Google Company’s Performance: Management Interview
Introduction
Google Incorporation is one of the largest internet-based companies in the world. The company’s headquarters are in California. The company deals in areas such as software vending, search engines, and internet marketing. In the recent past, the company has added cloud computing to its products line. The company has grown through product differentiation, acquisitions, and merges in the last ten years.
Google has a workforce of more than 47,000 employees based in its 52 offices across the globe. Google’s motivation strategy, called the ‘Innovation Time Off,’ has been critical in ensuring optimal performance within its labor force. This research paper reviews the factors that have ensured the high performance of the Google Company, about the organizational performance strategies implemented with the workforce.
Research Approach
The research was carried out through one-on-one interviews with the company’s human resource manager, assistant, human resource manager, and two production supervisors. The short interview comprised of three questions on strategies that have been applied to boost performance, the necessity of the strategies, and what the company can do to sustain the current high level of organization performance. The findings are discussed in the next section.
Findings
From the interview results, the respondents indicated that the company’s performance values include competency, creative culture, organizational effectiveness, and authenticity. The human resource manager noted that the company has been proactive in offering continuous training programs to its new and old employees periodically to ensure that their performance meets the expectations.
The production supervisor indicated that the company has a stable and sustainable ethical and performance culture that is pivoted on the need to improve on creativity and a healthy state of mind. Therefore, a proactive behavior control system for the company functions within a structured reward system. The assistant, human resource manager, noted that the company is focused on the most elevated moral models in all business exchanges. Each employee must follow all pertinent laws, guidelines, and regulations when performing his or her obligations.
Performance Assessment of the Company
According to Battilana and Casciaro (2012), a “people subsystem may be effective when the incentives are properly matched with the responsibilities assigned to an individual in an organization” (p. 391). At the company, the strategy functions on the assumption that proactive management is the first step in managing counteractive behavior, which is a distracter from optimal performance. This has been achieved through a series of continuous training programs that are customized to meet the demand of each training need at the company. The training needs are classified according to the level of skills, market demands, and the organization culture.
As a result, Google’s organization management functions on the periphery of inclusive and proactive response mechanisms in line with the HR value proportion developed by Ulrich and Brockbank (2005). According to the Good to Great criteria developed by Collins (2001), the models of intention, adoption, and continuance are essential in investigating the concepts of intention, adoption, and continuance on the process of employee training. At the Google Company, employee trust and satisfaction are the key determinants of continued performance. In the face of globalization and the development of effective training, the company has been consistent in providing a series of training programs aimed at creating a healthy work environment for sustainable performance.
Through understanding the organizational sustainability, organizations need to comprehend the dynamics that prevail, drive and support essential programs within their workforce to accomplish the strategic objectives, while ensuring that the employees are comfortable in line with the Fortune Magazine’s Best Place to Work For assessment criteria (Andreadis, 2009). In line with this criterion, Google has physical structures that promote a positive relationship between favorable and effective job performance as attributes of motivation and congenial conditions.
According to Collins and Porras (1994), measuring factors such as interpersonal relations, working conditions, support and trust, welfare provisions, and work environment may greatly contribute to the organizational sustainability as well as employees’ satisfaction, especially when technology is secondary to human input. Concerning the Google Company, technological modifications are sustainable since the human factor is equipped with appropriate skills for ensuring operational efficiency.
Job training is an important concept in the discipline of human resource management, especially in terms of the job selection process, such as training candidates for specific job descriptions. Getting the right individuals for employment is critical to achieving an organization’s goals as aligned in the Baldridge award assessment criterion (Dasgupta, Suar, & Singh, 2013). About the Google Company, employees are empowered and feel trusted and valued by the management personnel. Naturally, human beings would wish for motivation through mutual consent, internalized empowerment, and appreciation. Better performance translates into organizational growth.
Since Google has internalized the aspect of aligning organizational goals to the desires of the employees through structured promotional and motivational strategies, human resource management endeavors to have a pipeline of talent to work towards achieving long-term objectives. Besides, through designing relevant training and development programs that suit different work environments, human resource management has developed sustainable skills that enhance career development for the employees of the Google Company. This has been achievable through proactive evaluation of employees besides designing a succession pipeline for vital job positions in the organization (Andreadis, 2009).
Despite this ideal performance concerning different performance assessment criteria discussed above, they need the Google Company to diversify its employee training strategy to guarantee sustainable performance. The best approach towards achieving sustainable performance is discussed in the next section.
Recommendations
The Google Company should concentrate its motivational strategies to create a more dynamic and inclusive approach towards managing talent and compensational needs of the more than 3,000 employees. This strategy will guarantee optimal employee empowerment, which unleashes plenty of energy and motivation. Reflectively, the motivation and energy aspects of appreciation function simultaneously at micro and macro levels to facilitate optimal functionality or productivity. Empowering employees will ensure a stable and sustainable win-win situation as employees will be motivated to work without much supervision from the management or their supervisors.
When properly incorporated within different departmental segmentation, as an active component of the company goals and vision, the complete interaction between the management and other staff will contribute to value addition, good performance, and a healthy working environment (Andreadis, 2009).
The actualization of the tactics that this plan proposes requires the management of the Google Company to work closely with the staff and allow the person freedom to associate with clients and form networks with other organizations as they accomplish their duties (Ulrich & Brockbank, 2005). The program can run for six months, after which a comprehensive feedback assessment might be rolled out. The successful evaluation of the proposed recommendations is summarized in the table below.
References
Andreadis, N. (2009). Learning and organizational effectiveness: A systems perspective Performance. Improvement, 48(1), 5-11. Web.
Battilana, J., & Casciaro, T. (2012). Change agents, networks, and institutions: A contingency theory of organizational change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(2), 381–398. Web.
Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap…and others don’t. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. Web.
Collins, J., & Porras, J. (1994). Built to last: Successful habits of visionary companies. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. Web.
Dasgupta, S., Suar, D., & Singh, S. (2013). Impact of managerial communication styles on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Employee Relations, 35(2), 173-199. Web.
Ulrich, D., & Brockbank, W. (2005). The HR value proposition. Chicago, Ch: Harvard Business Press. Web.