In summary, D’Onfro discusses ways in which Google manages the benefits and retention of its employees and the effect that these practices have on the staff. The author’s thesis is that Google has always had excellent benefits management practices praised by its employees. D’Onfro collects and summarises information gathered from online platforms such as Quora and Glassdoor, where Google’s employees share their opinions regarding business practices.
D’Onfro explains that Google provides free rides for its employees, as well as gourmet food at its main office. Additionally, people can bring their dogs, which, as one employee explained, helps maintain one’s energy during the workday. Moreover, because this is an IT company, Google offers TechStop service for its employees, which is free of charge helps with software and hardware. Most importantly, Googlers are encouraged to develop professionally, continue their education, and work on creative projects. However, D’Onfro mentions that the most crucial benefit of working at Google is the ability to communicate and meet like-minded people, which creates an excellent internal culture.
The author is writing for managers or business owners interested in learning about ways to improve their worker’s productivity and engagement. Since this article is a summary of employees’ opinions, it provides a good assessment for managers, allowing them to understand how retention and benefits affect work productivity and satisfaction. Additionally, employees of other technology-oriented companies may also be interested in this article since they can compare and contrast the approach to engagement and retention improving at their companies and Google.
Analysis
D’Onfro uses a variety of rhetorical choices to prove his argument to the selected audience. For example, the author uses logos to persuade the readers by citing that Googlers get to work using 80/20, 80% of traditional work, and 20% of creative work or working on their projects. This allows one to understand the type of logic behind Google’s management decisions and the way they encouraged creativity while ensuring that the employees complete the necessary tasks as well. In addition, D’Onfro mentioned a variety of monetary benefits, for example, when discussing the death policy, where the spouse of the deceased Google employee receives money for ten years. The appeal of this argument is in the logic since the company’s support of the employee’s family can be an essential consideration point for a person who receives a job offer.
The effectiveness of pathos’ used to prove that Google’s retention policies are excellent for the managers reading this article is good. The author mentions statistics and numbers that a reader can use to logically assess and compare Google’s benefits policy to that of their company. The use of such information also allows for enhancing the credibility of this article. Therefore, this rhetorical choice is useful in providing D’onfro’s thesis. One issue is that the author does not include the position of the employees or the amount of time they have been working at Google. This creates a logical problem of perceiving information, since a potential reader may find it challenging to make a conclusion regarding different policies and their impact on people working in different positions.
D’Onfro uses pathos by including the commentary from Google’s employees. In these excerpts, the Googlers explain why they enjoy a specific type of retention and benefits policy, which usually contains emotional explanations. For example, one employee reports that “Google trained the manager to be proactive about their employees’ growth. I enjoy that the most” (D’Onfro). Here, the part where the employee states that they enjoy a particular policy invokes an emotional response in the reader. Pathos helps effectively prove the thesis because the author uses comments that actual employees of Google left on different platforms. The inclusion of these in the text in their original form allows the reader to perceive the joy and satisfaction that the employees feel when discussing Google’s policies. It is an effective way of proving the thesis because positive emotions can be an important factor in improving job satisfaction.
D’Ofro’s use of ethos in the discussed article is interesting because he uses open-source material. On the one hand, the author claims that these comments are gathered from Google’s employees. On the other, there is no way of identifying whether these individuals are the actual employees. Hence, the use of ethos as a way of convincing the reader is partially successful because the credibility of D’Ofro’s sources cannot be verified. One suggestion that would help address this issue is to include an interview with Google’s employees. In this case, the readers would have more trust in the article and its content. Another problem with perceiving the credibility of D’Ofro’s sources is the lack of negative reviews for any of the policies that the author mentioned. As a result, the reader can only see the positive impact, which does not allow forming an opinion about the companies’ benefits and retention policies. As a result, D’Ofro has moderate success in using ethos in his article.
Response
The writing makes me proud of the company and happy for the employees or Googlers, but I think that it does not provide much value to the majority of businesses and workers. All the mentioned perks can be considered as outstanding benefits, and all employees should be able to have some portion of them at their workplace. However, one should not forget that these retention measures are in place due to Google’s success and dominance in the industry. No average company could offer such perks even if they wanted to due to a lack of resources and unnecessary expenses. I learned that if a company can treat its employees with dignity and respect, they should because it will allow them to keep the best experts in the field within the organization. However, Google’s position is unique because the overall quality of its employees’ competence is a primary determinant of its success. Googlers are the ones who generate the main value for the company, which it sells to its customers.
Such a strategy would not work where there is no need for highly competent workers, or the value is not solely generated by the employees. For instance, in the construction industry, one cannot provide Google’s perks, because the environment is vastly different and the value is not only generated by employees but also construction equipment and raw materials. A construction worker cannot bring his or her dog as an emotional boost, or ride a bicycle around the territory. In addition, death benefits would be impossible because the construction worker’s work environment is significantly more dangerous than Googler’s. Therefore, the given writing is an excellent summary of Google’s employee retention tactics, but it provides no value to many businesses, industries, and employees.
Work Cited
D’Onfro, Jillian. “An Inside Look at Google’s Best Employee Perks.” Inc, 2015, Web.