Google's HRM Challenges: Analyzing Sexual Harassment and Misconduct

This report examines the human resource management (HRM) issues that arose at Google following allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against a senior employee, Andy Rubin. The analysis is based on a news article discussing the incident and the subsequent employee walkouts protesting the company's handling of the situation, including a substantial settlement provided to the accused. The report identifies key HRM failures, such as inadequate employee management and a lack of a safe work environment, which led to reputational damage and financial repercussions for Google. It explores the responses of Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, and the demands from employees and organizers for changes in HRM practices, including greater transparency, stricter policies, and increased accountability. The report highlights the importance of robust HRM policies, particularly in addressing issues of harassment and ensuring a fair and safe workplace for all employees, especially in large tech companies. The analysis underscores the need for proactive measures to prevent such incidents and protect organizational performance and reputation.

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HR management

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HRM is one of the important segment of organization and its role in the organizational
functionalities are not only to manage the employees but also to manage their functionalities and
make sure that the rules, regulations, policies and all types of regulations imposed by the
organization are followed by the employees. At workplace, number of issues arises due to
numerous factors and those factors may affect organizational performance, thus, it is necessary
to have an eye over the functionalities of the employees so that organizational performance could
not get affected.
Recently, it has been noticed that the giant tech company Google is facing certain HRM related
issues due to misconduct done by one of their senior employee. Andy Rubin, creator of Android
accused of sexual harassment and misconduct with one of the female employee at the workplace.
As soon as the incident came into the notice of management, he was asked to leave the
organization because it was directly affecting the organizational performance in both financial as
well as in reputational terms.
Sexual harassment issue is one of the trending topics of these days and in relation to this
incident, #metoo campaign has been started by the victims. With the rise in the incidents under
this campaigns, I decided to analyse one of the major issues occurred at the workplace of giant
player of tech industry Google Inc. In relation to this, I have selected a news article published in
the Global News on 1st November 2018 as “Hundreds of Google employees walk out to protest
million-dollar settlements for sexual harassers”. The article was written by Rebeccaa Joseph,
National Online Journalist, Global News. In this article, failures human resource management
will be analysed due to which not only organizational performance is getting affected, but it is
also affecting the reputation of the business across the globe. In relation to this article, major
HRM issues could be recognised as the failure in the management of employees, maintaining a
safe work environment for female employees, thus, it is necessary for the organization make
relevant changes in their HRM policies for making it better in order to reduce the occurrence of
such issues (Joseph, 2018).
After knowing the incident, Google’s Chief Executive Office Sundar Pichai asked Andy Rubin
to resign from the position against compensation $90 million. Since, the action taken by the CEO
of Google, hundreds of people across the globe including the employees of Google walked off

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their jobs to protest against the settlement amount given to the man who was found guilty in the
sexual harassment and misconduct with a female employee at that workplace. Along with this,
the walkout was spreading like the fire in the jungle because both men and women were coming
out on the roads against the complaint of sexism, racism and unchecked executive power at the
workplace. But in the scenario of Google, Andy Rubin was found guilty and after attaining the
proofs for that incident that Andy Rubin, former officer of Google and creator of Android
coerced the female employee at workplace to perform oral sex with him.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google then decided to ask Andy to leave the organization but as per the
Google’s motto “Don’t be evil”, he decided to offer him the exit package to resign from the post
in order to give him a generous exit and publicly lauded his accomplishments. With regards to
this, organization faces lot of issues and criticism from across the globe and in relation to this,
organisers from the globe walked towards the Alphabet, parent company of Google to make
necessary changes in their human resource management practices to make harassment claims a
fairer process along with adding an employee in the board of directors to share internally pay-
equity data (Joseph, 2018).
In relation to this, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google said in a statement that “employees of the
organization have raised certain constructive ideas” and these ideas have ultimately helped the
organization to choose appropriate options in order to take necessary actions. With regards to
this, it could be said that when a giant player of the tech industry could suffer from the issues like
sexual harassment after such huge policies in terms of increasing equality, decreasing
discrimination and a huge diversified workforce, the small and medium scale enterprises would
surely build strict policies in order to deal with these types of issues. Organisers from worldwide
asked Google to submit a publicly report by the end of every year in terms of sexual harassment
statistics along with asking the chief diversity officer to perform its functionalities actively for
reducing such types of incidents.

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References
Joseph, R. (2018). Hundreds of Google employees walk out to protest million-dollar settlements
for sexual harassers. Retrieved from: https://globalnews.ca/news/4618581/walk-out-google-
sexual-harassment/