Google\'s Work Environment Is Actually Quite Famous

¶ … Google's work environment is actually quite famous -- a place where creative people gather and work in a relatively free environment. Employees are allotted company time to work on individual, personal projects. They sell the company on things like "do cool things that matter," diversity, innovation. The company offers fairly generous benefits, for example, and it takes a slightly different approach to hiring.

Google employees are motivated intrinsically, as evidenced in "do cool things that matter," which implies that the average Google employee wants to do things for internal reasons. A further implication is that teamwork is important because most projects involve teams. Indeed, the company usually interviews you with four or five of its employees. This is because it is understood that you have to work well within the company's culture, which is driven by people who are comfortable with ambiguity, internally-driven and have varied skill sets.

The second company is Wegmans. The appeal of Wegmans is completely different from that of Google. Wegmans is good for the values that it has with respect to treatment of its employees. The company has a focus on finding the right employees (using behavioral questioning) and then treating them like family. Such a tactic gives Wegmans high levels of customer service and low levels of turnover. Employees are given family time and are more empowered than most retail employees with respect to decision-making (Sapong, 2013).

A third company on the list is REI. This retailer gets on the list for a number of its benefits, including its encouragement of having a work/life balance. The company seeks employees who have a love of the outdoors, because this is a key component of the job, selling outdoors clothes and equipment.

These companies all understand the point that Homans makes about work as a social exchange of goods/services. In this case, the workers exchange their effort for a package of pay and benefits. The more attractive the company makes the pay/benefits package, the more workers it can attract. And retain. Wegmans understands that in its upstate New York market, people who want to live there will probably stay there for life. So they offer things that encourage people to cultivate a long career at the company. By being one of the most preferred employers in the region, Wegmans is able to have its pick of employees. The result of that is that the company is able to be more selective, and ensure that the people they hire are the ones who are best-suited for the job and for the company's culture. The approach that REI takes is quite similar, and it sees specific benefit in tying employment to a love of the outdoors because this is something the company understands to be beneficial to the customer as well. Further, employees who love all aspects of the job are more likely to stay longer, reducing turnover in an industry otherwise characterized by high turnover rates.