Human Resource

Management

Assignment I
HR practices implemented at
Google

Submitted to – Dr. Rajani Jain

Submitted by – Manya Singh

Srishti Jain
Reeya Chhetri
Urvashi Tomar
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Table of Introduction

Contents Google HR policies – Critical and theoretical

discussion

Points for discussion

Google HR policies – Practical Implications

Conclusion ( HR Policies )

HR Issues faced by Google

Reasons Behind Success

INTRODUCTION
Google has a highly energetic and dynamic working
environment. The employees, known as “Googlers” in
popular jargon know how to work hard and at the same
time have fun at the work place. The entire campus in
Mountain view, CA exudes a lot of creative energy and
dynamism. The office has a relaxed environment of a
college campus with no compulsory dress code or daily
formal meetings of any kind. The campus has the
facilities for the employees to play games like beach
volleyball, foosball, table tennis and many others. The
employees are instilled with the belief that they are
superior to the competition not just in terms of the
money they earn but also in terms of their lifestyle and
culture. They are taught to believe in values of teamwork
and satisfaction through creative achievements.
As a result of this culture, the employees also feel proud to be
a part of the Google brand. Google has comprehensive HR
policies that help employees grow both personally as well as
professionally. People of many communities and ethnicities
work in Google, who are all made to feel part of one big
Google family. Also the employees have a firm belief that they
are working for the best company in the world and the work
they are doing be it either organizing information or creating
advertisements is for the betterment of the society. The motto
of the company is “Don’t be Evil” and encourages the
employees to strictly adhere to the ethical norms of the
company.
Google HR Policies:
Critical and Google encourages its employees to work on 70-20-
10 rule where in the employees have to devote 70 %
Theoretical Analysis of their time to core search and advertising work,
20% on a project of their choice and 10 % on
working on far-out ideas. The product innovations of
Google Talk and Gmail have been a result of this kind
of initiative. The business benefits of the 20 % off
time are very limited as far as their core search and
Success of Google: advertising businesses are concerned. However the
HR department and the executives still continue to
encourage the employees to go for these efforts to
Employee Motivation remain motivated and committed to innovation and
Theory Perspective novelty.
 Success of Google : Employee Motivation Theory Perspective

The compensation policy of Google is highly rewarding with the employees getting salaries,
bonuses and stock awards at regular time intervals. Google also encourages and rewards
outstanding performance achievements amongst the employees. The Google premise has a big
collegiate environment with many sporting facilities and other benefits that the employees can
avail. The whole idea behind creating such an environment is that the employees feel very
comfortable and easy working in the office and can be as creative as possible. In order for the
employees to maintain work life balance, Google offers the employees flexible working hour
options, work from home facility, telecommuting and a generous vacation policy. This combined
with the TGIIF sessions that are held every Friday afternoon which is a get together within the
company itself. The company has a strong code of conduct and encourages its employees to report
any violation of policies and feel safe doing the same.
 Success of Google:
Employee Motivation Theory Perspective

The HR policies are all aimed at improving employee productivity. The offices are designed in
such a way so as to provide color, lighting and a shared room to the employees. The
employees are seated very close to each other and made to share offices, thus making
knowledge sharing an essential part of the everyday culture at Google. On an average, each
employee generates more than 1 million in revenue each year. This gives leverage to the
Google employees and manager to try out new things, make mistakes and learn from their
failures, which is again a great motivating factor for the employees to try out new stuff. So as
a result any employee in the company has a chance to create a new product or a feature.
 Hiring & Job Design Practices:
The Organizational Perspective

Google is considered by many employees to be the best place to work. The core strength of
the company is its employees. All the benefits provided by the company help it in recruiting
the top employees who are willing to spend their entire day at the work place itself. The entire
HR policy of Google is based around hiring the best talent; make them work hard and long
and manage to keep them at Google for a long time. Google also carries out various people
programs in order to support the growing expansion of the Google workforce across different
countries in the world. These programs are run to explain the many virtues of Google as an
employer and also to deal with the cultural diversities of the workforce across the nations.
 Hiring & Job Design Practices:
The Organizational Perspective

Google has an innovative hiring strategy and hiring the right people is one of the core pillars of the
HR policy of the company. The company has a centralized hiring team, comprising of specialists
whose main endeavor is to identify the best talent in the market and retain them. The branding
team of Google also plays a very important role in attracting the best of the professionals to work
for Google.
The candidates have to go through a tough screening process. Google uses an innovative
recruiting tool that relies on algorithms to identify the potential talent rather than traditional ways
of hiring like those based on academic grades, SAT scores, degree from well-known colleges, prior
industry experience, interviews and subjective test results. This gives Google the power to identify
and select the candidates on a more data driven approach. The whole idea behind this screening
procedure is to evaluate the candidates on their innovative and dynamic skill and to check their
ability to work in a flat organizational structure with small teams as present in Google, which is
also referred to as “Googleyness”.
Google HR Policies: Google has got huge financial strength at its

Practical Implications
disposal. It spends a lot of money on providing its
employees with a lot of benefits which are not
comparable to any other company in the world. This
makes it a highly motivating work place for any
Employee Motivation employee. Google has a very flat organizational
Factors structure where in the employees can go and talk to
the executives and other team members and share
their ideas and thoughts. Google has pushed very
hard to remove the bureaucratic boundaries that
normally exist in such a big company. This is also
explains the fact as to why there is no dress code of
the company and also no formal meeting structure
that the employees need to follow. The young work
force that the company has also proliferates such an
environment. This is also one of the major reasons
why so many talented young people want to work
with Google.
 Hiring & Job Design Practices

The hiring process that Google follows is also very innovative and non-conventional. In a normal conventional
company the process would involve interviews, academic background check, work experience in the industry
and so on, but not in Google. Google has come up with a very innovative hiring procedure based on algorithms
making the entire process of hiring very scientific and data driven. However there are criticisms for this kind of
process also as it goes on for months and is very inconvenient for the applicants, but it has been very fruitful
to Google from a business perspective as it has been able to hire the best of the talent from the industry. Such
a long hiring cycle again might not be feasible for any other company in today’s day and time. Also the
applicants are ready to wait for months despite the inconvenience because working with Google is such a
lucrative proposition in itself.

However it’s difficult to imagine that the applicants would be ready to go through such a long and a tedious
hiring cycle for any other company. Moreover it is not only the HR department that is involved in the hiring
process in the case of Google; it’s the entire company that gets involved as the application first needs to be
approved by the team that has the opening. So it’s the entire machinery of the company that is involved in the
hiring process. Google can do this because of its flat organizational structure. Other companies however would
have to remove the bureaucracy in their system and create small team structures in order to implement
something on similar lines.
Conclusion
Google is one of those companies that puts its employees at the core of their
strategy and looks at the long term benefits that they would bring to the
shareholders and their peers. In fact, in 2008 when Google began cutting its
employee perks, its employee productivity and stock prices both fell. This shows
a direct correlation between gaining and retaining outstanding employees with
innovative ideas and the overall company growth. The company’s success has
been based on the fact that they have been innovative, flexible and dynamic in
their functions. Managing growth by keeping the same collegiate environment in
the future will be essential to company’s success. As Google grows in shape and
size, the challenge for the company will be to maintain the same level creative
activism and sense of empowerment amongst its employees. Google is having
problems finding the right talent in its other offices worldwide especially in its
South Asia operations. The employees must be encouraged to work in a more
entrepreneurial manner and they must be provided adequate resources and
finances for the same. Google is one of the few companies where in the
employees know that they will be paid for their innovative efforts irrespective of
the fact whether the product that they are working on, may or may not come out
right. This is a highly motivational factor for the employees to remain committed
to innovation. This is also an example how a HR strategy of a company is directly
linked to its business strategy.
HR Issues faced by
Google
HR managers are facing many challenges in the present
business scenario like Globalization workforce diversity,
technological advances, and changes in political and legal
environment . Google is one of the leading companies and
therefore the problems faced by the human resource
department could jeopardize their position globally. As a
result HR professionals design and execute innovative
mechanisms of developing skills and competencies of human
resources to accept the emerging challenges.
CHALLENGES:

Employees are under a lot of pressure at work.

Legal and Policy Issue

Selecting Issue

Screening Issue

Long Recruiting Process

 Employees are under a lot of pressure at work.
Google is described as a number-oriented organization.
In this case, the employees are expected to complete
tasks within a short period. The intensive work
environment causes tension and pressure on the
employees. The situation could cause a breakdown if a
staff member succumbed to the pressure.

Solution. The company should provide adequate time

for the employees to complete tasks. In addition,
numbers should not be the only performance indicator
because figures could fluctuate. In this case, the
company should take the time to see the overall
outcome of an individual course.
Legal and
Google faces policy and legal issues because of
having offices in different parts of the world such as
Europe. In essence, the new environment poses a

Policy Issue. challenge in providing equal service and financial

benefits to all its employees to achieve the proper
work-life balance Notably, some countries restrict the
Company because of the issue of taxation and
international laws.

SOLUTION
Google offers its employees many services with an
aim to achieve a work-life balance. In this case, the
company should remove some of the services
provided within the organization and maintain those
that would be accepted in all the different offices
around the world.
Selecting Issue
Google only accepts employees with particular traits that they
believe would be essential for a job position in the organization.
Given company-specific traits, attracting the desired applicants
becomes a challenge. Despite the large number of applications the
company receives, the rigidity in their selection process makes them
lose potentially good talent.

SOLUTION
Google should have a flexible selection process that does not focus
entirely on their preferred employee traits. The company should be
open to training people and bringing in potential staff members who
did not necessarily meet their rigid criteria. In doing this, the
managers could discover people's abilities and appreciate new and
resourceful traits in the workforce.
 Screening Issue
In some instances, applicants with many years of work experience were turned down because they
missed meeting the company expectations. For example, some applicants were rejected because they had
average campus grades yet they had great work experience. This practice would reduce the company's
expansion as they declined potentially great talent in search of individuals who attained high grades in
their college education.

Solution
Solution. Google should not only hire on grades merit, but also on work experience. Notably, people might
not have attained high grades when they graduated from college, but after years of professional
experience, the individual be comes an asset for the relevant company.
Long Recruitment Process
Given that Google seeks to recruit employees with specific traits and qualifications, the hiring process
becomes long and tedious. Notably, potential job candidates go through a series of personal interviews
with different professionals. Such procedures become tedious because the job candidate would have
to wait a long time to get hired or declined. In some in stances, applicants opt to accept jobs in other
companies.
SOLUTION
Google should shorten the recruitment process and reduce
the number of interviews. The company should consider
having only two discussions, one over the phone and a
physical one. The change would ensure that the corporation
maintains the chance to recruit resourceful candidates
before they accept jobs in other organizations.
Reasons Behind
Success
While most companies may not have the same resources
available to them as Google, there are still many lessons
that can be learned from their innovative HR process –
regardless of your current stage of HR maturity. Perhaps the
most important piece of advice would be to look after your
people. Happier employees are more likely to go above and
beyond, and do the very best for their employer once they
feel valued and appreciated. Additionally, it’s time to stop
the mindset that Google is not a competitor for talent
outside of the IT sector . Google attracts and retains the top
talent in all areas from IT to marketing, sales, sustainable
development, engineering and more. It is this ability to hire
and retain the best talent that accounts for Google’s
continued success and dominance on the world stage.
THANKYOU!
We hope you learned something new.