Managing Human Resources at Google Singapore

This report discusses the human resource management practices of Google Singapore, including HR planning, job analysis, job design, recruitment and selection, legal ethics, and safety policies. It provides insight into the challenges faced by the HR department and how they proactively manage the workforce. The report also highlights Google's effective job design strategies and its simple yet effective recruitment and selection process.

Running Head: Managing Human Resources
Executive Summary
Google is a US
based MNC
pioneering in the market of internet services and products. The company is perceived as one of the
best places to work in the entire world. The Human resources practices of Google are second only to
none. The firm believes that its employees are the biggest asset and everything else revolves around
it. All the policies of Human resources are deflected on how to keep an employee happy, motivated
and associate himself with Google for a longer time. Google has a very cogent way of interviewing
and selecting its candidate; its process is different from other tech companies and is a
comprehensive process to evaluate a candidate. Google hires its employee on the basis of his
presence of mind and attention to detail and come up with simple solution to tackle even the
complex situation.
In the report it is also described about the job analysis and design of work for the employees of
Google. This report is an accumulation of Best human resource practices, strategic human resource,
HR planning, Recruitment, selection, Job analysis and job designing. Reading the report will provide
useful insight on the challenges faced by the HR department and how proactively HR functions to
avoid any challenges pertaining to the human resources.
Google Singapore
Managing Human Resource

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 1
Table of Content:
Executive Summary...............................................................................................................................1
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
HRM, Strategic HRM & HR Planning......................................................................................................4
Legal Ethics & Safety..............................................................................................................................5
Job analysis............................................................................................................................................6
Job Design..............................................................................................................................................7
Recruitment and Selection Process at Google Singapore:.....................................................................8
Conclusion:............................................................................................................................................8
References:............................................................................................................................................9

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 2
Introduction
Google, based in Mountain View, California is world’s most popular search engine; it is multinational
firm pioneering in internet services and products. The company was founded in the year 1998 and
has been one of the most revolutionary inventions ever since. The company has changed the outlook
and usage of internet ever since its inception (Star Hub, 2017). The company started as a search
engine company but later created businesses like Google drive, Gmail, Google+, YouTube and Google
pixel smartphone and many more. Sunder Pichai is leading the organization and is managing a
workforce of some 75,000 odd people (Channel News Asia, 2016)
Google Singapore started its journey back in 2007 and ever since it has moved to a team of 1000 odd
people and counting. Under the leadership of Joanna Flint the firm has come a long way. Capturing
the interest of young mind is what Google Singapore is targeting at next. Its computer science and
computational thinking course specifically aims to deliver trainings to 3000 underprivileged children
between the ages of 8-15 years (Channel News Asia, 2017).
In this report, it will be discussed about human resource management practices of Google
Singapore, legal ethics and safety of its employees, along with this will also see in detail about HR
planning in terms of analysis and design of work and recruitment and selection. This report will help
us understand and analyse the HR practices at Google and how they effective plan and manage the
workforce in context to their job selection and recruitment.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 3
HRM, Strategic HRM & HR Planning
HRM can be understood as a function in the organization which is designed to maximize the
performance of employees in services of an employer’s strategic objectives. It is the process of
recruitment and selecting employee, facilitating induction, T&D, assessment of the performance of
employee, appraisal, handling the compensation and benefits, motivating the employees,
maintaining good and healthy relations with employees and trade unions, maintaining employee
safety, welfare and healthy measures in compliance with the labour laws (Google Singapore, 2017)
HRM includes:
 Conducting job analysis
 Planning of personnel needs
 Recruitment & Selection
 Orientation, induction and training
 Providing benefits and incentives
 Appraising performance
 Solving disputes
 Communication with employees(Ingham & Ulrich, 2016)
In the similar manner Strategic Human Resource Management can be understood as the practice
deployed to understand, reward and retain employees for the benefits of both the employees and
employer and the organization as a whole. The goals of human resource department reflect and
support the goals of rest of the organization. HRM strategies guide personnel decisions which ensure
the best fit for the organization. Google is one of the best companies to work with according to one
of the recent survey; the company does numerous activities to keep its employees highly motivated
and is one of the best paymasters in the industry (Mak, Ho & Kim, 2014). The company has a team of
HR executives and experts who are consistently working to improve the working conditions of its
employees and strengthen the process of recruitment and selection. HR department in Google is
called as “People operations” and the people management decisions at Google are guided by the
powerful “People analytics team” (Google Careers, 2017)

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 4
Legal Ethics & Safety
Google is a company which focuses on its legal and safety practices all across the globe. Google
Singapore is no such exception. The company follows multiple practices in context to its legal, ethics
and safety policies and practices which reinstate the aforesaid argument.
Ethics and compliance report to the Google compliance steering committee which involves Google
officers to the rank of- VP’s and above and they have Google audit committee which involves
executive and board members. Google strongly believes in preserving the confidentiality of its
innovation and culture (LinkedIn, 2017) The Company’s confidentiality clause is spread across:
 Securing, labelling and properly disposing confidential material of Google.
 Safeguarding the information Google receives from other non-disclosure agreements.
 Keeping the trade and intellectual property secret (Business Insider, 2011)
Google respect its competition and in ode to compete with them fairly they keep the information of
the competition confidential. Google’s policy says that if information comes across an employee he
is supposed to contact the legal department at the earliest. Along with this, the company has
maintained its reputation for generosity with its employee benefits and openness with confidential
information shared with the company, hence the employees are taught about need the need to
maintain and keep the assets in best of its quality (New York Times, 2016)
Some other laws and practices pertaining to legal ethical and safety practices are:
 Intellectual Property-Google has stringent rights concerning its software development and
its innovative products. A high scrutiny and laws are placed against it to protect the same.
 Company equipment-Google provides technology advanced equipment’s to its employees
for their usage and the employees are expected to keep them and return them in best of
quality possible.
 The Network-Google’s security policy takes care of all its Network and hardware issues. If an
employee feels that his laptop, mobile or any such tool or information is compromised they
can report it and save the information from being leaked.
 Physical Security
 Use of Google equipment and facility
 Employee data-Google collects and stores the data of the employees across the globe; the
data can be accessed only on line with the help of Google internal policies and is in guidance
to Google’s data classification and employment data guidelines(Noor, Khalid & Rashid,2016)

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 5
 Ensuring financial integrity and responsibility-Google maintains a system of internal controls
to reinforce the compliance with legal, accounting, tax and other regulatory requirements in
every location they operate.
 Competition laws
 Insider trading laws
 Anti-bribery laws
 Non-Government laws
 Dealing with government officials(Marler & Fisher,2013)
Job analysis
At Google Singapore the jobs are in the field of operations, marketing, finance and legal and there
are almost 76 positions open. Google is looking for candidates who are qualified and smart enough
to drive their individual job roles. At Google Singapore, the employees are called Singagooglers, and
the company provides them with an amazing work culture and opportunities to learn and grow
(Panmore Institute, 2017)
Singapore has a great diversity in culture owing to the presence of four official languages, and hence
the diversity in Google Singapore. In this report the we would discuss about the position of Sales
lead guy for its Google plus business operations in south East Asian market.
The role of the sales lead guy is to bring in more business by serving the existing customers and
getting new customers on the board. Google plus is lagging in the south East Asian market, and
hence the sales lead guy has to roll up his sleeves and work on increasing the brand value and recall
of its business. The position requires the candidate to be absolutely well versed with the existing and
new technology, must have experience in selling tech services or selling products on the similar lines,
and must and should have worked on Google tools like Maps, G suite, search and chrome. Another
skill which is expected out of the candidate is the ability to motivate the corporate, government and
school on the use of Google tools and push them to use them in their respective organizations
Moreover the candidate will be responsible for managing the P&L for Google plus in the south East
Asian market, Google does that to make the candidate responsible and driven. The candidate will
have to target the financial institutions and sell the services on the USP of scalability, reliability &
security.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 6
Job Design
Job designing is the process of arrangement and rearrangement of the jobs in order to make the
employees feel motivated and come to work happily. The idea behind job design is to provide
employees with non-monetary benefits like satisfaction at work, positive working environment
which would eventually lead to increased productivity at work. (Dick & Carey, 2014)
Google is a master when it comes to Job design; the company has been effortless doing the exercise
for over a decade and the world looks to copy its practice in their organizations. Some of the
strategies used by Google are:
 Number of Employees: Google does an extensive research to set an optimum number of
employees at its workplace. The company ensures that any department of the organization
is not over staffed or understaffed, they use a mechanism to match the supply and demand
of each department and hire accordingly. This practice at Google is extremely effective and
works positively for them(Business Insider, 2015)
 Happy working place: Google is known as one of happiest place to work; Google ensures
than every person who works is happy and content and is at another pedestal of satisfaction.
This is ensured by providing the employees with work flexibility, choice of work, work from
home, amazing gadgets and also comfortable furniture ad nap pods(Cascio, 2015)
 Monetary benefits: Google is one of the best pay masters; this can be owed to its
understanding of the concept of employee motivation. Google wants its employees to just
focus on the work and leave the rest to the organization. Health benefits, legal benefits,
vacation benefits, brilliant insurance plans etc. are some of the monetary benefits the
company provides to its employees (Fortune, 2012)
 Non-Monetary benefits: These are the benefits which cannot be valued in terms of money
but are the additional benefits over and above the regular monetary benefits. Some
examples of these benefits are free food, game rooms, Lego room, movie rooms etc.
Recruitment and Selection Process at Google Singapore:
Google is one company which is the dream of every tech enthusiast, or any person who has even
heard the name of Google. It is not an astonishing fact for Google, but it sure is important for the
purpose of report to state that every year the company gets over 3 million job applications for its
various positions. The HR does a great job in hand picking the best candidates out of millions and

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 7
makes them Googlers (Bryson, James & Keep, 2013). As opposed to what people might think, the
hiring at Google is very simple 3 step process:
 Apply: Google does not believe in associating with any third party vendor like job portals or
hiring consultancy for hiring. It posts the jobs on its website and interested candidates have
to apply for the job position on the website, submit the job application. A team reviews all
the job applications and hand picks the ones they deem fit for the organization(Boards,
2017)
 Interview: Once the resume is shortlisted, representative interviews the candidate either
face to face or by the tools of virtual communication, preferably the hangout. The first round
of interview last for about 45-60 mins and it revolves around checking the skill set of the
candidate in logical, analytical, coding, decision making and overall general information
about the tech world. The interview process sounds lengthy but the interviewer puts in great
effort to make the candidate relaxed and try to extract the best from them(Shackleton,
2015)
 Decide: After the application process and few rounds of interview, the executive team at
Google reviews all the candidatures and selects the best fitted candidate for the job. It is a
joint decision of the department head, HR manager and the VP of the business function. The
decision is the result of assessment of all the rounds the candidate has under gone with
different weightage associated with each round. On deciding the candidates are informed
via email and asked to be part of Google Family(Freivalds & Seibel, 2013)
Conclusion:
Google is one of the finest companies to work with and the same has been reiterated by the
research and the awards it receives year on year for providing one of the best cultures and working
environment. Google is made by Googlers and Googlers are found by an effective HR department
which consistently keeps on innovating their hiring practices and look out for the best candidates
across the globe. At Google, they always believe in nurturing the talent and hence keep a resource
pool ready for the future, by this they can safeguard the future of the company and build the skills
they are looking for in a candidate.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 8
Google Singapore has replicated all the polices of the headquarters and is doing a fantastic job with
its HR policies in Singapore, one of the prime reasons for the growth of Google Singapore is the
effective HR department who does everything to keep up the great work at Google and spread
positivity in and around the environment
References:
Board, G. (2017). RECRUITMENT & SELECTION.
Bryson, J., James, S., & Keep, E. (2013). Recruitment and selection. Managing human resources.
Human Resource Management in transition, 125-149.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 9
Business Dictionary, 2017, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/job-design.html, viewed
on 4 December, 2017.
Business Insider, 2011, http://www.businessinsider.com/how-segment-focus-can-increase-revenue-
growth-2011-8?IR=T, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Business Insider, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.in/The-amazing-perks-of-working-at-Google/
articleshow/49046272.cms, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Business Insider, 2016, http://www.businessinsider.in/Googles-HR-boss-explains-the-companys-4-
rules-for-hiring-the-best-employees/articleshow/51048044.cms, viewed on 4 December,
2017.
Cascio, W. F. (2015). Strategic HRM: Too important for an insular approach. Human Resource
Management, 54(3), 423-426.
Channel News Asia, 2016, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/google-moves-to-
new-office-in-singapore-to-house-growing-team-7686728, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Channel News Asia, 2017, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/google-wifi-lands-in-
singapore-with-starhub-as-exclusive-partner-9164220, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Cleverism, 2014, https://www.cleverism.com/google-way-motivating-employees/, viewed on 4
December, 2017.
Dick, W & Carey, J. O. (2014). The systematic design of instruction. Pearson Higher Ed.
Fast Company, 2013, https://www.fastcompany.com/3007268/not-happy-accident-how-google-
deliberately-designs-workplace-satisfaction, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Fortune, 2012, http://fortune.com/2012/02/24/inside-googles-recruiting-machine/, viewed on 4
December, 2017.
Freivalds, A., & Niebel, B. (2013). Niebel's Methods, Standards, & Work Design. Mcgraw-Hill higher
education.
Google Careers, 2017, https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/decide/, viewed on 4 December,
2017.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 10
Google Careers, 2017, https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/sales-lead-google-maps-
large-customer-singapore-2698880377&, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Google Careers, 2017,
https://careers.google.com/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jl=1.352083%3A103.8198360000
0001%3ASingapore%3ASG%3A
%3A20.274207235868648%3ACOUNTRY&jld=10&yes&jcoid=7c8c6665-81cf-4e11-8fc9-
ec1d6a69120c&jcoid=e43afd0d-d215-45db-a154-5386c9036525&, viewed on 4 December,
2017.
Google Singapore, 2017, https://careers.google.com/locations/sing/, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Ingham, J & Ulrich, D. (2016). Building better HR departments. Strategic HR Review, 15(3), 129-136.
LinkedIn, 2017, https://sg.linkedin.com/jobs/google-jobs, viewed on 4 December, 2017.
Mak, A.K.Y., Ho, S.S. and Kim, H.J., 2014. Factors related to employers’ intent to hire, retain and
accommodate cancer survivors: the Singapore perspective. Journal of occupational
rehabilitation, 24(4), pp.725-731.
Marler, J. H., & Fisher, S. L. (2013). An evidence-based review of e-HRM and strategic human
resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 23(1), 18-36.
Noor, A. N. M., Khalid, S. A., & Rashid, N. R. N. A. (2016). The Relationship Between Human Resource
Diversity Management Practices and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. In Proceedings of
the 1st AAGBS International Conference on Business Management 2014 (AiCoBM 2014)(pp.
355-365). Springer, Singapore.
Panmore Institute, 2017, http://panmore.com/google-hrm-hr-planning-job-analysis-design, viewed
on 4 December, 2017.
Shackleton, V. (2015). Recruitment and Selection. Elements of Applied Psychology, 153.
Star Hub, 2017, http://www.starhub.com/personal/promotions/google-wifi.html, viewed on 4
December, 2017.

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 11

Managing Human Resources P a g e | 12