Strategic Human Resource Management Analysis: Google Company Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Google's Human Resource Management (HRM) practices. It begins by examining Google's recruitment and selection process, highlighting its emphasis on talent and the current interview procedures. The report then delves into Google's strategies for achieving high performance from employees, including training programs and performance management practices. It explores how Google fosters employee commitment through its unique work culture and extensive benefits. The report also addresses potential challenges in cross-cultural management, such as ambiguity, inflexible attitudes, and ethnocentrism, along with other challenges like employee attrition and economic downturns. Finally, the report concludes with recommendations for improving Google's HRM practices, such as streamlining the recruitment process.

Running head: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Strategic Human Resource Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
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Executive summary
The purpose of this report is to analyze the HR practices of the Google Company. This report
will contain the recruitment method of the mentioned organization, methods used by Google to
achieve high performance and effective commitment from the employees, potential issues of the
organization on cross cultural management and other challenges faced by the Google Company.
Apart from analyzing the current HR practices of Google, effective suggestions for improvement
of the HRM practice will be provided in this report.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Part A: Recruiting and selecting new employees........................................................................3
Part B: Achieving high performance from the new employees...................................................5
Part C: Achieving effective commitment from the new employees............................................6
Part D: To highlight any potential issues on cross cultural management....................................8
Part E: Any other challenges you feel relevant to mention.........................................................9
Conclusion and Recommendation:................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
The term Human Resource Management refers to the process of managing Human
resource of an organization. The chief role of this department is to maximize the performance of
the employees so that the strategic objective of the organization can be fulfilled. The HR
department manages the staffs, focusing on the systems and policies of an organization. In this
report, the HRM practices of Google Inc. have been discussed. This report includes the
recruitment method of the mentioned organization, method used by Google to achieve high
performance and effective commitment from the employees, Potential issues of the organization
on cross cultural management and other challenges faced by Google. Apart from analyzing the
current HR practices of Google, effective suggestions for improvement of the HRM practice
have also been provided in this report.
Discussion
Part A: Recruiting and selecting new employees
Considering the fact that while recruiting an employee, Google focuses more on his talent
rather than specific skill sets of the employee. In the past, the HR department of the mentioned
organization used to conduct 29 interviews before granting an offer letter to a candidate (Finkle
2012). However, currently, Google conduct 4 to 9 interviews. The current HR practice of Google
is provided below:
Current HR Practices:

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1. Resume screening: Each and every resume are checked on the basis of educational
qualification, experience and technical requirements in order to ensure potential fit. Each
year the company receives approximately 1 million resumes.
2. Phone Screening: The selected candidates are contacted through phone calls and the job
profile of the position he or she has been selected for is thoroughly explained. If the
candidate is an engineer, college GPA and SAT score of the candied is asked.
3. On Site Interview: The duration of the first interview is approximately 45 minutes and it
is conducted with 4 to 5 candidates per round. Apart from general intelligence-related
questions, candidates are asked to solve technical issues by coding solutions or by white
boarding a design (Bal, Kooij and De Jong 2013).
4. Interview feedback: The interview feedback for each and every candidate is submitted
and a numerical numbering is assigned.
5. Hiring committee: This committee consists of senior directors, managers and
experienced staffs from the domain. They follow the mission of Google to appoint
suitable employee for a specific position. The responsibility of this committee includes
reviewing the resume, feedback and work experience of each employee before short
listing.
6. Executive review: After the above mentioned review, senior level management of
Google reviews every resume.
7. Compensation Committee: This committee determines whether the job role should be
offered to the selected candidates or not.
8. Final executive review: In this step, the top executives go through all the offer letters
before employing the candidates.

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9. Offer Letter: Finally, offer letters stating all details related to the job profile are sent to
the selected candidates.
Part B: Achieving high performance from the new employees
In order to enhance the productivity and performance of the newly appointed employees,
Google provides special training and performance management programs. In order to design an
ideal training program, the company analyzes specific needs of each employee in order to
support an innovative workforce. The results of the training programs are evaluated on a daily
basis to ensure that the requirement of the human resource is met properly. In addition to the
training, the above mentioned organization also has effective performance management practices
which directly fulfil the HRM corporate objectives.
Analyzing training needs
In order to analyze the needs of the new employees, the HR professionals undergo work
analysis, cost-benefit analysis and organizational analysis. While work analysis deals with
capability and efficiency of the new employees to fulfil the job role assigned to each of them,
cost benefit analysis determines the practicality of the training activities (Chun et al.2013). The
organizational analysis includes analysis of the human resource requirements for conducting an
effective training session.
Designing training program
The HR management of Google uses both result oriented approach and relational model for
designing an effective training program. While the chief focus of the relational model is the
relationship of the employees with the company, the result oriented approach focuses on the
training outcomes. In order to enhance the participation of the employees in innovative and

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creative processes, Google maintains a strong and positive internal relation. For instance, while
implementing a training program, the approach used by the mentioned company is ‘providing
learning faction to the employees’. This approach ensures better employee-company relationship.
Delivery
The company delivers training to its new employees in various ways like simulations,
discussion and on-job-training. Discussion helps the HR management to maintain effective
communication with the staffs. Rich communication, in turn, ensures maximum feedbacks from
the trainees. Simulation is used by Google to empower the new employees to understand their
projects, products and work tasks efficiently (Yan and Chan 2012). Finally, on the job training is
provided to ensure that maximum knowledge is transferred to the new interns.
Part C: Achieving effective commitment from the new employees
The work culture of the company is unique and is totally different from the typical
corporate culture of its competitors. The Googolplex looks more like an adult's playground than
a workplace and this is considered to the secret behind the huge success of the company (De
Dreu et al. 2012). One of the chief reasons behind the commitment of the majority of the
employees is the huge number of facilities provided by the company to the employees. Some of
the mention-worthy benefits provided by Google to its employees are:
 Free breakfast, lunch and supper
 Free dental and health checkups
 Free dry cleaning
 Free Haircuts
 Subsidized Massages

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 Swimming pool and Gym facilities
 Nap Pods
 Video games, ping pong and football playing facilities
 Car subsidies
 On-site physicians
 Death Benefits
Google welcomes its new employees with a warm greeting. According to researchers,
heartwarming greeting notes enhance the chance of employee commitment by 15 percent
(Steiber and Alänge 2013). Besides that, Google put more emphasis on informal ways of
meeting than conventional ways. The managers conduct meeting in diner booths in place of
conference rooms. According to the HR manager of Google, informal environment helps the new
employees to show their creativity more efficiently (Leekha and Sharma 2014). These facilities
not only act as a major employee retention strategy but also provide the company with major
competitive advantage in the global market. Besides that such employee friendly culture and
perfect work-life balance makes the employees of Google highly committed to the Company.
The HR management of Google believes that commitment of the employees is the key to
success.
In spite of the fact that Google has its name in the list of one of the best place to work, the
company has lost hundreds of its employees to its major competitors like Facebook and
Microsoft. Several employees have left the organization to start their own business.

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Part D: To highlight any potential issues on cross cultural management
One of the most important factors to achieve success in the global market is effective
cross cultural communication. Being a multinational company, Google Inc. needs to engage with
partners and consumers around the world and hence require skills to manage intercultural
expectation and contexts. Some of the major potential issues on cross cultural management faced
by the company include:
 Ambiguity
Considering the fact that Google has several numbers of branches across the world, issues
associated with cultural diversity can impose a negative impact on the productivity of the
company. The culture of a certain country defines the way of thinking, hearing and looking at a
situation of employees who reside in that country. Even if the language is same, the same word
carries different meanings in different culture (Fawad 2012). The problem increases when the
languages are different and translation is needed. Besides that, when individuals of different
cultures come together, being unaware of the difference in cultural values and communicational
styles of each other, they tend to assume certain things. Hence situations are created where the
listener develops an incorrect perspective about the delivered information. This can happen in the
case of Google which will certainly affect the productivity of the organization.
 Inflexible attitude
Some of the employees face difficulties while experiencing and appreciating the culture
of the host country. This causes closed mindset and introvert behavior which in turn convey the
message to the host country that visitor are not accepting their culture. Google being a
multinational company can also face the same issue. If employees of Google are not able to

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accept the culture of each other, teamwork will be highly hampered (Thomas and Peterson
2017). As a result, the productivity of the company will decrease causing a decrease in the
overall revenue of the company. On the other hand, if an effective relationship is not established
between the employees and the management, the company will be able to understand the
requirements of the consumers of the country. Thus the brand Equity and consumer loyalty of
Google will be hampered.
 Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism can be defined the concept of an individual that his culture is superior to
other cultures of the world. Considering the fact that ethnocentrism is an unconscious behavior
the cross cultural management of Google may find it difficult to prevent this in advance (Moran,
Abramson and Moran 2014).
Part E: Any other challenges you feel relevant to mention
Apart from the potential issues that Google may face in near future, one of the major
challenges faced by Google was a huge number of employee terminations due to recession.
Throughout 2008 and 2009, Google laid off approximately 25 percent of its employees along
with cutting of 200 positions due to recession. This step was taken to save costs and deal
efficiently with the economic crisis during recession. Google have recorded limited position of
supervisors, the changing enterprising spirit and the fact that Google’s competitors are buying
the experienced employees of the company by offering them a huge salary and lucrative terms
and conditions (Mor, Morris and Joh 2013). Another potential issue that Google may face in near
future is employee attrition. Since the majority of employees working in Google are highly
talented, a good number of competitors of the company try to hire them by offering lucrative

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salary and facilities. Moreover, several employees, after gaining experience from Google, leaves
the company to start a business of their own (Hancock et al. 2013).
Conclusion and Recommendation:
From the above discussion, it can be clearly understood that the HRM practices of
Google are highly efficient and hence the company is considered to be one of the best companies
to work across the world. The recruitment and selection strategy of Google is strong enough to
recruit the best candidates out of millions of application (Vaiman, Scullion and Collings 2012).
However, the whole process of recruitment is quite time consuming. Hence, instead of
conducting 4 to 9 interviews per candidate, the HR managers of Google should recruit
employees by conducting 2 to 3 interview sessions. The strategy of Google to train its new
employees is highly effective and that can be clearly understood from the success of the
company in the international market. However, when it comes to commitment of the employees
and the potential cross cultural issues that can affect the revenue of the company in the near
future, Google needs to follow the following recommendations to cope up with the negative
consequences of the above mentioned issues.
 Considering the fact that Google recruits highly talented employees who have high
demand I the international market, in order to enhance the commitment of the employees,
Google must sign a long term contract with the new employees that will hamper the
process of leaving the organization due to tempting offers from other organization (Bal,
Kooij and De Jong 2013).
 In order to solve the potential issues related to the cross cultural management of Google,
the HR manager should implement training session for the employees on understanding

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and respecting other cultures, before they are transferred to a branch of Google located in
a different country (Jiang et al. 2012).