The story is a bit old but may be the analysis will be not.As all of you might be knowing that Google topped the Fortune's list of "100 Best companies to work for" again this year, let us analyze Google in this perspective.
Employee's Perspective:
The first factor that makes Google to top the list is the college like environment in the Googleplex. There is nothing like dress code there. Sergey Brin and Larry Page , they themselves just in their early 30's know the youth pulse and as majority of employees there are from the new young generation, this clicks very well among the employees.
The Google employees (called Googlers,in Google's jargon) hold their pride in saying they work for the best company in the world.The company has taken measures about not letting the employees go off their pride.The company's policy allows their employers to say proudly that they are working "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"(from Google's corporate overview) , instead of saying they are "coding" or "selling ads" .That makes them proud of themselves.
At Googleplex(Google's campus) , Googlers have facilities like beach volleyball,soccer,videogames,pool tables and png pong.They even play roller hockey twice a week.This makes the employers really feel like they are at college campus, instead of being in an office.
The workplace at Google is so comforting that it reminds me of the work environment shown to the employees in the movie "AntiTrust".Of course, I meant it just in the workspace environment.
The other factor which might seem silly is that Google provides free meals to all employees at their café (known as "Charlie's Place").The food is seemingly very nice that it made Genentech(company which was no.1 in the above ratings before Google and is the inspiration for Google's culture) CEO and Google board member Art Levinson say, "Here I am a guy who can afford a good meal, and every time I go to a Google board meeting, I don't leave until ten o'clock at night because I get a free dinner there". There are also free doctors,swimming spa,washing machines etc there.
All Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them.This makes their work far from turning monotonous and makes them enjoy their work.
Employer's Perspective:
What it takes to create a college like environment in the company is just a bit of informality added to the offices and as Google is not a kind of business where there's a direct interaction with the customers ,they can afford his without loosing the feel of officialness. In return, what you get is an innovative employees instead of those age old traditional ones .And as Google runs on innovation, it surely helps.
There is not much of effort to be put in enhancing the employees' pride.But when it comes to the talk of the company among aspiring employees , it does a huge impact and makes the brains vie for job at Google.So they have a wide range of job seekers to select from.
The operational costs of Google form 30% of their revenues (taken from 2007 Q4 results ).That's not a very high number.So it proves that to provide facilities like free meals,sports,good workspace environment etc., it doesn't cost much for them.But in return there's a high range of employee satisfaction. When an employee is offered to jump to some other high paying companies ,they would surely interrogate about the availability of these facilities there.So the company can never far about the major problem of software companies - "Employee migration".
Though the allocation of 20% time on individual projects may seem loss of work time, if you know that some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors, you wouldn't dare to say that again.The advantage is as they are developed in Google itself,the Googlers would prefer it to sell to Google ,rather than some other high offering company.This way evolution of new Google products is made possible.
Google's release of IPO has made many of Googlers millionaires making it the company with mots number of millionaires. The Googlers who are holding the stocks know well about the company.So they won't go for short term selling resulting in the rise of GOOG's share price.As majority of Google's 271million shares are with Googlers (source -Wikipedia) , the market speculations won't affect it badly.This makes the company's assets raise.
Conclusion:
Due to the above reasons , it makes Google a Best company to work for from an employee's perspective and profitable from the employer's perspective. The Google's success story should give rise to new trends in the organizational culture and values. It doesn't cost much to provide your employees their freedom and comfort.
Employee's Perspective:
The first factor that makes Google to top the list is the college like environment in the Googleplex. There is nothing like dress code there. Sergey Brin and Larry Page , they themselves just in their early 30's know the youth pulse and as majority of employees there are from the new young generation, this clicks very well among the employees.
The Google employees (called Googlers,in Google's jargon) hold their pride in saying they work for the best company in the world.The company has taken measures about not letting the employees go off their pride.The company's policy allows their employers to say proudly that they are working "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"(from Google's corporate overview) , instead of saying they are "coding" or "selling ads" .That makes them proud of themselves.
At Googleplex(Google's campus) , Googlers have facilities like beach volleyball,soccer,videogames,pool tables and png pong.They even play roller hockey twice a week.This makes the employers really feel like they are at college campus, instead of being in an office.
The workplace at Google is so comforting that it reminds me of the work environment shown to the employees in the movie "AntiTrust".Of course, I meant it just in the workspace environment.
The other factor which might seem silly is that Google provides free meals to all employees at their café (known as "Charlie's Place").The food is seemingly very nice that it made Genentech(company which was no.1 in the above ratings before Google and is the inspiration for Google's culture) CEO and Google board member Art Levinson say, "Here I am a guy who can afford a good meal, and every time I go to a Google board meeting, I don't leave until ten o'clock at night because I get a free dinner there". There are also free doctors,swimming spa,washing machines etc there.
All Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them.This makes their work far from turning monotonous and makes them enjoy their work.
Employer's Perspective:
What it takes to create a college like environment in the company is just a bit of informality added to the offices and as Google is not a kind of business where there's a direct interaction with the customers ,they can afford his without loosing the feel of officialness. In return, what you get is an innovative employees instead of those age old traditional ones .And as Google runs on innovation, it surely helps.
There is not much of effort to be put in enhancing the employees' pride.But when it comes to the talk of the company among aspiring employees , it does a huge impact and makes the brains vie for job at Google.So they have a wide range of job seekers to select from.
The operational costs of Google form 30% of their revenues (taken from 2007 Q4 results ).That's not a very high number.So it proves that to provide facilities like free meals,sports,good workspace environment etc., it doesn't cost much for them.But in return there's a high range of employee satisfaction. When an employee is offered to jump to some other high paying companies ,they would surely interrogate about the availability of these facilities there.So the company can never far about the major problem of software companies - "Employee migration".
Though the allocation of 20% time on individual projects may seem loss of work time, if you know that some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors, you wouldn't dare to say that again.The advantage is as they are developed in Google itself,the Googlers would prefer it to sell to Google ,rather than some other high offering company.This way evolution of new Google products is made possible.
Google's release of IPO has made many of Googlers millionaires making it the company with mots number of millionaires. The Googlers who are holding the stocks know well about the company.So they won't go for short term selling resulting in the rise of GOOG's share price.As majority of Google's 271million shares are with Googlers (source -Wikipedia) , the market speculations won't affect it badly.This makes the company's assets raise.
Conclusion:
Due to the above reasons , it makes Google a Best company to work for from an employee's perspective and profitable from the employer's perspective. The Google's success story should give rise to new trends in the organizational culture and values. It doesn't cost much to provide your employees their freedom and comfort.
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