Assignment 2: Integrating Culture and Diversity in Decision Making

Introduction

The company selected for this paper is ‘Google’. In this essay, the corporate and organizational culture of Google will be discussed in detail. The essay starts first by describing the background of the company- Google. Once the background is clear, the culture of Google will be discussed. After the culture, the factors will be defined, which helps shape the organizational culture of Google. In  the end, the essay concludes by identifying the type of leader that is best suited for Google.

 

Background of Google

Google is one the largest search engine Internet gianta. The company was founded by Sergei Brine and Larry page in the September,1998. The headquarters of Google is in the United States. Apart from being the largest search engine company, it specializes in the products and services related to the Internet (Girard , 2009). The services and products of Google includes cloud computing, online advertising, searching and  software etc. Google has been rated always the ‘Best Employer’ company and also the ‘Best Workplace’ in the past 10 years (Jarvis, 2009). The main reason is because of the unique and great corporate culture of this company. The current CEO of the company is Larry Page (Jarvis, 2009).

 

Culture of Google

The main features of the corporate cultural identity of Google is liberty, equality and it is human oriented. The employees are provided the most comfortable and luxury environment of work. The company encourages its employees to work hard, play hard and relax more (Jarvis, 2009).  Many companies are now realizing from the example of Google that employee not only care for the benefits and perks such as insurance, overtime, medical, two week holidays or free coffee but they also want a relaxing and friendly work environment. In Google nobody is forced to work on a specific time. You can work wherever you want and feel comfortable (Girard , 2009).

The employees can adjust their timing suiting to their needs. Google allows the employees the option to bring their pets at office if they don’t want to leave their pets at home. The company provides free dinner and lunch so the employees doesn’t have to bring a lunch box or tiffin to the office (Jarvis, 2009).  Apart from that, there are many state of the art facilities in Google. These facilities consists of gym, professional masseuse, dry clean laundry, bicycle, massage chair, electronic scooter oil change, the slides and the list goes on (Girard , 2009).  Everything is there what an employee could dream about. If there is anything missing and the employee has other demand, he can share this with the CEO directly. This kind of request may seem crazy, odd and excessive but Google does this also for its employees. Whatever is feasible for the employees, Google allows it. The company tries to satisfy their employees in the best possible manner (Jarvis, 2009).

Talking about the corporate culture and environment, the open policy is reflected deep within the environment of Google. There exists an equality among the employees and there is no discrimination. Google is a multinational company with a diverse workforce culturally. But still the culture is so pleasant and suitable to the employees that the workforce diversity is easily managed (Jarvis, 2009).  In Google, every employee can schedule and plan to meet with the boss or the coworkers. Google shares the information related to the developing direction and programs to its employees. They treat their employees as the most integral part of the company. This makes the employees feels elated and they know that they are being trusted by the corporation (Jarvis, 2009).

 

Factors that determines the Culture of Google

            Google has become one of the most premier place and choice for the employers to work with. It is a dream come true for those who are selected in Google (Landeweerd, Spil & Klein, 2013). There are numerous perks and benefits provided by this company that far outweighs to that of any other corporation. The perks such as free food, demanding work schedule, sleep schedule weekly makes it a heaven. Google focuses most on the wellbeing of their employees (Jarvis, 2009).  These employees are termed as ‘Googlers’. Google  supports its employees and wants them to be healthy, more resilient, well and overall better for the people (Jarvis, 2009).  Google is the place of continuous improvement, innovation and success. The company has found new ways to improve the company’s profits and lowering costs (Landeweerd, Spil & Klein, 2013). This way the company can give back more to its employees. The company has established various work environments such as water place in the kitchen to be visible at sight, gym for the employees to work out, be healthy and also drives down the cost of premiums of health. There are many factors linked to the successful culture of Google and these all merges to form the culture of Google (Jarvis, 2009).

In order to reduce the brain drain from the company, Google has invested heavily in the work of HR departments and invite such professionals of this case, such as Laszlo Bock (former top manager of GE  and now the HR Director of Google). Despite the fact that the brain drain in the company today is only 5%, the number of employees who plan to change employers  22%. At the end of 2002, the staff of Google was to just 700 people. Those who even today continues to work in Google managed to get not only all kinds of awards and grants, but also became the owners of the company. Despite the positive corporate culture, the company employs people who move by inertia, i.e., get paid without spending any grandiose effort (Landeweerd, Spil & Klein, 2013).

In order to solve this problem Google paints its employees career opportunities, establishes a whole group of countervailing incentives, provides employees with bonuses that can amount to several million dollars etc. (Hansell, 2007). Today, Google is planning to introduce a new system of compensation: professionals, successfully working in the company for a long time, will receive non-cash compensation, which they are free to be able to sell on the open market. In this case, the employees will not have any problems with the exchange commissions in the sale of securities. To date, there is no company, which would have introduced a similar scheme (Hansell, 2007).

Another danger for the company is active growth. If your state’s 100 employees, you’ll probably start to feel that in your hands a gang of criminals who want to divide the world between them. And if in your state 10-100 thousand. Employees, the situation is even more complicated (Hansell, 2007). Too many employees after work in Silicon Valley, no longer want to work in a large company, because the embodiment of new ideas in practice can lead to conflict situations. Sergey Brine is very concerned about this issue: If before I could change a few lines of code and run them on the site, I just changed them all (Hansell, 2007).Our users immediately tested them. Today we cannot work this way.  Also, Google’s founders cannot say with certainty how long the company will continue to keep its leading position. Silicon Valley today littered with old IT companies, which are either completely collapsed or are far behind in development. Therefore, Page and Brine decided to build a new corporate culture (Landeweerd, Spil & Klein, 2013).

Conclusion

To sum up, Google is one of the fastest growing and wealthiest company in the world. Google is frequently presented as the organization of ‘Progress’ and is also deemed as a ‘Model’ corporation (Landeweerd, Spil & Klein, 2013).So what lessons businesses learn from the culture of Google? It is that the company has rapidly grown within the span of 11 years’ time to a multinational enterprises. It employs more than 20,000 people globally (Hansell, 2007).The corporation has diversified its business and it is not only a search engine company but also the provider of Internet related services. Many companies are now realizing from the example of Google that employee not only care for the benefits and perks such as insurance, overtime, medical, two week holidays or free coffee but they also want a relaxing and friendly work environment (Hansell, 2007).

Along the years, Google has bought many companies in which one of them is ‘YouTube’. Nothing seems to stop the company from growing and increasing its revenue each year. It has received many awards  like ‘Best Workplace environment’, ‘Best Corporate culture’ etc. Google is the name known to the employees as the place where the employees are motivated and satisfied (Landeweerd, Spil & Klein, 2013). This is the reason why Google is able to retain unique talent and high class professionals. The company has this unique ability to retain the best talent. It is a lucrative company for the top graduates of the universities.

 

References

Girard, B. (2009). The Google way: How one company is revolutionizing management as we know it. No Starch Press.

Hansell, S. (2007). Google keeps tweaking its search engine. New York Times.

Jarvis, J. (2009). What would Google do? (Vol. 48). New York: Collins business.

Landeweerd, M., Spil, T., & Klein, R. (2013). The Success of Google Search, the Failure of Google Health and the Future of Google Plus. In Grand Successes and Failures in IT. Public and Private Sectors (pp. 221-239). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Warnecke, H. J. (2011). The fractal company: a revolution in corporate culture. Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated.