HRM Analysis of Google - Eight Principles of Innovation and Human Resource Management

Principle 1: Have a Mission that Matters

Good morning everybody,

Today we are here to discuss the HRM analysis of Google. Let us start with the first slide where we will discuss how a company like Google manages to grow exponentially while still staying innovative?

Slide 2: Google believes that they have focused on nurturing such a culture which supports an innovative environment within the company and hence it was the key of their innovation. Google have grown to over 26,000 employees in more than 60 offices. Google has also faced classic dilemmas like whether they should invest in brand new products, or should in improve existing ones?  The company decided to follow eight principles of innovation which covers everything (Wojcicki, 2011).

Slide 3: The first principle is to “Have a mission that matters” which means that Google’s mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ Employees have to start work in such an area where an issue is unresolved and the company’s technology can solve it. In emergency situations, employees have launched Person Finder tool to save lives in order to fulfil the mission of Google. Google has helped by organizing life-saving information and making it readily available. For example, Google has launched software to saves lives on short notice when Japan was hit by earthquake within two hours ( Savoia & Copeland, 2011).

Slide 4: Moving on towards the second slide, the second principle which Google has “Think big start small” which literally suggests that no matter how ambitious the plan is, one has to start from somewhere. Google wants that their employees should have the ability to create new and innovative platforms where the company can integrate more information with alliance in the changing world. Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google created Google Books in order to bring all of the world’s books online. For example, AdSense was created to give contextual ads to websites and it is the biggest platform for advertisement today(Mccracken , 2014).

Slide 5: The third principle which Google follows is “Strive for continual innovation, not instant perfection” which states that Google is not afraid of failure, the company embraces it by considerably improving the products. Google has learned from the past mistakes and improved considerably and employees are motivated to learn from the past mistakes and improve with every project. The first version of AdWords was released in 1999, by Google was unsuccessful but the company did not give up on it as it believed in its potential (Strategos , 2021). Google still runs many experiments to improve search and ads quality so that the company can increase its base and attract more sponsors and customers. The employees are motivated to launch over a dozen new formats with improved technology and only the ones which are the best among them are finalized.

Principle 2: Think Big, Start Small

Slide 6: The fourth principle which the company follows is “Look for ideas everywhere”. Google launched a board where ideas of employees were posted anonymously on wall at Google’s headquarters at Mountain View. And the employees were encouraged to share their ideas, complains and feedback through which the company can improve and reflect on its own previous products and future products. For example, once an employee wrote the convoluted problem that Google had with its ads system and it came into light due to this idea board and was resolved within hours by the other employees in a couple of days. According to the company claims, best ideas and improvements of the Google’s product came through the idea board and hence, company has encouraged its employees to share and discuss their ideas in the break room or hallways.

Slide 7: Moving to the fifth principle “Share everything”. Google believes in keeping its employees up to date about the happenings in the company and hence, the company has come up with an innovative solution to keep their employees up to date. Every quarter, a board letter is shared with all the employees and the same is then presented to the board of directors as well to ensure that each and every employee of the company is on the same page. Google believes that employees should feel more connected to the company and it has led to the creation of new and innovative ideas which have benefitted Google. For example, Google was able to launch language translation after the teams of both Google Talk and Google Translate came together one day randomly.

Slide 8: The sixth principle is “Spark with imagination, fuel with data” which states that Google believes in their employees’ intuition. Google hire those people who are determined to achieve the impossible and are thrilled to take up challenges. Like that the company can stay ahead in its race with the other competitors as it is very important for the employee to think innovatively. And hence to encourage the employee to think and work on innovative projects, Google has come up with an approach to give a 20% employee time to each employee in a week where each employee is encouraged to do what they believe in their 20 percent time. Most of the Google products were launched when the employees worked during their 20 percent time.

Slide 9: The seventh principle is “Be a platform”. Google believes in open technologies which adds more value to its products and also supports that each person who has something more to add on to the company is welcomed and are respected by Google. The company has also further added that each unique idea and perspective is given a platform by Google and it is what the company strive and stand for to be a platform where every employee and every person is welcomed to enable and use their skills to create something unique. For example, Google Earth can be edited by anybody who has something unique to add to the application. Android users enjoys Google’s extensive resources which were developed by independent developers(Niculescu, Wu, & Xu, 2018).

Principle 3: Strive for Continual Innovation, not Instant Perfection

Slide 10: Finally, the eight and the last principle is “Never fail to fail”.  As it is widely known that the Tech Industry is very dynamic and if Google is too afraid to take risks, then the company will be left behind. The company hence motivates its employees to not be afraid to take risks and with every project the employee and the company both learn become more advanced.  Products like Google Answers or Google Video Player did not work out, it did not stop Google from taking risks. Each failure of a product has made their employees more knowledgeable and it was seen in the future products. If risks were given importance by Google, the company would have missed so many opportunities.

Slide 11: Next slide will talk about the employment training at Google. Google covers employee training for effective performance management to maximize human resource capabilities (Menell, 2012). For all the employees which are hired by the company, Google focuses on providing them with the appropriate training programs which are designed with an aim to support an innovative workforce. Results of the training programs are regularly monitored. Google focuses on train their employees using the technology where their progress is closely observed by their managers. Not only the employees get observed but are also offered guidance and help at every point where they get stuck.

Slide 12: Next slide will talk about Recruitment hiring at Google. As for every vacant position at Google, thousands of applications are received by the company. Google focuses on hiring the right person for the job as trusted and hardworking employees ensure growth and development of every company. Google aims to incorporate its culture as the company believes that the culture compatibility of an employee directly affects their overall performance at Google and hence is extremely important. Productivity of employees is also an important factor at Google and the company invests in finding new employee and the budget of recruitment is high.  

Slide 13: Next slide will cover the performance management of employees at Google. Google has one of the biggest HRM department in the world as the major responsibility of managing all the HR related activities which is important to run the company smoothly is done by the HRM department. Google rewards handsomely to people who perform good with incentives and people who are not able to perform well have to answer their superiors. The payment and incentives are directly linked to the overall performance and differs from employee to employee depending on the overall performance of the employee and how much were they able to contribute to the company. Google has the reputation of respecting and rewarding those employees who work hard for the development and new innovative projects.

Slide 14:  Lastly, the perks and benefits of working at Google. Other than working for the leading company in the tech industry, Google has a lot more to offer to its employees and hence, it is why most of the employees wants to work for the company rather than its competitors. Some of the benefits of working at Google are Help from experts at every step of the way good incentives, a platform to work on employee’s dream projects, flexible working hours, vertical learning curve, opportunity to work with the best industry experts and good retirement plans and strategies for every employee. Other than this Google has a lot more to offer than other companies which makes it “a dream company” for most of the workers.

Slide 15: Thank you so much everybody for patiently listening to me. I hope this has been an informative presentation to you all. Have a good day.