Google's Human Resource And Recruitment

Google: Organization and Employer

Discuss about the Google’s Human Resource and Recruitment.

Google is an American multinational company deals with online products and services all over the world. The human resource management is an integral part of the company’s organizational structure (Marchington, 2016). The employees are the pillars of the company. The HRM makes sure that appropriate candidates are getting hired and their needs are getting fulfilled. They select smart, intelligent candidates who will prove to be a beneficial investment in the longer run. They focus on talents more than some specific skills. Some well though recruiting strategies are applied in the process which is unique and different from most other companies. The employees get great opportunities and benefits working here.

Google works mainly in the mission of organizing all the information in the world and make them useful and accessible globally. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the search engine in 1996 which has become world’s most powerful online search engine (Jackson, 2014). It has grown to be more than a search engine; it now deals with social networking, desktop applications, mobiles, operating system and other online services (Our Products: Google, 2017).  

Every employee is equally important for Google. The company is very open to new ideas of the employees. Not just great work opportunity, the company also offers great salary and various bonus and incentives. It creates such environment that employees can earn more and work on innovating new ideas through hardworking. As Google is one the world’s largest company, it has offices all around the world, so any person with talent and hard can apply and join Google.

Google treats with the physical workplace as much they work on their virtual platform. Google offers a complete organizational culture in its workplace. Google generates huge amount of revenue every year so it always provides great opportunity for the employees to earn more. The employees get 20% of their work time in working on their own projects (Gersch, 2013) ). Google has developed a free working culture where the employees are provided with medical support, massage, yoga and healthy snacks. The employees get free lunch at the Google offices. The company wants the employees to always feel motivated so that they can concentrate more on their assigned task. Offering the employees to buy the Google share is a unique opportunity for the employees, through this strategy Google is making them an active member of the family, who will look after the family as his own. The company always gives importance to the employee health, the employees are free to choose their heath care programs and offer medical leaves to them when it is necessary. New and creative ideas of the employees are always encouraged by the management and if the idea has potential the company offers them financial support to materialize the idea. People from all around the world work for Google and the company employs intelligent and hard working people irrespective of their cultural background. So, the working culture in Google is rich in diversity an open (Coleman, 2016). The employees engage in sharing lifestyles and ideas. As the company provides their service to every kind of consumer all over the world, the diversified ideas are required by the company. The employee motivation and performance is so successful in the Google because the work environment is so free, open and encouraging. It is even more prominent if someone compares the working culture of any other global company with Google. The company always encourages the employee creativity by providing them with flexible working environment and working hours. 

Human Resource Management Theories and Google’s recruitment

The human resource management can be defined as the process of managing the human resource of the organization in order to achieve the organizational objectives and satisfaction (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis, 2015) . Theories are important for the human resource management to work effectively.

Maslow’s theory can help the human resource professional to improve employee retention, employee engagement, understand employee need and meet many organizational goals. According to Maslow in any organizational structure, the need-hierarchy is based on human’s need for safety, physiology, social, self esteem and actualization (Taormina & Gao, 2013). In the human resource management if the employees’ physiological needs are not met, they will take decision based on stability, compensation or safety. The human resources management of the company ensures that the lowest level needs of the employees are met properly so that the needs do not move further in the pyramid. The theory of need also includes constant change. Once one step of the need is fulfilled the need will step upward. So there pay rise must be measured and implemented such a way that it will motivate the employees for next few years.

By conducting a survey on 200 engineers, Fredrick Herzberg has developed this theory. This theory is based on the employees good bad feeling related to their work experience in the organization (Alshmemri, Shahwan-Akl & Maude, 2017). The research demonstrated that when the employees felt bad it was related to maintenance factors and when the felt goo it was about the motivation factors.

The human resource management of Goggle is working their best to motivate the employees. They motivate the mothers by providing the children to be present in the working place. They recruitment videos also showed that the basic needs are provided to the employees generously, like the employees get free healthy food in the work place. The management believes that the life and work must be maintained well to work better in the office. The employees are provided with 20% of their work time are encouraged to invest on the own individual projects. The company believes that such creative activities and innovations will ultimately lead to organizational benefit. The paid maternity leave and other benefits are paid well (Truong, 2016). By executing management theories Google is significantly attracting fresh talents every day.

The economic crisis brings difficult challenge for the HR department. Internal supply is more than actual demand in the market, which eventually results in employee lay off. In 2007 Google laid 6100 of the ‘Double click employees’ and more than 10000 contractual jobs were cut off (Helft, 2008). In 2009 the company closes of many engineering offices and the 100 recruiters were laid off and it is still continuing.

Challenges Google faces in recruitment process

Though Google has been struggling to spread its business more than just a search engine but it has not achieved much success yet. This is having negative impacts in the development of Google’s homogenous organizational culture which they follow in their recruitment process. Embracing different culture is appreciable but mange them in a singular direction often proves to be difficult in the real world. The employees working outside the main campus of Silicon Valley generally do not get so many opportunities and benefits. Google receives 3000 resumes every day (Cooper, 2016). Google often hires the recruiters on contracts. They work temporarily for the company, so the recruitment process is not as passionate as the company is towards its employees.

A similar company Yahoo faced huge financial crisis with stock market crash. Google is recruiting an average of 1275 employees in every 90 days (BORT, 2015). This strategy might make the company face financial crisis. 10 newly recruited employees get ‘irrational’ packages, which leads the employees believe that they can expect from the company whatever they want. The lower paid or already existent employees might feel as unfairly treated by the company .

In such a high rate of recruiting the quality control appears to be most challenging. The recruiters have to manage so many candidates every day and mostly they prioritize their candidate data point. This includes their education, work experience, referrals and feedback from previous interview (Bradley, 2015). The time management for the Human resource managers becomes difficult as they could offer less time for the candidates scoring lower in the list. Filtering the right candidates becomes difficult as well. The recruiting process is often too long.  And they do take more time to reimburse the applicants the travel allowances.

There is always another side of the coin. Some employees feel differently, who left the company. Whatever they feel about the company, they spread it through social media and other people end up getting affected, which hampers their recruitment process as the future employees get confused by them (Edwards, 2016). Competitors like Fcaebook are hiring Google employees with experience and offering them higher than what they are receiving from Google. Google is failing to offer the employees in the competition as the other rivals deliberately offering high valued stocks.

Google has been generating its revenue from a same source for years. It might consider engaging with more partners. Google has a long way to go in successfully retaining and recruiting new employees. The company should adopt more detailed and smarter human resource strategies. The ‘public image’ of the company must be taken care of properly to smooth the hiring process. To manage thousands of recruiting the apparatus should be off a global firm. Google should develop new businesses to decrease the employee turnover.

Conclusion

The human resource management of Google is creating and developing a dynamic, free and challenging organizational work culture. The company is adopting innovation and creativity to gain efficiency of the employees. The employees also must consider the policies, principles and values of the organizational culture. The leadership in the human resource management apply management theories and strategies to create a suitable working culture for the employees, who will work together to achieve the desired goal.

References

Alshmemri, M., Shahwan-Akl, L., & Maude, P. (2017). Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory. Life Science Journal, 14(5).

Bort, J. (2015). Google's hiring may have slowed, but it's still adding thousands of new employees. Businessinsider.In. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.in/Googles-hiring-may-have-slowed-but-its-still-adding-thousands-of-new-employees/articleshow/48117685.cms

Bradley, S. (2015). "System and Method for Optimizing Job Candidate Referrals and Hiring." U.S. Patent Application No. 14/736,181.

Clegg, S. R., Kornberger, M., & Pitsis, T. (2015). Managing and organizations: An introduction to theory and practice. Sage.

Coleman, A. (2016). Is Google's model of the creative workplace the future of the office?. the Guardian. Retrieved 7 August 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2016/feb/11/is-googles-model-of-the-creative-workplace-the-future-of-the-office

Cooper, S. (2016). Here are Google, Amazon, and Facebook’s secrets to hiring the best people. Qz.Com. Retrieved from https://qz.com/675152/here-are-google-amazon-and-facebooks-secrets-to-hiring-the-best-people/

Edwards, J. (2016). Google employees confess all the things they hated most about working at Google. Businessinsider.In. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.in/Google-employees-confess-all-the-things-they-hated-most-about-working-at-Google/articleshow/55947110.cms

Gersch, K. (2013). Google's Best New Innovation: Rules Around '20% Time'. Forbes.Com. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2013/08/21/googles-best-new-innovation-rules-around-20-time/#7ae07abd2e7a

Helft, M. (2008). A First for Google: Layoffs. Cnbc.Com. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/id/23933196

Jackson, A. (2014). Google®: How Larry Page & Sergey Brin Changed the Way We Search the Web (Vol. 10). Simon and Schuster.

Marchington, M., Wilkinson, A., Donnelly, R., & Kynighou, A. (2016). Human resource management at work. Kogan Page Publishers.

Taormina, R. J., & Gao, J. H. (2013). Maslow and the motivation hierarchy: Measuring satisfaction of the needs. The American journal of psychology, 126(2), 155-177.

Truong, A. (2016). When Google increased paid maternity leave, the rate at which new mothers quit dropped 50%. Qz.Com. Retrieved from https://qz.com/604723/when-google-increased-paid-maternity-leave-the-rate-at-which-new-mothers-quit-dropped-50/