Google's organizational culture and employee engagement strategies

CEO and Organizational Culture Profile

Google is a successful information technology firm with footprints in over 43 countries. Established in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the company has expanded in all aspects since then (Bolden & Gosling, 2011). Some of its offerings include search, web applications, and advertising. A notable statistic is that Google receives over job applications annually but employs less than a quarter of them. This signifies two indispensable things about Google. First, the company seems to be extremely particular about whom it hires and second many people wish to work for Google. It has made it into the Fortune list as the best company that anyone can desire to serve.

Organizational culture

Google is an energetic and quick moving workplace. Google workers do their best, yet have fun at the same time. The Mountain View head office boasts of a college campus-like atmosphere where the virtues of innovation and creativity are extolled. The company uses its business servicescape and organizational culture to make a casual 'value-added' climate. In Googleplex, workspaces are filled with personality, and the environment is comfortable (Parker, 2012). There are neither formal meetings nor dress code. Googlers can engage in games like table tennis, video games or beach volleyball on the campus, which makes employees feel like they are still at a university rather than being in a workplace.

Google inculcates in its workers the philosophy that it is not about the money. On the contrary, theirs is a way of life that fosters innovative brilliance over the competitors. They represent themselves as a company that performs towards modifying the world through creative involvement and teamwork. Associates express their pride in being part of such a brand, and they take tremendous satisfaction in being a part of the venture. Co-founder Sergey Brin argues that because Google is engineering-oriented, it has been misunderstood to mean that somehow the other operations are less important. Rather, the creative worker is the foundation of the culture.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) offer useful reviews on Google's HR policies and programs. This system provides useful possibilities to develop individually and professionally (Robbins & Judge, 2011). In addition, Google has many worldwide communities that help them connect to the organization, including Gayglers (the gay, lesbian, transgender bisexual network), and Greyglers. Employees happily announce that they are working for the best organization on the globe and that they are a part of something essential and believe the tasks they perform is extremely fulfilling. Rather than explaining their jobs as "selling ads" or "coding," they believe they are "organizing global data and making it globally useful and accessible" which is the Google's mission.

Passion does not originate from perks of profits. Google's philosophy of giving meaning to their work brings out the best in their people. In addition to emphasizing on establishing a corporate paradigm that capitalizes on this attitude, Google is poised to experience success as the best employer across all sectors. Therefore, focusing on intangibles, on strategies to enhance the culture, Google goes with cool team building activities to get a process started. This great organizational culture has helped improve the bottom line maintain high productivity.

Signs of the organizational culture

The organizational culture of Google is shown in their decision-making. Choices are made in groups. Even the management is under a triad: Page and Brin employed Eric Schmidt to assume the position of the organization's CEO, and they are allegedly running the organization by agreement. Significantly, the typical top-down decision-making scenarios by seniors are not applied at Google. It is typical for several groups to tackle each issue and for workers to try to influence each other using logical conviction and information.

In addition, the company motivates employee innovation and risk taking. I noticed that when the head of the marketing system made an error costing the organization huge amount of money and apologized for the error. Larry Page commended her for making the error and argued that he would rather run an organization where they are moving fast and doing too much, rather than being too careful and doing too little. This mindset toward acting quickly and recognizing the cost of causing errors as a natural effect of operating on the innovative edge may describe why the organization is ahead of opponents such as Yahoo and Microsoft. One of the current difficulties for Google is expanding to new areas outside of their web search business. To promote new ideas, it motivates all technicians to spend 20% of their time working on their initiatives (Cameron & Quinn, 2011).

Gut feeling has little effect on decision-making. In meetings, people allegedly are prohibited to say, "I think," instead must say, "the information, suggest." To foster group work, associates work in open office surroundings where private workplaces are allocated only to a select group.

Factors that caused Google to embody this culture

Google's culture is driven by two main factors: HR practices and Humble Beginnings.

HR practices. An essential factor in continuing Google's culture and passing on the founders' spirit is in the hiring. Thus, the company invests mush resources and time into choosing only the best employees in a three-phase procedure. The first phase is to get an application, which will be analyzed, along with experience and a resume. Then, if Google thinks the applicant matches the job, she will contact him to learn more about him, and respond to any questions he may have about working for Google. Here, the employer explains Google's work environment and culture. The employer officially analyzes the candidate's abilities and decides if he should continue to the next phase of the recruitment procedure, an interview over the phone. An essential attribute of this phase is that someone at the company in a similar position will perform the interview. In this manner, Google renders the task of recruiting not up to HR managers, but the job of every worker at the company. The last phase of the recruitment procedure is the on-site interview. If the applicant passed the phone interview, he/she is asked for a face-to-face interview. Here, problem-solving skills, behavior, technical skills, and thoughts are analyzed. Then, interviewers and recruiters see if the applicant's personality will fit into Google's culture of creativity, passionate productivity and innovation (O'Callaghan, 2010).

Humble Beginnings. Part of Google's culture can be tracked back to the little experience of Google's modest beginning with a few workers under control of owners Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The two entrepreneurs got the organization from the ground with its values of dedication, passion, and fun (Cameron & Quinn, 2011). Evidently, a familial climate, creativity, and passion are still permeating Google's culture due to its dedication to protecting the best aspects of their start-up culture. The physical existence is still felt around the office. Page and Brin are often seen giving each other high-fives within the premises. They had a twofold purpose in the company. While they are entrepreneurs, overseeing the smooth running of the company, on the other hand, they are the social glue that perpetuates the organizational culture they put into place.

Changes to the organizational culture

In this case, Google must address the effect of its staggering perks and benefits on experienced and older employees. These subtle, extrinsic motivators are a potential problem because experienced and older workers are taking advantage of these rewards. These external motivators can thus over time challenge the intrinsic motivators that ultimately drives Googlers. Therefore, suggestions for enhancing this part can be including other simple external motivators that will not challenge intrinsic motivators as much. For example, the company could apply more staff recognition programs that give compliment to workers.

Though the utility of intrinsic motivators to increase employee efficiency is clearly successful in many ways, such a strong focus on intrinsic does not come without impact (Parker, 2012). However, these motivators are carefully connected to Google's culture. Thus, overall, any changes to Google's intrinsic motivation may reduce the strength of Google's culture. Although minor issues occur due to a focus on intrinsic inspiration, in the end, these issues can be neglected to maintain the culture.

An over-emphasis on giving employees independence to make many work-related choices, coupled with a deficiency of managers, leads to a broader control span for each manager. Sometimes, this is a demotivating aspect as those seeking management-related tasks are disappointed with the absence of a supervisor. To sustain Google's unique culture, this type of disaccord would successfully ax disappointed employees from Google's labor force (Lussier, & Achua, 2015).

Essentially, the corporation floods resources into suggesting innovation gambling that the brainstorming time might generate something constructive. The mixture of too much independence and too much motivation lead to innovation but insufficient implementation of good ideas, which could hit success if accorded the opportunity. Though brainstorming is crucial to revamping the quantity and quality of ideas, and thus to the development of the innovative goods defining Google, it cannot continue to gamble with no assurance of return. While these gambles have paid off so far, the corporation should be vigilant of its fortune running out and progressively refocus on the implementation, not idea generation.