Man and woman 

How Google became the best place to work. Google: HR policy of the most attractive company

Today Google is one of the most recognizable corporations in the world, but few people know that the main recipe for its success is the motivation of staff in Google. When its owners are asked how they managed to become world leaders in 10 years, how they manage to demonstrate high growth rates for 15 years, they unanimously answer - all this was done by staff motivation at Google. Only a reliable and cohesive team can achieve such heights. So what are the secrets of motivating Google's staff?

First, pay attention to some statistical details. Officially, the company started in 1998, and today it indexes pages in 195 languages ​​of the world. In 2012, she earned more than $50 million and every year increases her profit by 10% per year. Whatever parameter you take, everywhere the company becomes a leader. So what are the secrets of motivating Google's staff.

People come first

The company puts a careful and reverent attitude towards its personnel at the forefront. Even on the company's website hangs a pretentious slogan: Google is people first. And it's not empty words. For four years in a row, the company has maintained leadership in the rating of the best employer, and according to Forbes magazine- fourth. Why? Let's figure it out.


Staff Motivation at Google

Everyone knows that a high salary is the best motivation for staff. It inspires specialists to new feats and keeps them in the company. Google has the highest salaries in its region.

In the company, staff motivation is also expressed through various bonuses. It can be not only allowances and bonuses, but also various courses, educational programs And so on. According to one of the leaders of the company, the motivation of the staff is to support all areas of the life of employees: from the physical to the emotional.

More specifically, the motivation of staff at Google is:

Family support - an additional week of vacation for new parents;
refund of funds spent on education;
free sports complex near the office;
health care right in the office, including massage;
free food.


involves an ergonomic organization of workplaces, a convenient daily routine - if possible, it is permissible to establish an irregular working day. After all, it is much more important that the employee completes the task, and does not serve the required hours in the office.

Separate staff motivation - office decoration. The best minds from the field of design and architecture are invited to their arrangement. Characteristic- many living plants. In some cases, meetings can be held on the roof of houses on comfortable trestle beds or armchairs - a relaxed and relaxed atmosphere is the best motivation personnel.

Another interesting and significant feature of the motivation of the company's personnel is the posthumous payment to the family of a deceased employee of half the size of his salary for some time. If there are minor children in the family, each of them is paid $1,000 every month until they reach the age of 19.

Like this amazing staff motivation at Google keeps it at the forefront of the technology world.

As Vice President of Human Resources, the company has grown from 6,000 employees into a powerful global corporation with 60,000 employees.

With his team, Bock re-engineered his management strategy to make Google one of the most desirable jobs for technical talent and happy company in America.

Here are the personnel management rules he used.

1. Fill the work of employees with meaning.

Your company will not be able to grow if your employees work simply for money or to become a market leader. Work must also be associated with higher values, which is why Google has a mission that cannot be fulfilled. By hiring employees who want to "make search of the world's information accessible and convenient to everyone," Google pursues both higher and business goals, and at least one of them is eternal.

2. Trust your team.

As a manager, you must guide the development of your employees. You shouldn't micromanage everyone and try to do the work for them too much. This level of trust will benefit everyone. Google has a semi-annual anonymous employee survey in which they rank managers, and then managers discuss the results with the team.

3. Hire only those who are better than you.

Never compromise on quality, no matter the situation. Find someone who will do a better job than you.

4. Share development conversations with debriefing and grading.

If the only time your employees get "feedback" is during the annual and semi-annual reports, then employees will begin to associate your criticism with the failure of tasks.

It is better to talk regularly with employees about their work, and evaluate the results strictly in relation to meeting or not meeting the annual goals. If you do it well, then the final grades will not be a surprise, because you communicated with employees throughout the journey, and the employee constantly had the opportunity to resort to your advice and support.

5. Pay attention to your best and worst employees.

Find out what makes your best employees great and let them teach it to the rest of the team.

And look at your worst employees. Remember why you hired them and then decide what's the matter: is the employee not suitable for his position or he himself is not suitable for the company? If the first option, then give him new responsibilities and a chance to prove himself. If the second - let him leave not only for the sake of the company, but also for his own sake.

6. Spend wisely.

Many of the famous "goodies" for Google employees are either free for the company or relatively inexpensive. There is no need to spend money on expensive training programs that do not guarantee results. Use your best employees as teachers or invite company friends.

Save money to give employees the perks they really need, like taking care of their health or using them to pay retirement benefits. For example, at Google, we spend a lot on free lunches.

7. Pay non-transparently.

At Google, there have been times when one employee received many times more than another in a similar position. To understand the logic, compare with a professional baseball team: the one that received more was an elite player.

The Detroit Tigers, for example, paid Justin Verlander $28 million because he's a star and wouldn't want him to go to another team. Google has enough resources to poach the best of the best from competitors, but by and large the same logic applies to small companies.

8. Push your employees in the right direction.

No need to demand from them quick changes. Show the way with skillful gestures.

For example, if you want to develop team spirit among employees, you can send a mass mailing that will tell about the work success of each.

9. Facilitate change.

You can make mistakes while trying to improve your team's performance. If you want to experiment, make sure your goals are known and understood by your employees.

This will turn them from critics to supporters, and they won't throw stones at you if you don't succeed.

10. Fun and innovation.

It is important to understand that there is no such thing as an ideal work environment or office culture: with personnel management, you need to constantly experiment and bring something new, it should not turn into a routine. All these efforts cling to each other and together will help you create a creative and high-performing organization.

Business Insider conducted a survey and compiled a list of the top 50 employers in the United States. During the work, criteria such as employee satisfaction, salary levels, the likelihood of stress and the significance of the work were taken into account. Google took the first place in the ranking.

To what Google considers best employer, there are several objective reasons. Employees of the company shared their experience.

High job satisfaction

Express info by country

USA(USA) is a country in North America.

Capital– Washington

Largest cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Philadelphia, Boston, Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas

Form of government- Presidential republic

Territory- 9,519,431 km 2 (4th in the world)

Population– 321.26 million people (3rd in the world)

Official language- American English

Religion- Protestantism, Catholicism

HDI– 0.915 (8th in the world)

GDP– $17.419 trillion (1st in the world)

Currency- U.S. dollar

border with: Canada, Mexico

According to the survey, 86% of Google employees are very or fairly satisfied with their jobs.

As he explains in his book Work Rocks! Google Vice President of Human Resources Laszlo Bock, the key to success is the constant introduction of new developments in workplace, experiments and a positive attitude.

“The most beautiful thing about this approach is that an amazing office stimulates self-development of employees: all these efforts are not in vain and work to create a creative, fun, hardworking and very productive team.”

More than 64,000 Google employees have access to perks such as free medical care, gourmet food, laundry service, gym and a generously paid decree.

An employee at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, says that his company cares about its employees, and this allows it to receive motivated and loyal specialists in return.

The reputation of a company that changes the world for the better

73% of Google employees surveyed said they consider their work at the company to be beneficial to society. And this is not surprising, given the company's global mission: "to organize all the information that exists in the world and make it accessible and useful to everyone."

As Bock explains, this is "more of a moral than a business goal" and it's not possible to achieve it intentionally.

“It motivates to constantly apply innovative technologies and try yourself in other areas,” he writes. – When the goal of “becoming a market leader” is achieved, it gives more inspiration. A wide range of goals allows Google to move forward, guided by a compass, not a speedometer.

And the company's employees share its global goals, trying to implement even the most complex projects.

High salaries

Google invites only the most talented specialists to work and is ready to offer them a competitive salary. Middle level The income of an experienced worker is $140,000 per year. But even those with less than a year of experience earn around $93,000.

Google also tops the list of employers for offering above-average salaries in the market. At the same time, two people in similar positions can receive completely different amounts, and this is done intentionally.

“It’s hard to pay everyone within the normal range when someone can do two or even ten times more than the rest,” Bock writes. But it's much harder to see how the best specialists leaving you with great potential. It makes you wonder which companies are really paying unfairly: those where the best workers get much more, or those where everyone earns the same.”

Ability to work remotely

Free Wi-Fi allows 28% of Google employees to work partially or completely from home. This is more than others large companies such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple.

"The company is very flexible in this regard," says one of the employees of the headquarters of Google. - If you are lucky, you will not have a micromanager boss (a leader who controls even the smallest movements of a subordinate. - Approx. Ed.) And you will be able to decide how you work. But don’t get me wrong: there will be just as much work, you just won’t be chained to your workplace.”

Low stress

12% of Google employees consider their work as one that does not cause stress. And although this figure is not very impressive, compared to other companies, it is quite high.

Perhaps one of the factors low level stress at work are various perks such as in-office massages, free fitness and gym, and great vacations. All this helps employees to relax.

A calm working environment is also facilitated by the absence of unhealthy competition between employees. While Google encourages its employees to set ambitious goals, they are not expected to achieve those goals at any cost. On the contrary, here they help to learn and learn from their failures. Moreover, the company encourages a culture of transparency and fights bullying employees in every possible way. At Google, it's not customary to complain about each other, because you are one team. Here they have open constructive conversations in order to solve the problem and continue to work for the good of the world.

Everything in modern management greater value acquire questions of motivation and stimulation labor activity personnel. As a complex psychological phenomenon, motivation determines human behavior. Most often, motivation is understood as those internal motives that guide a person's behavior and determine the intensity of his efforts to achieve the intended goals. These include different needs, interests, value orientations. They can be significant and insignificant, of varying degrees of significance and stability.

Stimulation of labor, in contrast to motivation, is, first of all, an external motivation to work, an element of labor organization that affects the labor behavior of an employee. As Professor V.A. Vaisburd correctly notes, stimulation is a targeted impact on the labor behavior of people through the formation of a system of incentives and the creation of conditions for their implementation. Thus, we can say that incentives are aimed at enhancing the employee's labor activity, and motivation is aimed at the professional and personal development of personnel in accordance with the existing structure of motives. In the practice of personnel management, as a rule, it is necessary to develop and apply mechanisms for an effective combination of motives and incentives for work.

As an example, for the analysis of motivation and stimulation of labor, we chose two well-known American companies - Google and Russian - Yandex. These are IT companies that belong to the industry high technology, where the main backbone of employees are highly qualified specialists in the field information technologies, programmers and high-class engineers. We can say that these are people with very extraordinary thinking. Therefore, in order to retain and increase staff loyalty, one of the directions of the personnel policy of these companies is to conduct annual surveys on the level of employee satisfaction.

Speaking about staff motivation, first of all, it is necessary to dwell on the issues of organizing the remuneration of employees and their participation in the capital of companies.

The income of ordinary employees in both Google and Yandex is kept at approximately the same level, but can vary quite significantly depending on the location of the office and the length of service of the employee.

Of the applied financial incentives it is worth noting the following:

  1. Google is committed to paying an employee a portion of the training costs if the employee receives "good" or "excellent" grades;
  2. An employee of the company who brought a new employee to the staff and he worked for a certain time is entitled to a cash bonus;
  3. Google is willing to bear the costs associated with the paperwork for adoption by an employee of a child;
  4. A Google employee who informs management about a colleague who wants to leave the company is also entitled to a monetary reward;
  5. For an employee who is transferred to the Swiss office, the company pays for renting an apartment for a month, two weeks for renting a car, German, English or Swiss language courses to choose from, Internet at new apartment and any sports hobby of the new employee.

And one very unusual bonus for Google employees that is not found anywhere else is a posthumous salary for the family of the deceased. . This innovation was made for 34 thousand workers who lost their loved ones. After the death of an employee, the family receives 50% of his salary for some time, and his minor children are paid 1 thousand dollars every month until they turn 18 years old.

The main motivational tool for employees at Yandex is the free regulation of working hours. The office is open around the clock and employees choose when it is more convenient for them to work. The company does not keep records of the time worked, it all depends on the productivity of the work, which is evaluated by the immediate supervisor.

Google is a little more conservative in terms of the daily routine than Yandex and does not provide an absolutely free schedule, but this does not at all prohibit an employee from leaving the office or not appearing in it, but working at home if this does not affect the effectiveness of his work. The main thing is not to spend a certain number of hours in the office, but to complete the assigned task.

Everyone knows that Yandex offices are considered to be one of the most creative and amazing offices in Russia. The company is responsible for the design and furnishings of its premises and takes all possible measures to ensure that employees can feel comfortable at work.

In order to completely take a break from work and restore the effort expended, Yandex employees have an additional three free days per quarter. These days they may be completely unavailable for work. The rest of the time, the staff can work anywhere, even in the office, even at home, even in the country, but just work, having a computer at hand and mobile phone. Employees working out of the office are provided free of charge laptops and Internet modems with the ability to permanent use. Working in the office, the staff also does not have to be constantly at the desktop, they can move around the entire office space with their laptops, because. the entire office is covered by Wi-Fi.

When the work is tired or there is a need to take a break, the employee can play billiards, ping-pong, kicker. And also in all Yandex offices there are equipped gyms, yoga and dance rooms. Usually, employees themselves gather in a group and invite a coach, but the company also supports them in every possible way. If you get to the Yandex office in the evening, you can hear live music. And in another Moscow office on the balcony you can play huge floor chess. An interesting fact is also the fact that a doctor and a massage therapist are constantly in Yandex offices. Some offices are allowed to move around in eco-friendly and compact vehicles, and some are specially equipped with bicycle lanes.

Google has developed enough interesting system bonuses and material incentives to work. Here are some of them:

  1. A free hairdresser works at the company's central office;
  2. Google pays its employees for dental services, which are very expensive in the US;
  3. Inside the offices there are high-tech swimming pools, which can be used right in work time, you can adjust the temperature, pressure and direction of water flow;
  4. Offices around the world have employee cinemas and small campuses where you can celebrate birthdays;
  5. Orange juice machines are present in every office and even guests can use them for free;
  6. Google has a system of subsidies, according to which the company pays for 10 to 90% of various services and hobbies of employees: from massage to medical operations;
  7. The famous "20% Program", the essence of which is that each employee of the company is obliged to spend 20% of his working time on an organized passion or hobby;
  8. The company pays for holiday parties and costumes for them. Google loves Halloween very much.

Google offices always have various cafes and restaurants, free for employees, where you can drink coffee or even have a full meal. Google offices have refrigerators filled with various drinks, ice cream and snacks free of charge for employees.

Google did some pretty interesting internal research, which revealed:

  1. Queue length in lunch break should be approximately three to four minutes, so employees do not lose too much time, but have the opportunity to get to know other people;
  2. Tables should be large so that unfamiliar employees have to communicate with each other;
  3. Google has found that adding 20cm plates to dining rooms in addition to the classic 30cm plates leads to fewer servings for employees, which has a positive effect on their health.

It seems to us that the results of these studies can be adopted by our domestic companies in order to improve the socio-psychological climate of labor collectives.

Meals are arranged in a very interesting way in Yandex. Firstly, all employees have an electronic work pass, which is credited with a certain amount of money. With these funds, an employee can pay in any cafe on the territory of the office, as well as next to it. Secondly, the offices have coffee points - the place where you can drink coffee, tea; eat cookies, vegetables and fruits. From season to season, the assortment changes slightly: in summer, fresh fruits such as apples, apricots, watermelons, etc. prevail. and fresh vegetables with herbs. AT autumn period nuts, dried fruits, celery, ginger and so on appear.

Thus, when analyzing and comparing approaches to staff motivation and incentives in Google and Yandex, it should be noted that they are almost identical and to some extent Yandex simply does the same thing as Google, but within its more modest financial opportunities. This fact can be explained by the fact that these two companies belong to the same high-tech industry, employees are engaged in similar processes, quality requirements work force are identical.

However, it seems to us that as directions for improving the motivation and stimulation of the work of Yandex employees, we can suggest using more non-material incentives: moral, creative, social, and others. For example, as often as possible, openly acknowledge the successes of the company's employees based on public praise, congratulations on the company's corporate website, mailing lists. thank you letters on behalf of senior management, organizing direct meetings of employees of offices and branches with top management of the company.

Bibliography:

  1. Weisburd V.A. To the question of the essence of motivation and stimulation of labor activity // Problems of enterprise development: theory and practice: Proceedings of the 5th International scientific and practical conference. November 24-25, 2005 - Samara: Samarsk Publishing House. state economy Univers., 2005. Part 2 - S. 190-194.
  2. Ilyukhina L.A. Motivation and stimulation of labor activity of nursing staff // Bulletin of the Samara State University of Economics. — 2014 - No. 6(116). — S. 136-140.

The company has been a leader in many employer attractiveness ratings for many years, including in. Of course, part of the company's success is due to its financial well-being, innovative developments (except for Internet search and development of operating Android systems, Google is actively engaged in scientific research in many areas) and regular coverage of the company in the media. Everyone knows about modern ones, thanks to which many companies today are abandoning the traditional concept of the office and are starting to take the atmosphere in which employees work more seriously. However, today we want to talk about some aspects of Google's personnel policy, that is, the company's attitude towards its employees and how this attitude helps Google maintain its leading position in the labor market.

A small selection of photos of Google offices:

Personnel costs always pay off

Like most Silicon Valley tech companies, Google has been actively campaigning to attract more women for years. However, a few years ago, the company discovered that women often quit after maternity leave. This problem harmed not only gender equality in the company, but also net profit, because Google has very serious competitors in the labor market: today, not only such IT giants as Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon compete with Google for talented employees in California, but and numerous startups. And the problem is real: Most recently, Google's vice president and first female engineer, Marissa Mayer, left to take over as CEO of Yahoo! .

The main feature of Google's personnel policy is that the decision is always made "in favor of the employee."

News in a timely manner

By applying this principle to problem solving, the company has gained a simple and effective solution- women working at Google received 5 months of maternity leave with 100% salary and 100% pension and medical contributions. By comparison, at the time, other companies in California were giving young parents seven weeks of paid leave. Such a "long" maternity leave at Google can be used at any time, for example, part - before the birth of the child, part - after, and the remaining month - when the baby has already grown a little.

To some, such generosity may seem detrimental to the welfare of the company, a kind of whim of management seeking to improve the company's image in the labor market. However, Google provides comfortable working conditions for its employees not just “out of the kindness of heart”: People Operations HR department carefully monitors the reaction of employees to the benefits provided and the “payback” of these benefits for the company. So, for example, an increase in maternity leave reduced the number of layoffs among young mothers by 50% - which means that the company's competitors did not get the opportunity to poach talented workers from the search giant.

We don't just want you to have a great job. We want you to have a wonderful life. We provide you with everything you need for maximum productivity and Have a good mood. And not only during the working day.
Larry Page, CEO

Changes in the company's personnel policy are not only of internal importance: Google demonstrates an alternative approach to solving personnel problems that can be adopted by other companies, first in Silicon Valley, and then beyond.

Google is looking. Talents.

Speaking about the personnel policy of Google, one cannot but raise the issue of graduates and young professionals. How does the search giant treat candidates with little or no work experience? After all, hiring the “right” people provides a significant part of the success of any company.

You are probably well aware that many companies prefer to hire employees with experience, and are wary of hiring graduates.

They can be understood - training a young specialist takes time and considerable effort. financial costs. At the same time, the company cannot know for sure that a young specialist, having studied and acquired professional connections, will not go to competitors.

Google, on the other hand, is one of the companies that rely on young professionals. This trend is probably partly related to the history of the company: the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were themselves university graduates when they had the idea to create a search engine.

The basic principle of searching for employees at Google: the candidate must have a talent for discovering new things, solving problems, finding the best solutions, improving performance, must be sociable and open, must be able to simplify and reinvent. Then the company will certainly offer him a position, regardless of work experience.

Google's initiatives to attract students and young professionals are known all over the world. In 2005, the Google Summer of Code project was launched - a kind of internship that helps students involved in design software, find a programmer mentor working for Google's open source partner. Yes, a student may not visit the Google office during the entire internship, but the program allows him to get closer to the company. Now Summer of Code is an annual event.

The Google Code Jam competition is a shortcut to the company.

Another company project is Google Code Jam, an international programming competition that dates back to 2003. Code Jam was supposed to be a convenient tool for the company to select potential employees. The winner receives not only a solid cash prize (the organizers promise a prize of $15,000 in 2013), but also an invitation to work at one of the Google research centers - it is not surprising that more than 35,000 people took part in the competition in 2012. Code Jam is a "shortcut" to the company, allowing both the candidate and the HR department to bypass a complicated selection process that can take several months.

In addition, Google hosts a range of events and programs for students, which you can learn more about on the website. Google Students. Unfortunately, not all programs of the company are available yet. Russian students and graduates.

Today, in the US and Europe, many talented young people are turning away from high-paying corporate jobs in favor of small start-ups. Google, like other large multinational companies, has a lot of work to do to maintain its position in the labor market and remain the place where graduates of the most prestigious universities peace.

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