. Unlike traditional means of HR management, Google’s approach is totally data driven. Here are the factors based on which HRM strategies are planned by Google.

Human resource practices by Google covers employee training programs and effective performance management technique for maximizing its HR abilities. The organization makes analyses from time to time and designs effective training programs all aimed for supporting the talented and creative workforce.  The results of such employee training programs are evaluated on a regular basis. This is for ensuring that the results match up with the HR requirements of Google. The organization has also excellent performance management strategies fine tuned to the corporate objectives of the company HRM. Still, like every other company Google to experiences problems and issues in its human resource division. For improving upon this company comes up with various techniques and analysis. From materiality leaves to the simple cafeteria Google is steps ahead of its competitor when the matter is related to HRM policies (Mohdin, 2015).

Manager’s Leadership Role

For top performance and retention of workforce managers play a very important role. For being a great leader or manager one  must go beyond the technicalities of the job. Rather, one must focus on one-to-one training and express enthusiasm, interest in the employee and have positive and frequent feedbacks from the concerned person. Hiring smart engineers, leaders, innovators  helped the company figure out everything accurately and effectively (Murray, 2011).

Pilab Research

Google believes in continuous research to ascertain how to opt for better and effective approaches for managing its people.  For this the lab works and experiments to create productive work ambience with the help of scientific data and experiments.

Algorithm Showing Retention Issues

Google’s internal employee experiments can predict internally which employees might have retention problems. Hence, it gives the organization to act timely and help take measures to stop such occurrences.

Diversity

For solving problems related to diversity in employee retention Google makes use of analytics. The primary causes of weak retention diversity is found and solved on a regular basis.

Hiring Algorithm Effectiveness

Very few firms recruits employees scientifically.  Google with its effective scientific algorithms can predict which employees have highest profitability when hired. Also, people are hired by groups of managers in Google rather than individual managers.

Top Performers Worth

Google and its research team has effectively calculated the differences in between their advanced technologist and an average employee. This way while recruiting the company knows what kind of talent they are in need of.

Workplace Design

Employees from different functions in Google are collaborated by its extraordinary HRM measures. Innovation increases by manifold by such an approach.  Discovery, collaboration and fun is the combination that makes workplace a fun place to be in for Google employee. 

Learning

Google shuns traditional classroom learning methods.  Rather job oriented or hands on learning are encouraged.

Data convinces instead of dictating

Finally the success in Google’s team is its strong data analytics team contributions.  It never dictates or demands managers to act in a certain manner. Rather with the help of scientific data it influences and internally enhances the performance and approach of managers (Sullivan, 2013).

Organizations uses a Gap analysis technique for making an assessment of what is the difference in between the performance on their business system or applications for measuring whether business requirements are fulfilled. For this every company must ensure certain steps taken to reduce the gap between where a company is and where the company wants to be. Even Google needs to ascertain its business performance with the help of Gap analysis. Reports of gap analysis are made by project managers or improvement teams in any information technology company. Such reports and analysis can even help small businesses for figuring out how resource can be efficiently allocated by them. Based on the mission statement of any company a target or objectives are made under the gap analysis method.  Second step involves analysis the current performance of the business. This is done by collecting performance reports, turnover reports and resource allocation details.  Documentation, interviews, observing and brainstorming are various ways of finding out such data.  Last of all, a comparison of the goals set and the goals met are made. Comprehensive new plans can be made for filling in the gap detected (SearchCIO, 2016).

Factors Involving a Gap Analysis

A 3 step plan for analysis Gap analysis covers the factors involved in this process. This is a general plan and holds true for companies of all genres. A very effective way for providing guidance to a team and adapting corporate policies and strategies for achieving standard level of corporate performance (Gap Analysis, 2016).

Identification of Plan to be Accomplished

The primary reason of making a gap analysis is there is a need or desire to improve on the present situation of something. So, for this first identify what objectives one wants to accomplish? The present company is it appearing when users or potential users are searching for products and services related to it? How well has the company has its ranking in Google’s search engine? What is the quality of traffic it is bringing towards? All such questions must be asked and its answers identified.

Analysis of Present Situation

Next it is important to ascertain the present situation. Using data, analytics, information and resources available one must have a clear visualization of what is the present trend of the company. Once this is known a comparison is to be made. Comparison of the present situation or performance based on what the competitors are having or where the company goals are predefined at.

Closing the Gap

The next critical task is to bridge the gap analyzed which will boost one towards their goals. (Solomon, 2016)

Swot Analysis of Google

From time to time every company needs to examine and compare its strength and weakness, opportunities for improvement and growth and the threats from the various external environments it experiences. Such information is crucial for the survival of an organization. Technically, this is termed as the SWOT Analysis.  Such analysis has the sole aim to bring a balance in between the external environmental factors and the operations of a firm over time. Like for humans self analysis is the path for higher success, so is for organizations, a SWOT analysis important for finding a balanced way of work. A powerful tool for making organizational decisions and a way for setting the ideal stage for work to happen.

Here we will discuss about the SWOT analysis of Google. By using SWOT analysis technique Google identifies strength, weaknesses of its HR team members, procedures, policies, communication, work ambience and impact on the entire organization. Opportunities of the HR depend on internal and external factors and the company makes such analysis to find out how able the HR is to act on such opportunities or threats of external natures. Threats can be in the form of cuts on budget, competition from new firms, outsourcing or enhanced health care problems. Surveys made for customer, process or employee helps achieving feedbacks. And additional data is obtained from SWOT analysis (Nestor, 2012). 

Strength

Human Resource – Roughly Google is the proud owner of more than 54,000 employees who are highly talented and skilled. The entire talent of Google is recruited based on the individual’s talent and potentiality for success. In different areas of the organization they are trained internally. Competition companies are always in a lookout for Google trained employees due to their positive reputation and work approach.

Core competencies – In the tech industry, Google is the primary player. The core competency of the company is its strong workforce. The high end successful HRM strategies and policies implemented by Google topped with its advanced services and products has become the core strength for the brand. State of the art technology is used for the human resource of Google to grow and contribute to the organizational objectives (Anonymous, 2016)

Organizational culture – Google works hard to develop its organizational culture. The primary focus of Google is to create quality employment work culture for better innovations at work.  Employees are encouraged to proceed with their own innovative ideas at Google. It is only by  fostering creativity of employees Google is able to  give employees a casual work atmosphere and a great quality of life.

Weaknesses

Retention of employees – Being worked in Google even if it is for a few months makes employees high on the desire list of other competitive companies. A lot of importance is used to retain staffs at Google. However due to better and more attractive packages and benefits offered to Google employees by competitive firms makes employee retention a challenge.

Internal risks- A lot of internal risks is present inside Google. The market is always in the demand for innovation. Hence, such innovation is possible with employees or people who have an innovative way of work. Hence innovation directly is depending on the people working in Google.

Opportunities

Better retention- Opportunities and benefits given to Google employees are world class in standard. Hence, this is excellent for retaining employees for long years to them. Over the years the company has never made fewer efforts to create excellent work ambience for their crew. The company believes if one loves working then one must stay more hours at work. And for this the workplace must be casual, entertaining and fun along with being functional.

Better engagement- Google spends billions experimenting scientifically what and how it can work on its various human resource strategies and policies to keep employees better engaged.  The company leads the market in recruiting excellent talent and retaining them successfully.

Social media- Due to the growth in engagement of people all over the world in social media the company gets a huge exposure. The company has a huge user base due to its excellent innovations in social media. Further to make the world believe and which is by the way a truth that working at Google is fun, the company keeps sharing images and videos of workplace.

Threat

Competition- Competition is intense for Google. Competition is always trying to lure the talented employees away by offering attractive packages and perks. Hence, it is a constant threat to Google.

Security breaches- Security breaches in the HR section is also a constant concern for big companies like Google.  Generally the organization is considered to be having a secured workplace. However, huge workforce with constant attractive policies and exposures causes threat too (Santana, 2014).

Recommendations Based on Google Swot

The SWOT analysis of Google made from the HR perspective shows there are adequacy in strength for this organization. For the weaknesses the company must look deeper into the well being of its employees. Sometimes attractive packages are not enough for employee retention. Employees can have different new set of issues which only a powerful HRM policy can look into.  The company has already done a lot of analytical research and experimentation for this. Recommended is that the company can focus on employee needs based on the regional factors and not universal ones.  The firm can also make efforts to reduce the threats it is facing and leverage on the enormous opportunities it has. By effectively addressing needs or employees Google can surely overcome the weakness and threat stated in this SWOT analysis (Thompson, 2015).

The above GAP analysis made for Google is a supplement for this SWOT analysis made. Both can help the company reduce the gaps analyzed in the most meaningful manner. Research shows there are some gaps that have been existing in the company which sometimes makes investors, sponsors or users make assessments of inaccurate nature about the company as a workplace medium. From the perspective of human resource sometimes the company is misunderstood to be flaunting and showing off to the world about the benefits its gives to its employees. As a result employees are easily lured to other completion with the help of better perks. To improve upon this and to create a work culture where employees will have utmost faith and loyalty for the brand, companies have to go further beyond attractive packages.  Gaps in HRM can be due to sometimes lack of awareness, motivation, knowledge or poor information access, empathy and other emotional factors. There can be variations in employees from different functions, culture, background, education and upbringing.  Quality of HRM will be strengthened only if companies stop being universal to all these genres of employees and take every employee as single case studies (Harrison, 2010).

The SWOT analysis acts as a precursor for making strategic HR policies of Google. Ideally speaking such analysis involves reviewing the company's operations and performances elaborately and in-depth. SWOT analysis experts collects data by observing, interviews or discussing with company employees or by reading published online journals, articles and books on the subject to evaluate the strength and weakness of the company. The entire analysis has carefully sorted into four categories – a) Strength, b) Weakness, c) Opportunities and d) Threats. Along with it the GAP Analysis further helps tie with the analysis made with SWOT.  Such analysis makes understanding refined. And it also helps understand the deficiencies and discrepancies present in the organization. Hence, all these analysis altogether helps achieve a) an in-depth understanding of hurdles faced by the company b) improving outcomes and c) efficiently working on HRM for better employee retention.

Conclusion

HR at Google can be concluded to be totally different from thousands of other brands and companies.  This is why probably Google does not call “human resources” and rather uses a term “people operations” for its HRM team. Decisions of managing people in any organization hence must also be made with the team of people along with its analytical tools in practice.  The primary reason for using Google as an example to ascertain an ideal HRM strategy for any company is because Google approach to keep the happiness factor alive in its workplace is worth praising (Manjoo, 2016).

A company which is essentially data driven along with people in it can have enormous experiments made which are valid statistically. With the findings made by Google it is clear that HR Professionals can improve job outputs only if they work more towards their employees than doing anything other than work. 

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