Introduction
Maintaining HR practices both in small firms and large international corporations is an important task in view of the ability to coordinate the activities of employees and select optimal work strategies. In relation to the algorithms for collecting and storing information that is necessary for these purposes, there are special principles and conditions determining the decision-making process. As a company for analysis, the international Google corporation will be reviewed.
Its approaches to HR activities will be evaluated regarding the specifics of collecting the necessary data, as well as legislative obligations that govern the principles of information protection. HR practices at Google are advanced and require detailed analysis due to the large size of the corporation, and the current tools used by the organisation allow keeping the company’s performance at a high level.
Google’s Reasons to Collect HR Data
One of the significant reasons why Google’s HR department needs to collect the necessary data about subordinates is the age of employees. According to the company, the average age of the workforce in the corporation is 29, which defines the organisation as one with young staff, unlike many other large enterprises (3 Lessons from Google’s HR Policy). Therefore, HR approaches are non-standard in such a team and require collecting unique data.
Another reason why data collection should be utilised in Google is the company’s need to determine the share of profit brought by each employee. According to corporate reports, annually, an organisation’s worker generates about $1.2 million, which exceeds the performance of many other IT global corporations (3 Lessons from Google’s HR Policy). Thus, the availability of data obtained through HR analysis allows predicting the effectiveness of employees and their contribution to achieving the goals of the company.
Types of HR Data
The data types needed for HR analysis are important elements in evaluating employee performance. One of Google’s approaches is collecting information about the effectiveness of the reward system promoted to retain and stimulate the activities of subordinates (3 Lessons from Google’s HR Policy). The evaluation of these data can help determine employees’ job satisfaction and find the best motivational drivers, which is an important performance criterion.
Another type of valuable information for HRs is exit interviews. Although turnover indicators in Google are low due to favourable working conditions, when terminating contracts with subordinates, the management of the corporation evaluates specialists’ satisfaction with the working conditions and seeks to receive objective feedback. According to Hossain et al., this measure provides an opportunity to review and optimise internal personnel management policies (2). Therefore, such an approach is a valuable HR solution for the corporation in question.
Storing HR Data
One of the most successful of Google’s HR data storage programmes is Project Oxygen. As Marler and Boudreau note, this system was introduced in 2011, and since then, it has been used by corporate leaders to track the performance of both managers and subordinates (19). A significant benefit of this programme is an opportunity to cover a wide range of employees’ performance indicators and their job satisfaction due to a convenient base for storing productivity results.
As an alternative, Google’s management can utilise the strategy of employees’ electronic records to monitor subordinates’ activities. This approach allows evaluating the productivity of personnel objectively and comparing the performance outcomes of individual workers. In addition, this storage principle helps eliminate errors and potential failures in the system, which adds objectivity to the assessment procedure and contributes to evaluating available data as correctly as possible.
Legislative Obligations
Since HR data contain individual information about employees, adherence to relevant legislative practices to ensure the security of this information is a prerequisite for the corporation in question. In this case, Google’s European subsidiaries are subject to the 2018 EU Parliament Act “on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data” (General Data Protection Regulation). In accordance with this law, the processing of personal information of employees should be carried out exclusively within the framework of their place of work, and their private data cannot be utilised for commercial purposes.
In the American segment of Google, which is larger, there is a special employee privacy policy that regulates the capabilities and obligations of HR managers concerning the processing of subordinates’ private information (Google LLC). Both these security programmes assume the inviolability of personal information received from employees and impose obligations on management in case of non-compliance with the storage and processing of these data.
Conclusion
Due to Google’s large size and unique working conditions, the analysis of its HR practices regarding the storage and use of personal information about employees is an important aspect of the workflow. A special reward system and exit interviews are the types of data used in the organisation. The storage of information is carried out within the framework of existing legislative provisions that are crucial to observe.
Works Cited
“3 Lessons from Google’s HR Policy.” Impraise, 2020. Web.
“General Data Protection Regulation.” Lumapps, 2019. Web.
“Google LLC.” Privacy Shield Framework. Web.
Hossain, Sajjad, et al. “Strategic Use of Exit Interviews: The Art of Retention.” Asian Journal of Economics, Business and Accounting, 2017, pp. 1-12.
Marler, Janet H., and John W. Boudreau. “An Evidence-Based Review of HR Analytics.” The International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 28, no. 1, 2017, pp. 3-26.