Google’s Approach to Empowerment

In this globalized corporate world, empowerment comes in to play as a linkage between employee and employer in realizing organizational goals through out of the box thinking and creativity.“Empowerment is the process of enabling or authorizing an individual to think, behave, take action, and control work and decision-making about their job in autonomous, independent, self-directed ways” (Heathfield, 2019).

“The empowered culture that Google has created is exactly the kind of culture that creates an excellent customer experience” (Shaw, 2014). An empowered culture is inspired to embark on a challenging journey through self-fulfillment and novelty.

Organization needs to foster a desirable work environment that encourage employees to act empowered. Google recognize that different people will yield in different ideas and act in different ways. Thus they have created many channels for expressions to gather as much inputs as possible from employees. Some of them include,

Google Cafes - “Designed to encourage interactions between employees within and across teams, and to spark conversation about work as well as play” (He, 2013).

Google Moderator– This is an innovation management tool by Google. Through Moderator “people can discover existing ideas, questions or suggestions, vote for ideas, questions or suggestions and see the aggregate votes to date, create a new series asking for ideas organized by topic, event or meeting” (He, 2013).

TGIF – This is a weekly meeting that enables all employees to pose questions to top management about company issues. The meeting ensures that employees are well informed about common concerns, decisions as well as future directions.

Google Universal Ticketing Systems – It is a method of filling problems pertaining to any company issues and is used to monitor patterns.

Apart from these direct emails are encouraged to any of the company leaders. Another initiation is the Internal Innovation Reviews that include formal meetings where executives present new product ideas to the top management. Both of these initiations ensures that fresh ideas are given life and issues are communicated and solved right at that moment.

These launches assures employees are rightfully kept on track and are inspired on their own to independently create new products and services. As an added advantage, newly hired employees too are assured that they start off right as information is readily available to get accustomed to the new environment.

References

Heathfield, S. (2019). What Do Empowered Employees Look Like?. [online] The Balance Careers. Available at: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/empowerment-in-action-how-to-empower-your-employees-1918102 [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

Shaw, C. (2014). What We Can Learn from Google’s Empowered Culture |. [online] Beyondphilosophy.com. Available at: https://beyondphilosophy.com/can-learn-googles-empowered-culture/ [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

He, L. (2013). Google's Secrets Of Innovation: Empowering Its Employees. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurahe/2013/03/29/googles-secrets-of-innovation-empowering-its-employees/#2e5e32ce57e7 [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

Organizational Culture and Performance

Organizational culture is a personality. It is the essence of how people interact, build rapport and work towards organizational success.  It can be defined as “the self-sustaining pattern of behavior that determines how things are done” (Katzenbach, Oelschlegel and Thomas, 2016). Hence culture is intuitive and composed of repetitive habits that cannot be easily copied nor pinned down.

In the recruitment stage it is essential to determine whether a candidate is culture fit. This is because the company culture is finally a summation of what employees bring in to the organization, their expertise, interests, background and values. A good culture fit employee is likely to sustain and excel in the organization regardless of inherent complexities.

“Culture is driven by leadership, how leaders behave, what they say and what they value drives culture” (Rick, 2015). This directs organization towards a unique social and psychological environment within the workplace. This is why anyone can copy company strategy but nobody is able to copy its’ culture.

Culture and Performance

“An engaged culture marked by high levels of involvement, consistency, adaptability, and a transparent mission improves sales and customer satisfaction” (Pontefract, 2017).  This signifies that a good culture will yield in higher share price, productivity and engagement as well as less employee turnover and absenteeism.

A positive culture is able to make an average person perform brilliantly and succeed whereas a negative culture may degrade outstandingly performing ones and perish. Hence the “key to performance is a strong culture” (Kandula, 2006). “When skillfully managed, culture can be a powerful and enduring source of competitive advantage” (Dewar and Keller, 2012).

Enculturation for a New Beginning

Companies need to welcome newcomers with a plan so that they adjust, sustain and progress without complexities. “Enculturation is a socialization process by which new workers adjust to, and become part of the corporate culture of their new company, office, department or workgroup” (Heathfield, 2019). Some of the activities to successfully achieve this is by communicating vision, mission, principles and values that underlie the organization, clearly conveying the culture and expectations, assigning a mentor who can guide the newcomer through initial phase of adjustment. 

References

Dewar, C. and Keller, S. (2012). Three Steps to a High-Performance Culture. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2012/01/three-steps-to-a-high-performa [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

Heathfield, S. (2019). What Makes Up Your Company Culture?. [online] The Balance Careers. Available at: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-makes-up-your-company-culture-1918816 [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

Kandula, S. R. (2006). Performance Management. New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India private limited.

Katzenbach, J., Oelschlegel, C. and Thomas, J. (2016). 10 Principles of Organizational Culture. [online] strategy+business. Available at: https://www.strategy-business.com/feature/10-Principles-of-Organizational-Culture [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

Pontefract, D. (2017). If Culture Comes First, Performance Will Follow. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danpontefract/2017/05/25/if-culture-comes-first-performance-will-follow/#13ac3d3d6e62 [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

Rick, T. (2015). What is organizational culture?. [online] Torben Rick. Available at: https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/organizational-culture/ [Accessed 5 Jun. 2019].

Techniques to Manage Employee Performance

Performance management is used as an indicator to support decisions related to strategic planning, succession planning, training and career development, compensation and benefits, promotion, transfers or even termination of employment. This ensures the employees are received with a specific performance target and monitor whether it is being achieved as expected.

Some of the techniques to manage and improve employee performance are setting clear expectationsand communicating them at all levels. “Empowering employees can include ensuring they have the authority to make decisions critical to their success and the ability to delegate if necessary to get the job done” (Miller, 2015).Conducting timely employee performance appraisals are essential for employees to gauge where they actually stand and also to minimize errors.Training managers can also be done to make them equipped with necessary tools to help out employees to excel.

Differentiating compensation is required so that “employee pay is meaningfully different across levels of performance and results confirm that this practice links closely with outperformance” (Chowdhury, Hioe and Schaninger, 2018).Giving frequent feedback once a recognizable act is carried out will ensure employees are well motivated and enthusiastic. This can be carried out by verbal praising as well as through recommendation letters. However negative feedback can also be done where necessary, so that employees know what and where went wrong to avoid future drawbacks. Being open to feedbackis vital so that managers listen to employee suggestions and inputs for the betterment of the organization.

Another new concept is Performance coaching that focuses on direct relationships with employees and managers. “It is about individual attention that caters to an employee’s needs, allowing them to significantly improve their skills and aptitudes and consequently increase their performance” (Clapon, 2014).Improving employee morale too is essential in satisfying and motivating employees.

Many companies are nowadays changing techniques of performance management for the better. Such change was done by General Electric by converting their once a year review process into a motivating way to guide employees. “GE managers and employees still meet once a year, but it is now a meeting with true purpose and employees future goals: to help with regular feedback the innovation giant is launching its own in-house performance app to help facilitate everyday regular feedback” (Heller, 2017).

References

Chowdhury, S., Hioe, E. and Schaninger, B. (2018). Harnessing the power of performance management. [online] McKinsey & Company. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/harnessing-the-power-of-performance-management [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].

Clapon, P. (2014). 10 Must-dos to manage day-to-day employee performance. [online] Hppy. Available at: https://gethppy.com/employee-engagement/10-must-dos-manage-day-day-employee-performance [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].

Heller, M. (2017). 6 Effective Performance Review Examples from the Best Companies | Blog. [online] iRevü. Available at: https://irevu.me/blog/6-effective-performance-review-examples-best-companies/ [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].

Miller, B. (2015). Techniques to Manage and Improve Employee Performance. [online] HR Daily Advisor. Available at: https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com/2015/08/27/techniques-to-manage-and-improve-employee-performance/ [Accessed 4 Jun. 2019].

Working from Home

Telecommuting has boomed in the recent past opening its doors to many opportunities worldwide. “As more companies offer flexible commuting policies, the remote job market is spreading beyond the traditional fields of computer technology or customer services” (Talty, 2019). Hence fields that utilize work from home are expanding, reaching new dimensions to both employees and employers.

This concept benefits both employee and employer because “for every employee who works from home at least half of the time, employers can save over $11,000 per year, the Global Workplace Analytics study found and half-time telecommuters gained back 11 days a year by working from home” (Wells, 2019). Therefore this alternative saves both time and money.

Good work-life balance is an increasingly important concern in retaining employees. Companies of all sizes and industries can adopt this emerging concept to provide flexible work environment and meet changing workforce demands. Appen which is a technology service based company in Australia is the top company that offer a large number of such jobs. “It supports more than one million contactors around the world, and offers positions that are flexible, part time and home based” (Rose, 2019). Other fields that are already offering work from home are education, training, IT, health, sales and customer service. 

As the world becomes more interconnected and globalized, there are many benefits of utilizing this emerging trend. “According to a Canada Life survey, homeworkers rank their productivity as 7.7/10, compared to 6.5/10 for office workers” (Hunkeler, 2018).  Other benefits include less stress, low office space cost, no exposure to road traffic, less exposure to common office health conditions as well as good work life balance. 

On the other hand job seekers need to be sensible enough to choose good from the bad as there are a lot of scammers who mislead them by faking work from home job openings. Therefore it is essential the job seekers have a keen eye before joining hands. Work from home is surely a successful trend in retaining employees as it opens new opportunities for sustaining in the highly competitive corporate world. It is growing day by day with ample of prospect for growth and there is more to be expected in the future than now.

 

Reference

Hunkeler, I. (2018). 8 Benefits of Allowing Employees to Work Remotely. [online] Do Better Hiring - The RecruitLoop Blog. Available at: https://recruitloop.com/blog/8-benefits-allowing-employees-work-remotely/ [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].

Rose, J. (2019). The 10 Best Jobs Working From Home. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jrose/2019/01/22/work-from-home-jobs-from-remote/#fcd18de28f4d [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].

Talty, A. (2019). Work From Home 2019: The Top 100 Companies For Remote Jobs. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandratalty/2019/01/15/work-from-home-2019-the-top-100-companies-for-remote-jobs/#7246b8791544 [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].

Wells, L. (2019). The 20 Best Work-From-Home Jobs | Bankrate.com. [online] Bankrate. Available at: https://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/10-best-and-real-work-at-home-jobs-1.aspx [Accessed 2 Jun. 2019].