Human resources overview and applications

Google's human resources strategies are effective. The objective of Google's human resources strategy is to attract the best workers in its industry and to retain them. Knowledge industries compete for the brightest workers by offering them a variety of enticements -- money, perks, benefits and opportunity to work on projects that interest them. It is basically HR by highly intelligent, creative people for highly intelligent, creative people. The point is that Google needs to experience continuous innovation in order to maintain its position as industry leader in a fast-evolving knowledge industry. Thus, it needs to attract and find the brightest, most creative people. Google's track record speaks for itself in terms of success. It is one of the most valuable companies on the planet, dominates its industry, generates over $1 million in revenue and $200,000 in profit per employee (Sullivan, 2013). By any metric you can name, Google has achieved its strategic objectives and this flows directly from its unique, analytical approach to human resources.

The Google approach to human resources relies on attracting individuals with a high degree of intrinsic motivation. While there is some motivation provided as many employees have access to equity-based compensation, Google is specifically seeking the highly-motivated individual, and is attracting these people by offering the best working environment. The perks are part of it, but Google also gives its employees time to work on their own projects, and of course the opportunity to work with equally talented people. Google is not really interested in employees that it will need to motivate; it wants the motivated people to come to it. Google also recognizes that it is in a state of intense competition for these high-caliber employees. Many of the perks are common in the best Silicon Valley firms, and Google's edge comes from giving employees time for their own projects, and in the creative work environment it provides. Google sells employees on giving them jobs that will genuinely allow them to become more actualized people, and that is very enticing, even for the most talented people.

Part 2.

Finding good people is a challenge for any organization. One organization with which I am familiar is FedEx. FedEx has a number of strategies for attracting talent. The first strategy for attracting talent is actually quite simple -- the company gets its name out in public on its trucks, on its airplane, and with advertising. Larger companies often have an advantage in this regard because people think of them more readily -- exposure is an important part of sales, and attracting talent is definitely a sales job.

FedEx has also sought to build its employer brand. Many employees are basically unskilled labor, but FedEx wants the best of unskilled labor. The company has a number of benefits that it offers to its employees, including health care plans, retirement savings plans, employee stock purchase plans, spending benefits (Bryan, 2014). Another aspect is that FedEx is loath to lay off full-time employees, even though its business is highly correlated with the business cycle. With respect to health care, FedEx has sought to provide a number of different options to its employees. In particular it seeks to improve the state of preventative care in order to reduce health issues for its employees, to everybody's benefit (FedEx, 2004). It is not just that FedEx does these things, but that it seeks to ensure that the public is aware of these things -- FedEx is building its employer brand this way to attract a higher caliber of employee.

From there, the company has a program for selection to ensure that it finds the best people in its pool of prospective employees. FedEx seeks employees that have specific traits -- good customer service, hard work, loyalty -- because when it hires it generally wants to find people that it can put into a long-term employment stream, knowing that turnover is bad for its business but that the industry inevitably will have high turnover rate among new employees. The company's selection process appears to generally be successful.

A lot of retention at FedEx therefore starts with attracting a broad pool of employees, then selecting those with the traits that the company desires, and offering them the sort of benefits that encourage long-term employment and a commitment to building a career.