Human Resource Management of Google - Case Study Example

Human Resource Management of Google Human Resource Management of Google Introduction This paper aims at analyzing Google Inc. from a human resource management perspective. The paper will analyze Google’s Human Resource (HR) Strategy in relation to the company’s vision and objectives. The paper will also endeavor to determine the impact of Google’s HR strategy on the company’s success. In analyzing Google’s HR strategy, this essay will look at different elements of HR management such as employment equity, employee maintenance, employee training and development and staffing procedures. Human resource management is an important element of a company’s management because it deals with a company’s resource that is directly engaged in the production process. Google inc. is a multinational organization with its headquarters in Mountain View, California (Heinz, 2008). Its cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin established the company as a private company in 1998 while they were studying for their PhD degrees in Stanford University (Heinz, 2008). The company had its Initial Public Offer (IPO) in 2004, thereby becoming a public company. The current Chief Executive Officer is Larry Page, its cofounder. The company offers a variety of products and services with a great human resource that oversees great development and growth for the business. Mr. Laszlo Bock, who is the current Senior Vice President of People Operations, leads the Human Resource Department (Heinz, 2008). His main responsibility is to devise strategies that will improve working relationships in the company, maintain high productivity, employing highly qualified people, and enduring that the employees are happy (Heinz, 2008). Google specializes in offering internet-related products and services to clients all over the world. Among the company’s services and products include software production, search engine, cloud computing and online advertising. The biggest share of Google’s revenue comes from AdWords, an online campaign and advertisement management platform. The company was originally created to offer search engine services through its online search engine, Google (Heinz, 2008). The company’s growth and expansion over the years prompted the company to delve in to other markets and diversify its products through strategic partnerships, acquisitions and innovation. The company has since delved in to productivity software through its Gmail email service; social networking through Google+; desktop products such as Google Chrome web browser, instant messaging and photo editing software; and office suite through its Google Drive (Heinz, 2008). This essay primarily selected Google Company as a basis for this analysis for several reasons. Google is one of world’s biggest brands enjoying huge profits from its products. The company is also ranked third on Fortune magazine’s list of the world’s most valuable companies. Google also has a large pool of human resource summing up to over 30,000 employees around the world in its different departments and offices. All these reasons made it compelling for this study to be based on such as global brand in order to assess how its HR strategy contributes to its overall success. The essay will therefore analyze the company’s HR strategy in relation to the company’s vision and ob objectives in order to determine if there is a link between its HR strategy and its goals. Google’s vision and Purpose Google’s vision is to organize the world’s information making it easily accessible by anyone from anywhere on the planet. The company achieves this through delivering relevant results in terms of data analysis on the internet, corporate networks, personal computers and mobile phones (Heinz, 2008). The company focuses on the end users of their products. Google’s purpose is to deal with information, analyzing the information for better to improve its usefulness for the organization and the end users. The company’s diversified range of products and services is intended to ensure that people communicate, interact and share information amongst themselves through the internet and other platforms. Google makes information meaningful for easy decision-making (Heinz, 2008). Another goal of the business is to remain a leading global brand in to the future through good business practices and strong partnerships around the world. Part of the company’s slogan is ‘Don’t be evil’, recognizing the company’s intention to engage in ethical business practices and corporate governance in order to be successful (Heinz, 2008). The company intends to have globally recognized and appreciated brands distinguishable from products and services offered y competitors. In order to achieve all these goals and objectives, the company needs to have a highly motivated, self-driven, and productive workforce. The employees have to be highly innovative in order to offer good service to see the company rise to its expectations. This also requires a great HR management strategy that recognizes people in the workforce as human beings and not machines for exploitation. The HR strategy has to ensure the best-qualified individuals are hired, retained and motivated to perform at their best level. Google’s Human Resource Management Strategy As an internet company in the information technology sector, Google has to maintain high innovation in order to remain as a market leader in to the future. The organization’s HR strategy recognizes that innovation originates from the people and that proper management of the people in the organization is essential for the company (Laura, 2012). The company’s HR strategy is widely appreciated for deviating from the 20th century HR management practices that focused on maintaining efficiency through risk avoidance and other management decisions. Google ushered in a new HR strategy that is based on data (Laura, 2012). Data driven HR management involves collecting data about employee performance and the various factors that affect employee performance, longevity, and motivation and analyzing the data to make relevant decisions. Unlike most other companies, the HR function at Google is referred to as People Operations instead of the common title, Human resource Management (Laura, 2012). This shows the amounts of recognition that the company has bestowed on its human resource by recognizing that they are all human beings important to the firm. Google’s HR strategy is based on two main principles, data analytics and the application of the scientific method used in making decisions in engineering on people. Google’s HR strategy entails the following; Focus on leadership and the role of managers, the PiLab, employee retention algorithm, diversity, predictability, effective hiring algorithm, valuation of top performers, and employee relationships (Laura, 2012). With regard to leadership, Google rates its managers twice a year in order to determine their performance rate and their impact on the company’s strategic position and their junior employees. The Pilab is sub group of the HR department. The group’s main objective is to test the best strategies for people management before they are applied throughout the company’s human resource (Stephen, 2010). This is a unique development in Google that distinguishes the company’s HR strategy from other companies. The company also has an algorithm for predicting which types of employees are likely to pose retention challenges and devise strat5egies for holding on to them or look for replacements in good time. Google also uses data in planning and predicting challenges and opportunities with regard to people management (Stephen, 2010). Data analytics are also important in maintaining diversity in the workforce through hiring, retention and promotion of employees from diverse backgrounds. Google also recognizes the importance of employee learning and development. Google uses a hands on approach to facilitate its employees to learn and acquire new knowledge and skills. In order to keep the employees motivated, Google offers good pay packs coupled with various benefits that make the work environment very conducive for work. The company offers benefits such as dental, medical, health, vision, paid holidays and vacations, fitness program, college savings plan, and a host of other benefits meant to keep the employees comfortable. These efforts may seem to be wastage of money for other firms, but Google makes good use of such pay pack based on scientific data. The company hires social scientists to advise them on the best ways to motivate the workforce in so as to increase their productivity. All the benefits offered by the company are in the end beneficial to the company in terms of increased productivity of the workers (Stephen, 2010). After realizing that the company was losing most of its female workers through short maternity leaves, the company decided to increase the maternity leave duration for five months. This I turn led to a high retention rate of female employees in the company and attracted more women to come to the company. Link between the Google’s HR strategy and its Vision Google’s success witnessed in recent years can only be attributed to a dedicated workforce and a great management team. The company has increased its share on the global market by acquiring various companies and diversifying in to other markets. Google still manages to attract a huge number of people who are attracted by the company’s human resource management strategy and work environment (Paul, 2010). The company’s human resource management strategy contributes a lot to achievement of the organizations objectives and realization of its vision. There is therefore a strong relationship between the company’s success, vision and global performance and its HR strategy. The relationship can be seen through the staffing or hiring procedures, employment equity, training and maintenance. All these key elements of HR strategy are very vital in the continued success of the company (Paul, 2010). With regard to staffing, Google attracts and hires the best qualified individuals who wish to work in a challenging environment to help the organization achieve its objectives. The company hires people from very diverse backgrounds in terms of knowledge, experience, race, disability, age, religion and culture (Paul, 2010). This diversity enriches the workplace and fosters employee relationship through cultural understanding. This staffing strategy enables the company to identify people who will contribute to innovation, leadership and management of the company in l9ne with its vision. Employment equity ensures the company creates employment opportunities for minority groups such as women, the disabled and indigenous communities. This strategy ensures Google’s workforce is highly diversified and inclusive in the community. This contributed to creation of good relationship between the company and the external environment, which results in the company’s brands being appreciated all over the world (Paul, 2010). This is also in accordance with the company’s objective of having its products appealing to many people across the globe. Employee training and maintenance is another key factor in Google’s HR strategy that also contributes to the company achieving its vision. Through employee training, the company is able to maintain high level of skills that will foster innovation. Retaining employees and maintaining them well through giving them good benefits motivates them to increase their performance. Conclusion Google has been experiencing unprecedented growth over the last few years resulting from its great HR strategy. Basing on the findings of this study on the impact of the company’s HR strategy on its success, the company will still be successful in the next five years. This is because Google’s HR strategy is data drive and the company only responds to the data analysis findings. Should there be different results in data collected from employees in the next five years, the company will still be able to maintain or increase its productivity because its data driven strategy if flexible and responds to changes in the environment. With such a strategy, Google is likely to be a leading firm for the next five years and even beyond that (Paul, 2010). The company will continue to attract more people and its brands will continue to do better on the global market. References Heinz, D. (2008). Google Inc. Services - Google Tools - What is Google? Lulu Laura B. (2012). Tony Grundy Value-based Human Resource Strategy. London: Routledge Paul K. (2010). HR Strategy: Creating Business Strategy with Human Capital. London: Routledge Stephen M. F. (2010). Linking Human Resource Strategy and Operations: An Integrated Framework. Leicestershire: Troubador Publishing Ltd. 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