Google Company: Performance Management Systems

Google is one of the most successful companies in the world. It is also seen as exemplary when it comes to performance management systems. Employees share the values of the company and they are committed to perform well and achieve the goals set. Great flexibility and freedom of employees (self-management) have become a distinctive feature of Google (Berber & Yaslioglu 2014). The use of the OKR system has contributed greatly to the development of the effective performance management system as well (Yarow 2014). However, the organisation is now facing several challenges.

The rapid growth often leads to an increase in bureaucracy in the company. The organisation is now operating in many countries of the world and this diversity affects the company’s culture to a certain extent. It has been acknowledged that Google is losing its entrepreneurial culture, which leads to dissatisfaction and increasing turnover (Berber & Yaslioglu 2014). Thus, one of the major challenges is the growing control over employees’ projects. Googlers feel quite significant pressure and they often lack time to develop their projects. Admittedly, they are becoming less committed and start performing poorer. Motivation strategies (perks, astounding offices) turn out to be insufficient to make employees stay. Another challenge is inappropriate leadership (Bryant 2011). Some leaders of teams and top managers have quite an autocratic leadership style, which is inappropriate for the entrepreneurial atmosphere in the company. Employees have a significant workload and they have to work under the quite strict supervision of such leaders. It has been acknowledged that one of the major reasons for quitting is the boss (Bryant 2011). Autocratic or inefficient leaders (those who are unable to put people together and create functional teams) lead to situations when many talented employees leave.

The selected topic is crucial for the company as its performance management is steadily transforming and losings its strengths. Google’s exceptional performance management set in the early days of the company is what made it successful. Torrington et al. (2014) stress that effective performance management is crucial for any company as it is one of the premises of organisations’ competitiveness. If Google loses its focus on self-management and efficient leadership, the organisation may lose many talented employees and, as a result, the overall performance of the company will deteriorate.

To collect data on the topic, it is possible to implement a secondary research method. Online databases, as well as local libraries, contain a lot of valuable sources. It is necessary to analyse the data provided in books on management, scholarly articles, newspaper articles and specialised magazines. These should be both qualitative and quantitative data. The resources should also consider the experiences of different companies. The particular focus will be paid to rapidly expand companies and the tools they use to improve their performance management.

Apart from these sources, it is also important to analyse numerous online resources. The website of Google as well as other companies. This will add certain insights into the way companies see their future and the actions they are undertaking.

Reference List

Berber, A & Yaslioglu, M 2014, ‘Managing high performance work systems and organizational performance’, in C Machado & JP Davim (eds), Work organization and human resource management, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 27-42.

Bryant, A 2011, ‘Google’s quest to build a better boss’, The New York Times, Web.

Torrington, D, Hall, L, Taylor, S & Atkinson, C 2014, Human resource management, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow.

Yarow, J 2014, ‘Employees – and you should use it too’, Business Insider, Web.