Google is a multinational technology corporation famous for its search engine and its innovation. The purposeful implementation of human resource and business strategies in the company has spurred its growth, and Google has now acquired other well-known entities, such as YouTube. There are no accidental successes in Google, but it does gamble with innovation in a manner which perpetuates its success. The organization has realized the benefit of successful sustainable long-term growth, but it has also recognized that large growth often comes from innovation and short-term risks that have the potential for great success. As such, the company is diverse, and it constantly evolves its strategies with evidence-based decisions in both business and human resources. In order to ensure that Google’s business and HR strategies stay aligned, I would continue with what Google has already done, which is a diverse, innovative strategy that will continue to lead to success.
Business Strategy
Google recently created Alphabet, which acts as an umbrella organization, encompassing all of its acquirements but allowing them to maintain existing business while gambling with new ideas and business ventures, which often experience higher yields when successful.
This business strategy has ensured that each Google unit is allowed to use its own strategies and development models to create the right approach tailored for success. For example, Google Search benefits more from a classical approach to business with strategic planning and business modelling while new ventures may benefit from visionary business strategies that focus on speed, persistence and riskier behavior (Reeves, 2015).
Human Resource Strategy
Many worldwide successful businesses have benefited from age and brand recognition. Google, in contrast, blames most of its success on people management. In order to instill constant innovation in an organization, Google must not only hire great managers, but it also must recruit and hire innovators who will thrive in a creative environment. While traditional human resource departments use efficiency, best practices and experience to maintain their organizations, Google uses data. All other departments use charts, graphs and hard data when making decisions, and Google has been able to incorporate that in their human resource department.
No longer does Google’s human resource department have to rely on relationships and hunches by experienced managers, which are contrary to good decision-making. Google now has the world’s first human resource function that is based on numbers. The company realizes it is breaking the mold of HR policy, which coincides with its decision to rename its HR department “people operations.” Their team is a people analytics team, which has ditched the subjective approaches to team building and relies on data and analytics to make its hiring decisions (Sullivan, 2013).
The well-known benefits or perks of working for Google are their cafeterias with high-quality foods, break areas with arcades or other forms of entertainment, and 20 percent time, which allows employees to work on side projects one day a week to motivate and increase innovation (Reeves, 2015). Every one of these benefits is calculated. Everything is meant to achieve empowerment and a climate of fun, which breeds innovation, and it is all numbers-based.
Google’s human resources strategy is perfectly aligned with its business strategy because it is based on success by numbers rather than uninformed decision-making, and it focuses on innovation and adaptation to achieve success. Neither strategy leaves much to chance, which leaves room for riskier developments.
HR Positions
There are many human resource positions worth remark, but two available positions highlight Google’s people analytics team. The first is a Staffing Channels Specialist out of Seattle, who must learn the dreams and interests of the potential hire before collaborating with the recruiting team (Google, 2016). This helps Google to cater to the personal needs of the potential hire to ensure retention. Personally, it would be an energized position with little downfall as far as work satisfaction.
Secondly, there is a position listed for a recruiter out of New York City, who is responsible for closing the hiring process. This is the secondary step in Google’s HR policy for hiring, and it includes generating an offer for the client that won’t be denied due to the previous research by the Staffing Channels Specialist (Google, 2016). As previously stated, nothing is done by accident at Google, and there is much preparation involved in hiring innovative employees that can be retained long-term. While this position sounds profitable and satisfying, I believe the Staffing Channels Specialist would be a preferable position due to the fact-finding mission of getting to know the potential hire rather than reporting to management to analyze the data.
Competitive Advantage
Google already goes above and beyond other companies to gain a competitive advantage over other companies with similar products. Its key human resource management strategies which help to achieve long-term employees are 20 percent time and TGI Friday meetings. Twenty percent time is the one day a week employees are allowed to work on their own innovation, which spurs competitive advantage because it helps to create exceptional employees, which are 300 times more productive than average employees (Sullivan, 2016). Google’s TGI Friday meetings create employee empowerment and trust because Google divulges information that is not given to the public about the numbers from different departments and future goals or concerns (Bock, 2011). Google employees are sworn to secrecy, and this confidentiality allows transparency, which drives competitive advantage by creating loyalty.
Diversity
Google is a large, multinational corporation with a diverse product-base and many locations. Diversity, in the traditional sense, is not an issue, however Google has analytics to ensure it is diverse. The primary diversity challenge has been getting women into the engineering workforce, and Google can increase the female influx to engineering by appearing at college campuses to educate women about engineering opportunities, optimizing work environments or benefits to meet the needs of women during motherhood, and by using its people analytics team to ensure their efforts are working. This is different from many diversity techniques because it is a unique diversity challenge.
Conclusion
Google is well-known for being great to its employees, and this image is not erroneous or accidental. The calculated efforts of Google’s human resource strategy align with the effort of its business strategy. They are both strategies in innovation and diversity, which they make synonymous with growth and success.
- Bock, Laszlo. (2011, March 17). What’s the Google approach to human capital? Yale Insights. [Web article]. Retrieved from http://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/whats-google-approach-human-capital
- Google. (2016). Search all jobs. [Web Search]. Retrieved from https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#t=sq&q=j&jl=New%20York,NY&jc=PEOPLEOPS
- Reeves, M. (2015, Aug. 18). Google couldn’t survive with one strategy. Harvard Business Review. [Web article]. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/08/google-couldnt-survive-with-one-strategy
- Sullivan, J. (2013, Feb. 26). How Google is using people analytics to completely reinvent HR. Ere Media. [Web article]. Retrieved from http://www.eremedia.com/tlnt/how-google-is-using-people-analytics-to-completely-reinvent-hr/
