Introduction
Fighting the war against employee turnover calls for the establishment of high-performance and retention measures that keep new workers not only focused on a company’s agenda but also always satisfied and willing to give their best input. The issue of employees’ affective commitment is vital, especially for organizations that wish to record sustainable profitability. Enhancing the dedication of new workers is a sure way of achieving this goal. Contemporary businesses have also recognized the significance of incorporating a pool of cross-cultural employees into their operations. This movie depicts their appreciation of the valuable input of a diverse workforce, especially when dealing with organizational operations that cut across varied geographical locations. Hence, from the perspective of an HR consultant, it is crucial to analyze Google’s current HR practices. This paper focuses on the identified issues of recruitment and selection of fresh workers, ways of ensuring high performance among new employees, enhancing their affective commitment to tasks, and cross-cultural management aspects among others in line with the prevailing industry standards.
Recruitment and Selection of New Employees
Google LLC is a globally renowned corporation whose main offices are located in Mountain View, California. According to Lombardo (2017), the company’s HR team adopts strategically chosen mechanisms for hiring, selecting, and maintaining its pool of competent workers. As a result, Google’s process of recruitment and selection of fresh workers guarantees it sufficient labor force and, consequently, continuous and sustainable profitability in all its global businesses (Vardarlıera, Vuralb & Birgünc 2014; McCord 2018). In particular, the organization’s HR department deploys an assortment of in-house and external hiring foundations to ensure sufficient workers. Regarding its in-house hiring plan, it utilizes methods such as “promotions, transfers, and trainees/interns as the main internal recruitment sources to satisfy its HR needs” (Lombardo 2017, para. 2). Its external mechanisms for getting fresh workers involve the use of adverts that are placed on the organization’s website. Figure 1 below shows various approaches deployed when hiring workers.
However, Baum and Kabst (2014) emphasize the effectiveness of using a company’s website when seeking new employees. The mechanism has the potential of attracting interested and diverse candidates from all over the world.
Regarding the company’s employee selection process, Google focuses on various aspects that define an employee’s level of proficiency. Consequently, a candidate who demonstrates the appropriate degree of “smartness, creativity, drive for excellence, and alignment with the organization’s mission and vision” (Lombardo 2017, para. 3) is regarded as fit in terms of contributing to the company’s profitability agenda. According to Armstrong and Taylor (2017), although the prevailing industry standards emphasize the need for considering a candidate’s experience, it is interesting to realize that this aspect does not form part of Google’s new employee selection plan. Although the organization enjoys an array of approaches when selecting fresh workers, it principally relies on elements such as candidates’ background information, groundwork screening, workplace assessments, and interrogations as shown in Figure 2.
Workplace appraisals are primarily subjected to beginners whose contribution to the company’s productivity plans may need to be monitored closely (Lachowska 2017). Hence, from an HR viewpoint, the company’s recruitment and selection process may be regarded as above par when compared with the available standards.
Achieving High Performance from New Employees
According to Bhalla and Giri (2014), a company’s human resource practices play a key role in determining its level of performance. Although recruitment and selection processes can help to get the best team of employees (Armstrong & Taylor 2017), sustaining their high performance in an organization requires the unrelenting input of the HR team, especially in ensuring that newly hired personnel are given the necessary support to adapt to the organization’s working atmosphere (Hardy & Tolhurst 2014). Google’s HR unit ensures that its freshly recruited employees perform exemplarily towards achieving the company’s goals and objectives. For instance, new employees are introduced into an environment that regards the client as a crucial asset for the organization, embraces the essence of transparency in communication, upholds the need for a diverse workforce, and/or values workers who can offer permanent solutions to issues that may arise in the company.
Regarding the need for diversity, Wittenberg-Cox (2017) reveals the extent of productivity that companies such as Google can attain by operating with a team of diverse workers. Some of the elements that fuel high performance among new employees at the company entail its exceptional culture of success and the maintenance of contented workers (Hardy & Tolhurst 2014). In an article by Bort (2013), the interior view of the company’s deluxe Googleplex College based in California is designed in a manner that makes the administrative center appear like a playground where new employees interact freely with others. This atmosphere free of tension drives fresh workers’ desire to take Google to the next level by dedicating their efforts to delivering their core mandates of boosting the company’s profitability levels.
Further, the HR department ensures that new employees who may be struggling financially are not strained further by having to cater to meals, health expenses, and transports costs among others. Instead, Google offers the above services free of charge to all its employees. Besides, the company’s dining tables are designed in a manner whereby they accommodate several employees at the same time, a strategy that allows new employees to interact with unfamiliar workers and/or brainstorm with older human resources when taking their meals. The rapport created not only eases their tension but also leaves them wiser in their particular lines of business (Marie Ryan & Derous 2016). This strategy has paved the way for its labor force to concentrate on the company’s affairs, hence explaining why it is among the top-ranked corporations globally in terms of high-employee performance and, consequently, productivity.
Achieving Affective Commitment from New Employees
According to Long, Yong, and Chuen (2016), affective commitment denotes a state of affairs whereby employees demonstrate a considerable sense of fondness, self-acknowledgment, and enthusiasm when undertaking organizational tasks. As Jiang et al. (2012) assert, establishing affective commitment entails investing in workers with the view of enhancing their contribution to the general achievement of a particular company. Google acknowledges the significance of creating an environment that allows employees to demonstrate affective dedication to the company’s agenda. As a result, it has devised different mechanisms that boost workers’ sentimental commitment to the organization’s mission and vision.
The company’s engineering unit demonstrates the degree to which workers are dedicated to solving any emerging problem. In particular, according to Google (2010), this unit produced Google Moderator, which is a groundbreaking Internet-enabled application that allows employees to come up with discussion subjects with the view of brainstorming and, consequently, ensuring that all of them participate in the conversation. It is imperative to note that this tool allows Google’s employees, both new and the old ones, from all over the world to pose queries on one platform with a provision of deciding the ones to be responded to (Google 2010). Through this tool, fresh workers stand a better chance of enhancing their level of participation because they learn the art of affective commitment through their interaction with not only colleagues but also bosses, thanks to Google Moderator.
Besides, they enjoy the chance of raising subjects and issues that they deem pressing and receiving the appropriate solutions promptly, as opposed to a situation where recruits have a hard time attaining some levels of affective commitment following the lack of proper support from colleagues. Through this close involvement among employees, Google Moderator has helped in addressing various issues that come up from new workers from all geographical locations. Further, the company has the 80-20 initiative that encourages recruits to utilize 20% of their working hours handling subjects of their interest. The company also gathers all its new and old employees in a weekly conference that targets addressing any general emerging issues. Hence, new employees are given all the necessary support to facilitate their performance and, consequently, productivity in the organization.
Potential Issues in Cross-Cultural Management
Hofstede’s cross-cultural theory acknowledges the existence of a significant impact on employees’ culture on their principles and conduct at the workplace (Tjosvold & Leung 2016). In this case, cross-cultural elements influence the dynamics of workers’ respective companies and hence the reason why HR administrators have been tasked with implementing mechanisms for managing such issues. Google has employees from different cultures. Such differences may range from religion, gender, language, age, and national background among others (Reddy & Gizachew 2014). Besides, companies such as Google establish branches in countries whose manner of doing business is different from what such organizations embrace. This observation is in line with Tran’s (2017) opinion that the contemporary business environment has many companies, which uphold unique cultures.
As a result, bearing in mind that nations such as China and the U.S. have significantly different cultures, Google’s move to establish the business in the former country has encountered cross-cultural management issues, despite having employees from the new nation (China). Issues such as ensuring that all employees view the company’s mission and vision from the same angle and creating an atmosphere that encourages their dedication have been challenging Google’s HR personnel. In an article by Noviantoro (2014), Larry Page is quoted confirming the company’s acceptance of workers from all corners of the world. According to Noviantoro (2014), one of the practices that have significantly boosted Google’s cross-cultural image lies in its approach to decision-making whereby all sub-cultures, as opposed to the CEO, Eric Schmidt, are allowed to take part without any favor. Consequently, new employees feel well incorporated into the company’s system, regardless of their cross-cultural disparities.
Additional Challenges
In the process of realizing Google’s mission of restructuring global information and making it available and valuable to all people, the company’s HR management encounters various challenges. For instance, during harsh economic times, the department is required to implement critical decisions that may entail laying off employees, regardless of the value they may have added to the company. In particular, the dawn of 2009 was marked by the retrenchment of 100 workers following the company’s directive of cutting its operations costs. Almost 100% of Google’s employees secure positions at the company after proving beyond a reasonable doubt that they are fit for the tasks ahead of them (Knight 2017). Hence, laying off such workers is usually a challenging task for the HR team. Instead, since the company is still growing, it should give such employees a temporary break to pave the way for its recovery. In this case, the HR unit may have an easy time explaining why such an action is taken without ruining the retrenched employees’ perception of the company.
Besides, in 2009, Elliot Schrage, the company’s communications leader, resigned and relocated to Facebook where he had been promised better remuneration packages and other benefits (Lee, Liu & Li 2013). This situation depicted a gap in Google’s HR unit regarding the company’s questionable work-life balance initiatives and even unfriendly human resource principles. Lastly, the company’s continuous recruitment of new employees leaves the older one’s less inspired because they operate with the fear that they may be retrenched any time to create room for the newly hired and energetic recruits. Hence, in the future, the company may review this strategy and focus on motivating and retraining its employees instead of continuously seeking new ones. This approach will enhance not only its organizational citizenship behavior but also the self-confidence of its current workforce.
Conclusion
The contemporary business environment has been characterized by intensive competition that has left virtually all companies with no option other than enhancing their HR practices, specifically their recruitment and selection processes. Adopting this move is founded on the awareness that having a pool of proficient employees not only enhances an organization’s competitive advantage but also boosts its sustainability in its line of operation. Through a discussion of Google’s recruitment and selection procedures, its high-performance measures for new employees, its methods of enhancing affective commitment among recruits, and issues regarding cross-cultural management, this study confirms that, overall, Google’s HR practices are in tandem with the existing industry standards. Nonetheless, some areas of adjustment in the HR unit have been noted.
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