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BUSN 3350-052
Human Resource Management
Case Study: Alphabet (Google)
Submitted by:
Ana Ramirez Fuentes-ID 300368881
Submitted to:
Dr. Pegah Yaghmaie
Douglas College
2023
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Executive Summary
This report shows the extensive study of the issues Google is facing in actual times, during
the following lecture the reader will find academic support for the recommendations provided by
the writer. First, an overview of the history and current practices of Google will be exposed,
followed by a set of questions that will be the center of the report, later on, an academic analysis
will be presented of different scholars supporting the perspective of the author in areas such as
recruitment, personality tests, work-life balance benefits and their influence in engagement, and a
global perspective for managing companies. Followed by recommendations on how to improve
the recruitment process to match the criteria Google has for its employees, why is it necessary to
maintain Google’s benefits even if they are costly to the company, and finally the creation of a
recruitment tool to support Google’s expansion. Concluding with the unification of the
recommended processes as a complete strategic HR plan.
Introduction
Everyone around the globe knows what Google is, and everyone who was born before 1990
knows it has not been here forever, the search engine became the number one site that people use
to find information about almost everything there is to find (Scott, 2008). Since its beginning
(1999) Google has maintained a playful atmosphere, Serguéi Brin and Larry Page (Google’s
founders) spent time and money to create Google’s distinctive organizational culture, they were
looking to cultivate strong loyalty and high job satisfaction in their employees (Googlers), by
creating an atmosphere that includes colorful sights, lava lamps, gadgets & toys, free meals,
healthy juices and snacks, medical care, fitness facilities, among others (Vise, 2005), these benefits
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don’t come easily, and they are costly to the company and are only justified by hiring the best of
the best.
According to Dessler 2020, Googlers are smart (3.7 or higher as a university average),
team-oriented, and driven, they are goal-directed and they come from the most recognized
universities in the world (for example MIT, Harvard, and Stanford), Google is always looking for
people that are eager to grow within the company and that are willing to work at non-conventional
hours to accomplish the companies expectations, they are ready to pay to win the recruitment battle
by offering excellent salaries starting at $80.000 a year (Dessler, 2020).
Nevertheless, all of this comes with a grain of salt; being a multinational that is expanding
worldwide, Google has encountered several challenges. Google keeps growing at an exponential
rate having 190,234 employees worldwide in 2022 (Bianchi, 2023), at this growing pace it has
been difficult for them to mimic the high standards they started with in the early 90s not only in
the US but more so now that they are opening new offices around the world. They strive to provide
the same highly profiled professionals, values, structure, and benefits in every space they open,
additionally due to international laws, it is more difficult than what they have expected (Dessler,
2020). And this is not only happening outside of the main corporation Googleplex, but inside as
well, according to Dessler 2020: “The biggest challenge Google faces is evolving its employee
selection system, given that the company must hire thousands of people per year … setting such
an extraordinarily high bar for hiring was holding back Google’s expansion.” (p. 642).
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Research question/ statement of the problem
Based on what has been said so far, it is important to recognize Google’s main issues to
find adequate solutions to its problems.
First to have the best people you must recruit the best people, but with its expansion rates,
and the high standards Google asks for its employees, it has been difficult to find the traits they
want their employees to have. To solve this, it is important to ask ourselves, What HR policies or
practices should be implemented to reach Google’s recruitment goal?1
Second the benefits Google provides its employees are expensive, however, this is one of
the main attributes of Google’s organizational culture. These benefits make working at Google a
little less stressing, keeping in mind that it is not strange to see Googlers working more than 40
hours a week through stressful meetings and number-based results to reach organizational goals
(Dessler, 2020). Due to this, it is important to keep a work-life balance inside their operations,
which brings us to our second question, are the benefits that Google provides necessary to
contribute to Googler’s work-life balance even if this causes high expenses to the company? Does
this contribute to the productivity of Googlers?2
And finally, keeping in mind Google’s continuous expansion and after understanding the
issue this expansion is bringing to them, how can the company bring its values, expectations, and
culture to new markets without losing its core?
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List five specific HR policies or practices that you think Google has implemented or should implement to support its strategy
and explain your answer.
2 how would you defend all these benefits if you were making a presentation to the security analysts who were analyzing
Google’s performance?
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Case Analysis
To start it is important to have some concepts clear, first, companies are made of
people, and like societies, companies have their own culture. We can define organizational culture
as “shared meaning and beliefs held by organizational members that determines, to a large degree,
how they act towards each other and outsiders” (Robbins, Coulter, Leach, & Kilfoil, 2016), and
like all companies, Google has their own organizational culture. Second, all companies have a
Human Resource Department, HR plays an important role in structuring and influencing the
performance of the employees in the organization. HRM (Human Resource Management) is “the
process of acquiring, training, appraising, and compensating employees, and of attending to their
labor relations, health and safety, and fairness concerns.” (Dessler,2020 p.3). Keeping this in mind,
it is important to mention that when it comes to finding the right person for an organization, a
correct Human Resource Management process is the best chance to find the ideal candidate.
Recruitment is an important part of every company, it is HR’s responsibility to find
candidates that fit and have the necessary qualifications to successfully perform in companies, and
according to Dessler 2020, effective recruiting is a goal every company should have, where
recruiters, recruitment sourcing, and the company’s image are interconnected to create an
appropriate selection process that allows candidates to show themselves as they are making sure
that they are an appropriate fit to the company. All of this is achievable when recruiters have the
correct tools and information to create and analyze the job description and specifications, attract
the desired candidates, ask the correct questions during an interview, and provide the correct tests
to finally make a hiring decision. To support this Christensen Hughes & Rog, 2008, stated that
“The benefits of an effectively implemented talent management strategy include improved
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employee recruitment and retention rates, and enhanced employee engagement. These outcomes
in turn have been associated with improved operational and financial performance.” (p. 743).
Once found the talent needed for the organization to succeed, it is important to maintain
and engage that talent. Benefits, monetary and nonmonetary are just one of the multiple ways
organizational cultures can keep employees motivated. Now, motivation is the desire to strive
towards a specific goal and it is crucial when achieving your objectives (Psychology Today, 2023),
workers are motivated by both internal and external rewards. Internal rewards or intrinsic rewards
are those related to the pleasure the workers get when performing their job (the satisfaction of a
job well done), while external or extrinsic rewards are all other incentives the person receives when
completing a task such as monetary incentives, benefits, development opportunities, appraisal
interviews, status, health programs among others (Morrell, 2011). Now as previously mentioned,
a pinnacle among incentives within Google is a correct work-life balance, this allows Googlers to
distribute their workload, personal life, and interests, this is done by creating spaces in which
workers can “forget” the stress of the workload, by making their life easier. Wayne, Butts, Casper,
and Allen (2017) found that employees that maintained a work-family balance were more
committed to their organization, were more satisfied with the jobs they were performing, therefore,
were less likely to leave their employer, they also performed better in their jobs and were more
satisfied and engaged in their family roles. This leads us to say that creating and maintaining the
correct incentives in the organization is going to create a better working environment and will also
increase the performance of organizational members.
Now, what can we do when your organization has already established hiring standards and
a well-defined organizational culture when expanding globally? It is important to understand that
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companies that want to expand their business abroad must incur in a multi-domestic corporation
point of view, meaning they should not pretend to manage foreign operations remotely, instead,
they need to find local talent (that meets the traits the company requires) to maintain and match
the goals of the company to new markets (Robbins, Coulter, Leach, & Kilfoil, 2016), without
losing the company’s core values and requirements. It is also important to keep in mind that
organizational cultures are just a part of society’s culture that is restrained by local laws and
practices, success in global management comes from cultural and emotional intelligence, Shmueli
Gabel, Dolan, & Cerdin, 2005 found that “cultural adjustment is positively correlated with
satisfaction among global managers” (p.385). For this to happen effectively companies have to
provide leaders and employees with training practices to help them develop global competencies,
emotional and cultural intelligence, in order to work effectively in diverse cultural environments
(Soon & Inkpen, 2008).
Recommendations
For Google, attracting and recruiting the perfect candidates has turned into an issue in
recent years, due to the volume of people they are hiring this process has turned out to be a long
multi-interview journey that leaves the candidates exhausted and sometimes they even accept
offers from competitors as the recruitment process is so time-consuming (Dessler, 2020). Keeping
this in mind, five HR practices will be recommended to help Google recruit candidates who are
“very bright and who work hard, often round-the-clock, and who are flexible and maintain a decent
work-life balance” (Dessler, 2020 p. 642).
First, it is crucial to perform a complete Job analysis, this will allow the organization to
clearly define what are the personal, and professional characteristics Googlers already have that
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makes them stand out among other workers, first, the analyst will review Google’s background
information and will meet with workers and leaders with the objective of understanding why and
for what is this person required, this data will also be recollected by observation, interviews and
questionaries like the position analysis questionnaire (PAQ), after collecting the data, the analyst
will create a list of the duties, responsibilities, and actions the candidates need to perform in case
of being selected, as well as the skills and knowledge they should have (Dessler, 2020), the final
product of this investigation should be the creation of a job description.
Second, it is important to find the personality traits Googlers have that make them special,
the Big five model of personality, is one of the most used models to predict personality in the work
environment. This test is widely used and aims to identify which candidates (based on their
personality traits) are most likely to succeed in an organization. Now recruiters at Google will use
this tool alongside the characteristics that were already defined in the first step to identify what
personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism)
Googlers have, by performing the Big Five personality test to the top performers of the
organization (for all the levels, associates, first-line managers, middle manager and so on) with the
goal of creating a pool of efficient and desired personal characteristics for newcomers that match
the current employees. A study performed by Lars, 2011 stated that after performing the test on
4.597 participants he found “strong evidence that the open access B5T is reliable and valid measure
of the Big Five personality model and allows differentiating between different job profiles” (pg.2),
nevertheless, he also stated that these were not the only variables that influenced a workers
performance income, qualifications, employment type between others (Lars, 2011), these findings
of personality traits will be accompanied with findings from IQ tests, emotional intelligence tests,
and aptitude tests also made to the candidate in the second stage of the process.
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Third, after having all the data clear and having pre-selected the candidates that match our
newly found ideal profile, a selection interview will be performed. Now, a selection interview is
understood as the “procedure designed to predict future job performance based on applicants’ oral
responses to oral inquiries” (Dessler, 2020 p. 207), the interview will be done as a panel interview
where the recruitment team, the direct supervisor and the area’s director will interview the finalists
to get to know them better, and with this, they will choose who will be chosen to get a job offer.
Four, the case evidenced that “Google’s head of ‘people operations’ says that Google is
trying to strike the right balance between letting Google and the candidate get to know each other
while also moving quickly. To that end, Google administered a survey to all Google’s current
employees to identify the traits that correlate with success at Google” (Dessler, 2020 p. 642), with
this information the company will help the overall talent management process as they already count
with valuable information when creating the job description/specification and employee ideal
profile.
Finally, it is important to keep cultivating the feature that makes the company stand out.
The company’s value proposition was to create a free search engine that would help people find
what they need to find, “to make all of the world's information freely accessible and useful” (Vise,
2005), and it is the same with HR practices, creating a value proposition directly from HR is
imperative for the expansion and accomplishment of Googles view for their abroad market. The
value proposition that is recommended is to create a tool to facilitate the recruitment process, where
the previously mentioned steps and tests are conducted in a “one-time” test that measures and
correlates candidates’ results with information that was obtained from the job analysis, personality
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traits analysis, to save the recruitment team time and money, with a Google-owned tool that prescreens candidates, so all that is left is the final decision from top management.
Previously it was mentioned that the benefits that Google provides to its employees are
costly for the company, and even more, keeping in mind that the world economy it’s in an uncertain
state, however, these benefits are at the heart of Google’s engagement plan. Keeping a healthy
work-life balance is one of the most important goals for the company, and since its beginnings, it
has strived to create an environment, where Google’s workers can feel as if they were family (Vise,
2005). Non-monetary and monetary incentives have an influence on employees’ engagement,
keeping in mind that Googlers have long working hours and stressful meetings, these incentives
can be the primary motivation sources to keep “bringing it all” at the moment of performing
rigorously. A study performed by Lazar, Osoian, and Ratiu, conducted in 2010 stated that the
outcomes of an appropriate benefit, work-life balance practices can have an influence in reducing
costs in the company, particularly those related to absenteeism and turnover, enhancing the positive
organizational image and retention of desirable employees, also in the increase in productivity and
employee’s performance. Another study done by Dhas & Karthikeyan, 2015 stated that providing
great work-life balance incentives has several amounts of benefits for the employees such as being
able to effectively manage tasks at the workplace and at home, being able to work flexibly, having
a good quality of life, good health, time management, among others, but also it has benefits for the
company such as having higher employee retention, increase in motivation, reduction in
absenteeism, decreased healthcare costs, and stress-related illnesses. Supporting what was
previously mentioned, it is recommended and justified to keep Google’s incentive programs and
benefits in order to continue to have a relatively balanced work-life perspective for current
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employees and for those who will see these incentives as the decision-making point when choosing
Google as their company of choice.
Finally, to answer the third question presented in this report, to manage globally
successfully, it is important to first understand the cultural nuances each new country brings.
Imagine that the HR team already had recollected all the information from the first
recommendation, having the “ideal profile” of a Googler for every area in the corporation. The
next step would be to find and establish an HR department made up of local talent meeting
Google’s desired profile. The following steps would be to conduct an HR strategy to research
which will be the appealing incentives that will motivate future Googlers within the new country.
Also, it is important to know which academic institutions are recognized for their excellency so
the candidate pool can be reduced to match the academic exigencies Google has. With this
information at hand and having understood the cultural background of the new country, it is easier
to identify and select candidates that will feel recognized and motivated by things that are their
own, this will create a similar sense of engagement for new employees that will be part of Google
corporation. An example of this adaptation was viewed with the arrival of McDonald’s in the
Chinese market. Initially, McDonald's stated that they would not make changes to their menu as
the company wanted to honor the “American style”, yet in 2004 they added fried eggs and Chinese
pancakes to their breakfast menus, also in 2007 they launched the new drink that contained honey
and ginger. McDonald's encountered a conflict with cultural differences between US and China
when arriving in the country, nevertheless, they have adapted to Chinese customs which has
increased its revenue and growth throughout the country. (Zhou & Quinjie, 2012).
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Conclusion
Based on what was previously discussed, the main issue Google has is finding the right
applicants to maintain its brand name and the quality standards that the company has.
However, by following the previous recommendations we want to provide a full strategic
plan for recruiting, engaging, and expanding the company and to re-ensure the profiles that are the
main core of Google’s operations. It is expected that after complying with the recommendations,
there will be:
A better level of understanding of the company’s employee profile, not only following the
academic demands the company has for their employees, but also having a wider understanding of
the common personality traits and performance factors most Googlers have. This will allow them
to oversee the academic requirements as no longer a factor that detracts from talent but is
complemented by personality factors that make Googlers the right people to fulfill company goals.
Maintaining the benefits and incentives that are, among other things, the value proposition Google
has for their employees, which will keep influencing their engagement and performance, and
finally, with the creation of the ideal work profile and the company-owned recruitment tool it will
be easier for the company to find talents abroad that match their working culture and that can
transmit it and entwine it with the new markets own specific culture, this way creating a truly
global culture for all their worldwide agencies and employees, without losing their goal to care for
their Googlers.
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