Organizational Goals and Vision
Google’s vision of providing access to the world’s information in one click is in line with its primary goals. It is particularly relevant to the search engine service for which the company is popularly known. The service has enabled many people to access the needed information around the globe.
The vision can be divided into three components. These are the world’s information, accessibility, and one click. To achieve the world’s information component, the search engine crawls billions of web pages across the globe to provide the sought information. The accessibility bit is covered by the fact that the search engine protocol is available worldwide. Finally, the one-click part of the vision statement implies that there is easy access to information. In other words, the Google search engine is user-friendly. This shows that the company’s vision reflects its overall goals in spearheading innovation and content access.
However, Google should change its vision statement so as it is in line with the various services and products it offers presently. For instance, the company now offers Google Fiber and Google Glass, among other new products and services. With the adjusted vision statement, new employees will easily figure out how to fit in the organizational culture and aspiration
Training and Development
Google believes in hiring high-quality human resources. The firm’s emphasis is on smart and excellent employees. To achieve this, the company’s human resources management follows careful strategies for hiring this high caliber staff. The methods and techniques used to aim at not only recruiting high-quality employees but also ensuring that the staff is retained. Google gives priority to employee training. The HR management employs several methods of needs analysis which include organization analysis, work analysis as well as cost-benefit analysis (Saks, Haccoun & Belcourt, 2010).
Having an adequate workforce is a major concern for the company. This is due to the diverse products that the corporation offers. Thus, the company seeks to retain well-motivated and innovative staff. It has, therefore, put in place various retention programs to address this crucial challenge. These programs are geared towards making sure that experienced staff is retained while at the same time attracting new staff to the company. At the moment, the company is among the leading companies that provide a good working environment for their employees. As such, the company’s popularity has risen due to the prevailing positive perception.
Google is aware that it is only through training and development that an organization can invest in human capital. It is from such investment that the organization benefits in the long run. However, training and development are not only the responsibility of the organization but also the individual (Cartwright, 2003). The company also knows that training and development do not occur in a vacuum: they are supposed to be linked directly to its aspirations and strategies.
Google should not only take development as only encompassing skills. It should make sure that development also has an impact on the attitudes as well as the attributes of the employees. It should be noted that a proper training and development strategy has a high impact on employee retention. Google uses analytics to teach employees only what they need to know so that profits may keep flowing. Thus, it focuses on teaching what is actionable. Additionally, employee reviews are used to gauge whether the learning outcomes are indeed applied in the daily work routine.
Like many other information companies, Google needs to come up with new strategies for human resources. That is why the training and development cycle should be complete. Hiring and retaining the right workforce remains a challenge for the company. Talent is not easy to find as different countries have diverse backgrounds and policies. Highly qualified labor means high labor costs and such workforce wishes to be rewarded commensurately (Saks et al., 2010).
As countries grow, they reach their peak after which no growth is experienced. Google has reached this level. Its size means that multiple players and levels of management pose a challenge to handle. Handling over 40,000 staff is a big challenge to the HR department. Also, compensation schemes for such a workforce may weigh heavily on the firm. Google has tried to put in place some incentives that make the employees feel free to work.
Some countries may not have the skill set that the company desires. Thus, a company is usually forced to migrate certain skills from one country to the other (Sengupta & Bhattacharya, 2007). Most workers have been unwilling to work overseas. This could be due to personal preferences or lower standards of living in those countries. It could be better if the HR works to incentivize such workers so as they may be willing to work abroad.
The measures that Google put in place have not been entirely effective. The issue of training, employee retention as well as staffing in many countries has remained a challenge. Human resource planning at the company needs to be more proactive in determining the right mix of strategies that each location requires. Different locations require novel strategies.
References
Belcourt, M., McBey, K., Hong, Y. & Yap, M., (2012). Strategic Human Resources Planning. (6th, Ed.) Toronto: Nelson.
Cartwright, R., (2003). Implementing a Training and Development Strategy. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Saks, M., Haccoun, R., Belcourt, M., (2010). Managing performance through training and development. Toronto: Nelson Education.
Sengupta, N., & Bhattacharya, M. S., (2007). International human resource management. New Delhi: Excel Books.