Employee involvement and engagement

Google LLC is an American multinational technology company that specializes in providing internet-related services such as search engines, online advertising technology, cloud computing and hardware to customers. The company was founded in the year 1998 and has 139,995 employees (Armstrong, 2019). The company’s human resource management practices cover effective employee engagement and training programs for maximizing human capabilities. The company makes use of the adequate need analysis for designing the training programs and aimed at supporting an innovative workforce. The company conducts its operations in a dynamic environment, therefore, the focus of the company is to ensure the right person is placed in the right job position (Banfield, Kay and Royles, 2018). The role is to facilitate and motivate skilled employees for overall growth and development. In the human resource business proposal, the discussion is made on describing the techniques used in employee involvement and engagement. Furthermore, describe the communication approach for the employee voice and at the same time determine the training considerations for enhancing the employees and managers.

Google should focus on adopting “The Zinger Model” which focuses on engaging the employees by using 10 main actions (Mello, 2015). It is important for meeting the employee needs and at the same time support to perform the meaningful work for accomplishing the results:-

Bottom row: The necessities

Google should adopt the Zinger pyramid because the focus is on meeting human needs by delivering good work. Employee engagement allows the employees to remain committed and engaged in the work they are performing in the workplace.

Improve wellbeing- In Google the employer should focus on satisfying meeting the physical and mental well-being of the employees (Michael, 2014). The concentration is mainly on maintaining a better culture and at the same time providing psychological safety such as lack of fear about harassment and discrimination. Furthermore, the employer should also adopt some other strategies and principles for engaging a large number of employees such as respect, improving employee engagement and setting towards the stage of success.

Enliven energy- In this strategy, the goal of Google should be on creating a better work environment. This is because it is one of the important aspects which the employee should focus on the better work energy influences employees to work effectively (Taylor, 2018). The first factor which should be taken into consideration is employee wellbeing and afterward monitoring the energy levels of the employees results in identifying the barriers and describing patterns for energy drains.

Classical motivation theory for employee involvement

Determining to mean and leveraging the strengths- In Google, situational leadership theory will be adopted because it allows the leaders to change their management style as per the situation. The leaders should create the environment for developing the strengths and making the strong company for improving the existing workforce strengths.

Second row: company uniting

In this row, Google should adopt the strategy of building the connection with the individuals with the company goals and objectives. As the objective of Google is to organize the overall world’s information and ensure that it is accessed and used universally. In this row, the employer would adopt the following actions:-

Building relationship and fostering recognition- Google engage the employees by building connections and building the team to move in the right direction (Torrington, 2009). The role of the leaders is to create and build opportunities for developing the employees. Moreover, the employer should recognize the employees by maintaining better culture and providing occasional promotions to the employees.

Master moments- The encouragement is provided to the employees in Google to present mentally and physically at the work. The managers facilitate daily connections for understanding the challenges. The main goal is to create a meaningful environment and adopt positive reinforcement in the workplace.

Third row: Boosting performance

In the third row, the goals will be accomplished by maximizing the performance and making the progress to accomplish the goals:-

Increasing performance- The employer of Google improves communication for reducing the barriers. Poor communication reduces the ability of the employees to accomplish the performance targets.

Marking progress- In this section, the employer should continuously progress the communication and promotion of the employees for accomplishing the goals (McKinsey and Company, 2020). The focus of the employees will be to develop the skills and knowledge for creating a sense of movement and culture.

Top pyramid: Accomplishing results

In the end, the motive of the employer in Google is to adopt engagement initiatives for increasing the productivity and profitability of the employees (McKinsey and Company, 2020). For accomplishing the end results the employer should adopt strategic engagement objectives by developing the metrics of employee engagement and retention for tracking the success. The internet mail tool will also be used for leveraging the growth. Furthermore, Email tracking is one of the best practices for engaging the employees in Google. However, Google should also feel an issue at the time of adopting The Zinger Model because highly dissatisfied employees cause disruption and dissatisfaction in the company. Furthermore, the highly active employees reduce the morale and reduce the engagement level of the employees. Through the discussion, it is revealed that disengaged employees affect the workplace in negative terms (Riyanto, Endri and Herlisha, 2021).

Communication approaches for greater employee voice

In Google, the employer should focus on this theory by emphasizing organization rather than working of the employees. This theory allows the employees to separate the human beings and machines, this supports Google to involve the skilled and competent employees in better decision making (Supriyanto, Ekowati and Pujianto, 2021). While adopting this particular theory, Google should adopt the following characteristics:-

• The company should detect the errors and correct in a timely manner for increasing the commitment of the employees.
• The concentration will be more on output and human beings.
• The employees should follow the stability approach about change in the company.
• Google should adopt a centralized and integrated system.

This theory is important because of maintaining the coordination between the technological aspects of the company and at the same time should be highly efficient. Moreover, the emphasis will only be on structural aspects and at the same time should adopt collectivism. The success of the company and employees should be involved in Google by adopting distinct streams such as scientific management system and administrative management system (Githinji and Muli, 2018). This helps in building the emotional connection and at the same time involves and motivates the employees by providing financial rewards. However, the disadvantages of this theory while applying for involving the employees are that it creates pressure among the employees and workload affects the overall satisfaction of the employees. Google follows a simple structure that’s why this theory is highly adopted and fits in this culture, as with the rise in time when the services increase the company moved towards following the complex structure. As this becomes difficult for Google to fit this classical motivation theory in a complex structure (Ababneh, 2021).

In Google, the Acceptance theory of Authority should be adopted for maintaining informal communication and focusing on the three functions such as effective communication, maintaining cohesiveness in the formal structure of the company and developing feelings of personal integrity and self-respect among the employees. This is used for providing the bottom-up explanation in the overall communication process (Linggiallo, et al., 2021). Through this theory, Google should develop the interaction centers in the overall communication system. The employer needs to ensure that the authority should not be vested but the focus should be on recognition and non-recognition of the authority by the authors. According to Linggiallo, et al., this theory is highly recommended to Google because this organisational communication theory is developed from the ‘Human Relations School” (Linggiallo, et al., 2021). Due to this theory, the company can increase communication and at the same time develop the importance of understanding the effective channels of communication.

However, through better communication and increasing the emotional attachment, the focus of Google employer is to maintain the formal structure for connecting with all the company members. As Google delivers high services so due to this theory the company needs to ensure that the line of communication should be short and direct for increasing the communication speed and reducing the interruptions in the communication (Leftiani, et al., 2020). This results in maintaining upward communication by focusing on the strategies of building the open communication culture and increasing the understanding of the audience for personalizing communication and at the same time creating the channels for the employees for expressing the ideas and resolving the employee’s concerns in a timely manner.

The advantages of the Acceptance theory of Authority theory allow Google to understand the patterns and follows the structure for resolving the problems in a timely manner. Moreover, through adopting this theory, the managers develop the structure for increasing employee productivity. It is important because of meeting the expectations of the stakeholders and formulating the normative theories for providing the information about the manner through which the company can conduct its function in better terms (Yue, Men and Ferguson, 2019). It results in better communication and at the same time follows the approach of acceptance and consent so that subordinates of Google are managed in an effective manner. While following the theory communication is increased by focusing on various aspects such as legitimacy, legal, social and cultural norms (Taylor, Simpson and Hardy, 2022). While encouraging upward feedback there are some strategies that employers in Google adopt for better relations and interaction with the employees. The strategies include that the company should follow feedback-seeking behavior, providing the option to the employees for providing the feedback and creating the culture of ownership.

While following the upward communication the focus should be on following the principles such as emphasizing, flexibility, using affirming responses and valuing the experience. This is important for expressing the ideas for meeting the ideas and feelings. However, the disadvantages of applying this theory in Google are that employees become free to disobey the manager’s orders and sometimes the issue may occur between the relation between the managers and the employees (Armstrong and Landers, 2018). Moreover, some other issues may occur in the company at the time of adopting this particular theory such as inadequacy in retaining power and lack of confidence among the subordinates. The other problem is that employees are unwilling for setting the standard of control, as the lack of confidence affects the overall performance of the employees (Younas, et al., 2018).

Google can make use of the General system theory for increasing communication and encouraging the employees to react in a certain manner. The General system theory is the theory in which the whole things are divided into parts so that all the employees work together in systems. In this theory, the employer of the company can make use of an interactional model which makes use of two channels of communication and provide a flow of feedback between the sender and receiver (Sung and Choi, 2018). In this theory, the focus of the company should be on the environment, experience and culture as well as results in encouraging upward communication. Google gets the opportunity for making clear communication and understands the problem of the employees. In this theory, the company can make use of the methods of performance reports, concentrate on the focus groups, conducting employee satisfaction surveys and meetings for increasing communication (Sheeba and Christopher, 2020). The advantage of the theory is that it is a powerful method that adopts the process of feedback-controlled regulation. As in this employees and managers adopt goal-directed behavior and get long-term success. However, the disadvantage of the General system theory is that in this Google faces difficulty in controlling the business environment conditions. The other disadvantage is that for better communication inter-dependence approach is being followed.

Google can make use of the theory of reinforcement because it emphasizes learning behavior and demonstrated that it will repeat again which is related to the overall positive outcomes. Therefore, while adopting the theory it becomes important for the company to ensure that the training programs are linked with the company objectives (Linggiallo, et al., 2021). Some human resource practices are important to be kept into consideration such as rewards, salary, bonus, awarding and developmental activities which are related to the overall positive outcomes. In this theory, the manager also encourages the employees to involve in training and development for accomplishing the long-term objectives of the company. The theory is important for accomplishing the desired level of motivation. However, for maintaining discipline and involving all the employees in the training and development the reinforcement approach will be followed in both a negative and positive manner for accomplishing the desired behavior (Leftiani, et al., 2020). For example, it is revealed that retaining skilled employees and developing the employees plays the important role in the operant conditioning process. Reinforcement is one of the effective tools which encourage desirability and discourage undesirable ones. Through adopting this theory the company needs to ensure that reinforcement varies from one person to another.

Reinforcement theory is the principle that shapes behavior by relating it with the consequences. It is important to ensure that the behavior among the employees is changed by providing rewards and punishments to the managers and the employees (Taylor, Simpson and Hardy, 2022). There are roles which Google adopt for implementing training and development programs for the managers and the employees such as:-

• Focuses on conducting the job evaluation survey
• Conducting the interview of the employees and managers for identifying and accessing the training and development needs.
• Delivering and overseeing the individual and group of employees’ training.
• Presenting adequate information for accomplishing the training objectives.
• Concentrate on implementing, providing advice and evaluating the appraisal schemes.
• Providing supervision and monitoring the progress which is made via implementing the training programs (Armstrong and Landers, 2018).
• The focus will be on ensuring that employees should receive the statutorily required training.
• The role will also be to design and access the training programs for identifying the differences and ensure that the company should retain the talent in the particular job position.
• The coaching, mentoring and workshops are provided to the employees for improving their skills and knowledge of the employees (Sheeba and Christopher, 2020).

It is training and development theory that focuses on the needs and requirements of the learners and their needs are addressed by following this type of learning. According to Riyanto, Endri and Herlisha, experience gives maturity to the person and increase their power of learning in addition with the knowledge. Google should this theory while providing training and development to the employees because through personal involvement the learner gets the ability for conducting the self-evaluation test which allows understanding the learning effect on the attitude of the individual (Riyanto, Endri and Herlisha, 2021). The company should provide the authority to the employees to perform the job in practical terms. It is due to the reason that the theory is based on the idea that the best way for learning things is to experience by themselves. This helps the employees to gain more knowledge and retain more information. Four elements will be included in this particular theory such as concrete experience, reflective observation and active experimentation. This results in helping the company to grasp and transform the experience. This theory is important because of increasing the understanding of the employees regarding unfamiliar situations and increases engagement. Furthermore, it also allows Google to support diversity and build a high level of engagement (Githinji and Muli, 2018). For using this theory for the managers and the employees, the company should follow the following roles and responsibilities such as:-

• Creation and acquisition of the knowledge
• Transfer of the knowledge
• Modification of behavior
• Evaluating the employees and identifying the weaknesses (Taylor, 2018).
• Identification of the training needs as per the needs of the employees.
• Developing the plan and implementing the training programs for following the career paths
• Leading, teaching and evaluating new trainers

Google can adopt the strategy of “The Deloitte Model” for engaging the employees by creating a culture of involvement, respect and challenge. This can help the company to focus on two aspects for engaging the employees such as meaningful work, hand-on-management, maintaining a positive work environment, providing growth opportunities and building trust in leadership (Ababneh, 2021). Moreover, the company can also make of “Theory of social learning” for improving the skills and knowledge of the employees. The training programs help in motivating the employees, furthermore, acquiring rewards from the training session helps the company to enhance the mental state of the employees.

Conclusion

From the above, it is concluded that Google is one of the leading companies which adopt human resource management strategies for hiring and managing skilled employees. The Zinger Model and Classical motivation theory could help the company to engage and involve a large number of employees. Google should make use of the Acceptance theory of Authority and General system theory for increasing communication. The training and development of the employees are provided by adopting the theory of reinforcement and the theory of experimental learning. This results in addressing the needs of the learners and improving the knowledge to perform the activities in particular terms.

References

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Managing Human Resource – Sources and Reading List

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