You might have heard about this mantra: ‘Happy employees produce better results.’ This is the mindset of Google to keep its employees productive and satisfied. This article explains more.
Let’s say you’re a company providing software development services. If your developer’s team isn’t enthusiastic about their projects every day, you’re not going to achieve excellence. This is productivity’s power. But remember productivity is dependent on the company’s culture.
Why is everyone talking about Google’s culture or work environment? We know that Google is one of the most influential and powerful companies around the globe. The company follows a pretty well unique culture instead of corporate culture.
It has something that every big organisation needs to follow to level up their employees’ engagement or morale. The culture of any company is vital to its success and Google is perfectly right on the track.
It has one sole purpose: Keep the employees happy and keep up the productivity.
Google has been at number ONE place from the past six years and featured on Fortune’s annual list of ‘Best Companies to Work For.’ And this is not it. Google has also been named as the tech company with the best culture. (Reported by Forbes) Furthermore, Google has a 4.4 rating on Glassdoor based on 6000+ employees reviews.
Google’s morale
This is what the employees of Google answered the questions asked about their work culture.
- Acknowledged for the efforts?
Yes: 61 % Employees
No: 39% Employees
- Job Security?
Very Secure: 34 % Employees
Neutral: 19% Employees
Insecure: 8% Employees
Very insecure: 5% Employees
- Work Environment?
Positive: 85% Employees
Negative: 15% Employees
- Excited about going to work daily?
Yes: 80% Employees
No: 20% Employees
So, without further ado, let’s move towards the ways Google uses to boost its employees’ engagement.
“There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week. But if you love what you do, it (mostly) doesn’t feel like work.”- Elon Musk.
How Google Keeps Its Employees Productive And Engaged?
Exclusive perks
Today, employees want a job in a company that makes them love what they do. Never for financial benefit or intellectual recognition. Yet instead of chance to add to the common good.
The major differentiator is to make a real difference.
Google offers different perks to its employees to show them that they are not only investing in their overall health but their future as well.
- Chef-prepared free organic food (breakfast, lunch, and dinner);
- Free dental and health checkup;
- Free and unlimited dry cleaning;
- Subsidised massages;
- Several foosball, ping pong, video games stations;
- On-site physicians;
- Gyms/swimming pools memberships;
- Free haircuts from professional hairdressers;
- In-house nap pods;
- Death benefits to deceased employees’ families, and;
- Hybrid car subsidies.
Flexibility
Google has been one of the very first companies that had a vision of understanding the employees’ needs. It lets its workers have a flexible schedule so that they can work on their terms and enhance creativity and productivity. They have given their employees complete freedom to work in a way that is most suitable to them.
Knowing the employees well
Google had gone through a series of laboratory tests to figure out the productivity of their employees. They had four different experiments that included 700 participants. All the employees were treated to free drinks, fruits, and chocolates or shown a comedy movie clip.
They also enquired some of the participants about the family tragedies as a part of their assessment. After this, they found that happiness is the reason for 12% more productivity.
Culture
Google promotes an innovative and diverse organisational culture that has been a part of its employee’s life. A positive creative atmosphere and a safe working space offered by Google to its workers keep them comfortable and happy at work. The concept that being a part of Google is about being smart and wise encourages the employees to think openly and keeps them productive.
Nowadays, there are different creative coworking spaces which are known to be a perfect alternate to a workplace. These spaces are believed to deliver various advantages such as strong networking and increased engagement.
Leadership
Google’s founders were researchers who had a belief in innovation and freedom of thinking. This is one of the main factors that influenced the style of Google’s leadership.
According to Brassfield, 2013, a positive leadership style stimulates inspiring and motivating employees to develop innovative ideas and inventions.
Keeping people inspired
Future Workplace, in 2017, demonstrated in a study that one of the biggest threats to employees’ engagement is employee burnout. It has also been found out that many proficient workers are often overburdened with the tasks that lead to halted innovation, incomplete work, etc.
What does Google do about keeping its employees productive, inspired, or motivated? Google’s strategy for this is 20% time. Every employee devours up to 20% of his time at work each week on ventures that inspire him.
This concept inspires employees as it allows them to concentrate on things they love or are passionate about. It can prevent burnout, decrease turnover, increase engagement.
Image: Pexels
Career development
Google provides an extensive professional growth program that is successful and creative and guarantees long-term performance for all the employees. The career development program of Google is one that ensures incentives are provided to employees to meet their professional and personal progression.
Google has adopted a unique way to promote the professional development of all its employees. CareerGuru is a career coaching that provides all the details to the employees by Google’s leaders about working at a specific role in the company.
Creativity Encouragement
The companies that believe in fostering a culture of creativity have happy, satisfied, and motivated employees. Google leads the way in promoting creativity in their employees.
They are free to express their ideas as a solution to any problem. Moreover, employees are encouraged to work wherever they are comfortable in the workplace. Google has a set up where rather than just considering an applicant’s professional background, they look to recruit people who are normally inquisitive and fond of learning.
Trusting Employees
Google believes in trusting their workers because trusted employees feel more valuable. It can also boost the sense of job satisfaction and can also decrease the rate of staff turnover.
In a survey by PwC, reliable employees are 76% more engaged in their work than those in a low trusting environment. Trusted employees are happier and they have the urge to go the extra miles.
Culture based on qualitative data
Google has always been searching out different ways to optimise the performance of its employees while ensuring their happiness and satisfaction. Everything done at Google is based on real data. They use the qualitative and quantitative facts to set up processes and every single rule that is streamlined.
Google has additionally performed researches to discover how much paid time off new mothers would need and ways of building an improvised and better culture.
Fun workplace
Have you ever been allowed to design your own workstation at your company?
Probably not. But Google does it. It lets the employees design their desks or workstations.
When you see the pictures of the workplace, it seems an interesting adult play and work area and not a dull and lifeless space.
Google has always tried to push the boundaries of its workspace.
Collaboration of coworkers
At Google, the employees are urged to collaborate. They have a program called ‘Googler to Googler’ to keep them productive and promote skills such as management, public speaking, orientation, or extracurricular activities.
It is crucial to build a sense of community to create a positive culture. The company has arranged several micro kitchens around the whole workspace where coworkers can have a little chit-chat session. No one has to spend time on deciding where to eat because Google has various break-out spaces for lunch.
Google’s way of listening
Google employees have developed great software and projects that include Gmail, AdSense, Google News, etc. and all these big projects were originated because of its staff productivity approach. Google has a way of collecting employees’ feedback and listening to their suggestions that is gDNA.
- The employees utilise a device ‘Google Moderator’, the result of 20% time strategy, to inquire about something and vote on inquiries of others;
- The company holds a meeting, every Friday, where the managers react to the most famous inquiries of the week;
- Leaders or managers utilise a charting instrument called Google-O-Meterto measure the prominence of various worker bits of advice;
- Leaders likewise plan “Fixits” to comprehend huge, critical issues; and,
- Fixits are 24-hour runs where team members give their full focus around discovering solutions for explicit issues.
In Summary
So, can Google teach us anything?
If you are planning to adopt these learnings at your organisation just like Google keeps its employees productive, it’s essential to test the progressions first and measure the results.
It’s a great deal of work, however, the engagement advantages will make the difficult function admirably justified.
About the Author
Usman Akram is a digital marketer and SEO specialist who’s passionate about experimenting and discovering new SEO tactics and strategies to dominate search rankings while bringing an unmatched user-experience. As of now Usman is serving Buzz Interactive, a leading digital marketing agency as the head of SEO.
