ERI 260 Case Assignment

Dilpreet Sidhu 996977785 June 11, 2012 University of Toronto

Introduction There are various factors that can determine whether a particular organization will thrive and be successful or fail to reach its potential. Perhaps no other factor is as crucial to an organizations success as employee engagement. Employee engagement is essentially concerned with the satisfaction and motivation of employees. Having employees who are highly satisfied with their jobs is beneficial for an organization resulting in higher performance, lower turnover and absenteeism, and greater customer satisfaction and profit. Similarly, employee motivation is also strongly linked to performance and absenteeism. Thus, when a business is failing to meet expectations, OB theorists and consultants often look to improve employee engagement within the organization. Due to lack of sufficient work experience from the author, this case assignment will be examining employee dissent and poor engagement at Google, as demonstrated by the article Why Google Employees Quit (http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-googleemployees-quit/). The article contains a series of e-mails from former Google employees sharing their poor experiences working at Google and detailing the factors that led to them leaving. Google is an American corporation that provides a variety of services for people and businesses. Google provides a variety of tools to help businesses of all kinds succeed on and off the web (advertising programs, cloud computing tools). Google also builds products that make the web experience better (Chrome, Android) by making it simpler and faster for people to do what they want to online. Google was founded in 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who met at Stanford University in 1995. The companys mission statement and goal is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google values its employees, hiring people who are smart and determined and favour ability over experience. Its employees are diverse in their languages, educational background, and experiences. Google strives to maintain an open culture in which everyone is a hands-on contributor and feels comfortable

sharing ideas and opinions (http://www.google.ca/intl/en/about/company/) Analysis In the article Why Google Employees Quit, former employees discuss various reasons for leaving the organization as well as the shortcomings of Google. Essentially, employee engagement and motivation is low due to various factors including: low pay relative to what employees could earn elsewhere, low fringe benefits, too much bureaucracy, poor management, poor mentoring, and a long hiring process. Initially employees thought that they would be working their dream job and enter the promised land but most of them ended up disappointed, with the job failing to meet their expectations, experiencing a honeymoon hangover phase. Discrepancy theory examines the discrepancy between job outcomes wanted vs. perceived to be obtained. In this case, job outcomes perceived to be obtained do not match up with job outcomes wanted. Due to Googles pristine image and immense reputation as innovators of the world, many employees perhaps may have entered the organization with grandeur visions of changing the world, but this is often far from the case. I had all these big ideas I could do if I ever worked there. Once inside, you have 18 000 other Googlers thinking the same things. This is largely due to Googles stringent and thorough hiring process, hiring only the best of the best. Google tends to value employees with extra education (masters, Ph.D), resulting in people that are overqualified to work at Google and whose abilities are largely underutilized. Thus, in a competitive environment where all your co-workers are creative, original, and open to experiences, the work environment can seem daunting and overwhelming to new employees or graduates. Often times, this may result in a lack of diversity in the workforce resulting in similar ideas in thinking and perceptions. Googles hiring process contains errors in all stages beginning from the resume stage up until the interview and recruitment phase. For one, Googles hiring

process is too long and drawn-out. This may be understandable since Google only wants to hire those at the top of their fields resulting in a higher skilled workforce and a lower rate of attrition. However, Google needs to understand that good engineers and software developers are in high demand and are aggressively recruited by many companies that offer more money. For many employees the hiring process can take up to five months. This can be especially problematic when a prospective employee is leaving an already established career and perhaps moving cities or even states. Furthermore, Google involves top level executives and management directly in the hiring process, which is a huge waste of time and mismanagement of resources. For example, Google co-founder Larry Page is often involved in reviewing resumes. During the interview process, Google tends to rely on perceptual biases and heuristics to select employees. In one case, Google relied heavily on contrast effects to hire an employee, I flubbed my first coding pretty bad but after it was clear that no one on my interview loop had enough experience or knowledge as me. Reliance on such heuristics often results in a poorer quality workforce and workers that are underqualified for the job. Google also maintains a minimum cap of 3.8 GPA when interviewing prospective employees, favouring potential abilities and skill over actual experience. Googles interview questions also lack sophistication and pertinence to the job. For example, recruiters often ask brain teasers and trivia questions. Lastly, when an employee is finally hired, there is very minimum formal mentoring involved, which may lead to psychosocial issues as well as career problems. Another factor that can be attributed to Googles low employee engagement is the fact that Google pays relatively lower to similar software and technology corporations and offers fewer fringe benefits. Google should realize that in order to attract top talent, they have to be willing to spend money to attract such workers away from orporations who are willing to invest more resources in them. The key problem with Google

seems to be that it cares too much about cost efficiency and saving money. For example, in order for Google benefits to be equal to Microsoft, it would cost an additional $22 million/year. For some organizations this would seem like a non-feasible option but for Google, whose net profit is $11.6 billion (2011), this is less than 1% of the organizations income. Whenever Google has been questioned on its employees relatively low pay, Google consistently relies on its prestige and image to justify the pay, People dont work at Google for the money, they work there because they want to change the world. This is a noble cause but if Google wants to continue to change the world, its employees have to be satisfied and motivated. Equity Theory is directly related to motivation as it involves the comparison of input and outcomes of your job to others whether they be co-workers, or people with similar jobs in other organizations. Thus, if Google employees are comparing themselves to Microsoft employees or Apple employees, theyre going to feel as if theyve drawn the short end of the stick and perceive a lack of distributive fairness. Recommendations Engagement levels at Google can be raised through certain interventions. First and foremost, Googles hiring process needs to be revamped to make the transition from an employees previous job to Google that much easier. During the recruitment and hiring process, Google should place a greater emphasis on pursuing top talent as quickly and efficiently as possible. Googles current strategy of playing hard to get is in no way beneficial to the organization as the engineers and developers they are looking to hire are in very high demand and can often find work very quickly. Googles reliance on skilled and talented workers is especially important particularly in a technological field which demands constant innovation and product enhancement. Thus, it should be Google begging employees to come work for them, rather than the current situation. The hiring process is usually the first interaction between a prospective

employee and an organization and so it is crucial to present a favourable first impression of the organization. One way this can be done is to reduce the time involved in the lengthy hiring process. The problem may be that Google is simply searching for the best available talent and by reducing the hiring process, their workforce would diminish in quality. However, this is not necessarily the case. Google could perhaps create a certain screening process whereby they use criteria for determining exactly what they are looking for in an employee. Those employees-tobe that meet the criteria get to advance further on in the hiring process, and those that do not are removed from the job search. For example, Google could perhaps administer personality tests or job compatibility tests to determine whether an individual would be suited for the position. As for the actual interview and recruitment process, Google has many issues that can easily be corrected. For one, having top level executives such as co-founder Larry Page involved in reviewing resumes is unnecessary and a waste of resources. Only Googles HR department and recruiters should be involved in the selection and hiring of employees. However, the inherent problem with Google is that its human resources department is severely lacking and is perhaps the organizations weak point. All of the recruiters were contractors, even though Google showed no signs of slowing down hiring. This led to old recruiters spending more time training new recruiters resulting in the long hiring process. If Google wants to identify and select only the best candidates, then perhaps it would be wise to hire full-time recruiters who are invested in the organizations success and well-being and can be held responsible for their consequences. Furthermore, it would be wise to have recruiters who are aware of the organizations culture and values, and be able to distinguish a good candidate from an excellent one. One of the consequences of having a weak recruiting department is the fact that they will tend to rely on heuristics and biases when hiring individuals. For example, Googles recruiters used contrast

effects when hiring employees as well as asking non-pertinent questions unrelated to the job. In addition to hiring full time recruiters, Google could also seek to improve the validity of interviews. For example, the questions being asked should not only be relevant to the job (question sophistication) but they should be consistent, in which the same questions are asked in the same order to every candidate. In addition, to reduce hiring times, Google should standardize their evaluation by creating numeric scores or criteria for all questions, as mentioned before. This would help Google determine exactly who the best candidates are and what makes them the best. Another problem is that Google seeks to hire employees with extra education, leaving people overqualified and underutilized for their jobs. Job satisfaction will usually suffer if people do not feel as if their work is mentally challenging and if they are not being adequately compensated. Rather than emphasizing GPA and education, Google should place a greater focus on previous work experiences. By hiring employees whose experiences match the job description, not only will the employee be proficient and know what to expect but productivity in the workplace will increase overall. Another major problem with Google is the low pay they offer employees relative to other big corporations. Google should realize that the basis of its operations directly depends on its employees and in order to lure away the top talent, they need to be able to spend and invest in employees. By bringing the perks on par with similar competitors, it will bring down the attrition level and increase job satisfaction. For example, by offering Employee Stock Ownership Plans, which allow employees to own a set of the companys shares, employees will have a greater stake in the organization as well as something to look forward to. Google can also offer retirement benefit plans, insurance plans, vacation days etc. However, the greatest motivator would be money. If Google continues to rely on hiring those who want to change the world, then it should be ready to compensate its greatest innovators. Googles best option would

be to create a system in which only the team/group that comes up with the idea/innovation gets a portion of the profit (gain sharing). This would help create much more competition in the environment leading to greater innovation as well as just compensation. This would give Google greater control and reward only those that are actively contributing, while at the same time still maintaining the cost efficiency Google demands. Validation Google should make a good first impression on prospective employees. Signalling theory states that job applicants interpret their recruitment experiences as cues or signals about what it is like to work in an organization. Therefore, it is crucial for Google to make the hiring process as friendly and efficient as possible. The first impression usually does last the longest due to our perceptual tendencies; constancy is a tendency to always perceive a person/organization the same way as the first time you met. Thus, if an employee likes the interviewer and has a favourable impression of the organization, they will be more inclined to stay and work harder. Many of these issues in interviews can be eliminated by improving validity through: question consistency, question sophistication, question consistency, and rapport building. As for Googles money issue, increasing pay for top employees (gain sharing) would be beneficial since money is the greatest motivator, satisfying nearly all of Maslows needs. Similarly, discrepancy theory provides evidence that when theres a small gap between pay you expect and pay you receive, satisfaction will increase regardless of other factors. As a result of this increase in pay, employees will perceive a sense of distributive fairness, and according to equity theory, comparisons of input/outcomes to similar workers will now be seen as fair. Furthermore, by explaining the process used (gain sharing) to determine pay, employees will also perceive procedural fairness.

Works Cited
Arrington, M. (2009, January 18). Why google employees quit. Tech Crunch, Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-quit/ Brin, S. (n.d.). Organize the world. Retrieved from http://www.google.ca/intl/en/about/company/ Johns, G., & Saks, A. (2011). Organizational behaviour: Understanding and managing life at work. (8 ed.). Pearson Education Canada. Pitek, J. (2012). Organizational Behaviour [Powerpoint Slides]. Retrieved from http://www.portal.utoronto.ca