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How Google Develops Employee Satisfaction and Motivation to Drive Performance

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Question:
How do Google's corporate values and goals concerning employees, customers, and the business combine to create job satisfaction and motivate the people who work there? Is this a model every business should adopt?

Key aspects:
- Define the problem: What are google's key goals and values?
- Analyze the cause: To analyze the effect of google's goals and values on job satisfaction and motivation, use the "employee satisfaction model" (google site) and the job characteristics model (attached in background info) in formulating the answer
- Propose a solution: Be sure to defend the choice for your second answer. The "why" is more important than the "what"
- Further info in background attachment.

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Solution Summary

The expert determines how Google develops employees satisfaction and motivation to drive performance.

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Google's mission (from their site):

- Long term focus
- Users over profits (this will generate more profits in the long run)
- Basic corporate values:
-- Employee-centered; all views accepted and respected.
-- Work should be meaningful and fun
-- Open communication at all levels
-- Stress on humility (even in success)
-- Money is made by doing the right thing; this is central to the long run commitment. Short-term profit seekers often act unethically to take advantage of a temporary opportunity.
- Care about the local community
- Take risks

From the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&

Project Oxygen is the name of the plan to create a better mangement team at Google:
http://www.humanresourcesiq.com/talent-management/articles/google-a-case-study-in-connection-culture/

Here are the elements:

Vision - Google has a clear and straightforward mission. Make electronic data available to all.
Value - Project Oxygen was to maintain an open door policy; employees are seen as assets, not costs. This is essential.
Voice - On Fridays, management has a meeting with all employees where anything can be discussed.

These are essential for Google's development.

Here are the Job Characteristics. We can apply them to Google:
Look here: http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/innovation/8-pillars-of-innovation.html

1. Skill variety: How many different skills and talents does the job require of a person. Are they asked to do a lot of different things, or is it a monotonous, repetitive job?

This is something avoided at Google. Group-work is important, and the stress is on a career being rewarding, not monotonous. The big issue is searching out problems in the web world that need to be addressed. Here is the google list of 'teams' you can join: http://www.google.com/about/jobs/teams/ . There is no evidence that you can switch from one to another regularly. When you look at the details for each team, it's pretty clear that there is a great diversity within each team. Engineering, for example, includes user interfacing, software, networking, hardware and tech infrastructure. So there seems to be a drive to make each department as diverse as possible.

2. Task identity: Is there a clearly defined beginning, middle and end to a given task? Does a worker know what he or she is supposed to do, and when he or she is successfully completed the task?

3. Task significance: Does the job have 'a substantial impact'? (Faturochman, p. 1)? Will it matter to people, either within the organization or to society? Is this job/given task meaningful?

This is one of the more important elements in the google mission. Connected and empowered is the phrase that the author uses above. The point is to overcome alienation through being a part of a team with many diverse jobs and concepts.

We should note that Google has a 20% program - 20% of one's work day should be based on projects that interest them. Of course, they have to be about google, but they get to choose which aspects of the firm they want to work on.

4. Autonomy: How much freedom does an individual have to accomplish his or ...

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