BUSI3402 Project Outline

Group 6

Kurtis Wells, Taylor Hill, Joe Streit, Joel Lapierre, Haider Falamarz

Company Chosen: Google

General Information

Google has become arguably the most recognized name among technology companies.

Whether it be due to its universally adopted search engine, its popular email service, or its expansion

into the smartphone market, it has emerged into both a corporate and technological powerhouse. It

was first formed in 1997, when the Google.com domain name was registered by owners Larry Page and

Sergey Brin (Our History In Depth 2013). As the company grew, it developed many popular services and

acquired other websites as it expanded its user base. Today, Google surpassed 14 billion dollars in

revenue in Q2 of 2013 (Popper 2013) as its profits continue to grow. The incredible growth and success

of Google can be attributed to a strong organizational culture, which motivates their employees and

keeps them happy while at work. As of 2012, Google has over 32 000 employees at over 70 offices in

over 40 countries around the world, including offices in Uganda, Senegal, Brazil, and India (Google

Locations 2013). With such an amalgamation of employees from different cultures, Google must ensure

that its compensation policies serve a broad spectrum of needs.

Benefits and Compensation at Google

For the past few years Google has remained as one of the top employers in the United States,

and actually being the top of the list this year according to CNN’s annual top 100 employers (CNN 2013).

One of the major things Google does is offer numerous on-site perks that allow employees to enjoy their

time at work and make their overall lives more manageable and enjoyable. Being a tech firm, Google is

actively trying to attract and keep young bright people, namely those who are post-secondary

graduates. Google prides itself on being a cutting edge firm that incorporates modern style in their

building layouts and also having all the newest technologies for their employees to utilize. As the benefit

show, these are clearly geared towards the younger generation as opposed to the baby boomers. On

top of being an over the top tech firm, some of the major benefits include:

Can eat 3 meals a day free of charge

On site free hair salon

A fully equipped gym and pool with life guard

Gaming tables throughout the buildings (ie. pool, Ping-Pong, foosball)

Video game consoles set up around most buildings

Full laundry facilities, free of charge.

A subsidized spa area.

20 percent program, in which employees can use 20 percent of their work week to spend on

unrelated projects.

Subsidized day care called “Woods” (which did meet some backlash because of prices, but it still

exists.)

On-site physicians and nurses, convenient medical services, and comprehensive health care

coverage.

Googlers and their families are covered with travel insurance and emergency assistance - even

on personal vacations.

New parents get time off and some extra spending money to help them welcome their new

bundle of joy.

Google will reimburse you for classes or degree programs that are job related to your work.

Googlers get legal advice at no cost and in the US get common legal services at a group discount.

Free shuttle bus for any employees in the San Francisco area to their Mountain View campus

You are allowed to bring pets to work.

Social events on Fridays that includes free beer and wine.

Free concierge services for daily errands.

Google has a fleet of electric cars that employees can rent out for hours at a time.

Research Analysis

In order to complete an effective analysis of Google’s compensation structure we will cross reference

the compensation offered to Google’s employees with compensation theories learned in class and in the

textbook “Canadian Human Resource Management”. We will look at issues within the organization and

try to determine how the issues can be related to and solved with new compensation strategies that

increase job satisfaction and productivity. Compensation theories will be applied in order to help

determine which strategies are most likely to have the largest possible positive benefits to the

organization and its employees while minimizing costs to the organization. We will analyze Google’s

current compensation packages to determine employee needs that are not being fulfilled and then

develop strategies to fill possible gaps in employee compensation. This application of compensation

theories will help us to develop strategies that will lead Google to have better employee retention,

motivation, and job satisfaction. Our suggested strategies will be in the form of indirect compensation

such as employee benefits that enhance the employee’s experience and encourage them to work

productively, feel comfortable at their position, and feel as though their work is valued and important to

the company.

Information Collection

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

(Google Company, 2013), which includes the vast majority of their information about their company.

Google is an extremely transparent and public company with the majority of the information about the

company including the Google’s benefits and perks for employees right off of the search engines website

itself as well as investor relations (news, financial, and corporate information). Another perk of picking a

public company is that we can view both quarterly and annual stakeholder’s reports in the last few

years, to get a better understanding of what is happened to Google’s culture and both internal and

external environment.

Google is an extremely cutting edge and innovative company, which attracts a lot of attention from

journalists, analysts, and other news media enthusiasts. With these large different sources of

information we can get an unbiased look into Google’s activities from multiple sources besides Google

itself. Google even has a news application enabling to find quick and easy information about a variety of

subjects including Google’s activities.

Hopefully we will be able to contact someone in one of Google’s human recourse offices, but even if we

can’t we have a strong amount of information available thanks to Google.

Works CitedCNN. 100 Best Companies to Work For. February 4, 2013.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2013/snapshots/1.html?iid=bc_sp_list (accessed October 3, 2013).

Google Locations. 2013. http://www.google.ca/about/company/facts/locations/ (accessed October 4, 2013).

Google Company. Company Overview. Retrieved October, 06, 2013. From http://www.google.ca/about/company/ .

Our History In Depth. September 2013. http://www.google.ca/about/company/history/ (accessed October 4, 203).

Popper, Ben. The Verge: Google's Q2 2013 Earnings. July 18, 2013. http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/18/4535766/googles-q2-2013-earnings-come-in-light-on-revenue-and-earnings (accessed October 4, 2013).

Smith, Kevin. Google Employees Reveal Their Favorite Perks Working For The Company. March 6, 2013. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-favorite-perks-2013-3?op=1 (accessed 3 October, 2013).

Stangel, Luke. Google's 10 best perks: Cars, sleep pods — you name it. April 2013, 2013. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/04/12/googles-10-best-employee-perks.html?page=all (accessed October 3, 2013).

Strickland, Jonathan. How Googleplex Works. 2013. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/googleplex3.htm (accessed October 3, 2013).