1. Company Profile: The purpose of this outline is to analyze the strategies that Google uses to motivate employees to work at the expected level of performance.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University graduate students, formed Google in 1998. They came up with Google to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful (“Company”). Through innovation and creativity Google has continued its success. As Google continues to grow it tries to retain a small company feel and creative workspace, which helps the company continue to succeed.

2. Company Background and Stats: a. Major Products and Services: Google is one of the largest internet search engines which provides maps, images, news, shopping, social networking, translations, advertising space, and Droid products. b. Number of Employees: 32,467 (Total full time)(“Mergent”). c. Annual Revenue: 37,905,000,000 (“Mergent”)

3. Observable Components of Company Motivation Strategy: d. Component 1: Google’s Compensation Motivation.
Google employees receive individually tailored compensation packages. With the custom pay packages, employees receive competitive salaries, and get to choose from a wide variety of benefits to create compensation packages that are tailored to each employee’s personal needs and wants (“Benefits”). This idea behind compensation is good motivation because it makes employees feel that their inputs are worth the outputs they receive.
When equity exists, people are motivated to continue contributing their current levels of inputs to their organizations to receive the current level of outputs (Jones & George, 2011). e. Component 2: Founders’ Awards
Google awards employees that work hard on outstanding projects that add enormous value to the company. These awards are handed out in stock options, but can be worth multiple millions of dollars. The recipients of the award receive their bonus based on their contributions to the project. “We have people who just do phenomenal things, I want a mechanism to reward that.” said Sergey Bin(Co-Founder) (Hafner, 2005).
Instrumentalities must be high for motivation to be high- people must perceive that because of their high performance they will receive outcomes (Jones & George, 2011). f. Component 3: Work Choice
Google engineers are allowed to use 20% of their work time to work on a project of their choice that is company- related and interests them. Google gives employees the ability to turn on of their small ideas into something that could change the organization.
Google works form the bottom up. If you have a great technical idea, you don’t have your V.P. send out a memo telling everyone to use it. Instead, you take it to your fellow engineers and convince them that it’s good. Good ideas spread fast, and this approach keeps us from making technical mistakes. But it also means that the burden falls upon you to spread your idea (Mediratta, 2007).

4. Analysis of Company Motivation Strategy: g. Theories Explaining Organization’s Motivational Approach a) Equity Theory: When an employee feels that their inputs are equal to the outputs they receive they are in equity. When there is equity, employees are more motivated to continue contributing that amount of input of they continue to receive that output (Jones & George, 2011). i. With competitive salaries and custom benefit plans, employees are likely to receive fair payment and benefits. Therefore they feel more motivated to continue their contributions to the organization. b) Expectancy Theory: Expectancy theory identifies three major factors in motivation: expectancy, instrumentality, and valence (Jones & George, 2011). Expectancy theory states that motivation is high when there is high levels of effort that lead to high performance, which leads to the outcomes (Jones & George, 2011). ii. Getting a Founders’ Award from Google is not easy, very few have been given out since the company started, but it gives employees something to aim for. Working hard and developing new ideas can create value for the company, creating enough value for the organization could get you an award for your productivity. c) Social Learning Theory: This theory focuses on how a person’s thoughts, beliefs and observations of others behaviors effects motivation (Jones & George, 2011). iii. Engineers receive 20% of their work time to work on something a project they are interested in (“The engineer’s”). This gives them the chance to experiment, fail, and learn from their mistakes. It gives them a chance to start very important projects even as bottom line workers (Jones & George, 2011).

h. Strengths of the Organization’s Motivational Strategy: i. Strength 1: Google use extrinsic motivators well. Google offers very good compensation packages. Employees try to do what they are required to attain the rewards (Jones & George, 2011). Google has done a good job of keeping equity by offering the individually tailored compensations packages to. By keeping the equity employees are motivated to do their jobs to the extent of which they are expected (Jones & George, 2011). ii. Strength 2: Awards. Google gives out awards in the form of stock and stock options. Stock options motivate employees to continue high performance because they want to see the company do well as a whole (Jones & George, 2011). iii. Giving employees 20% of their work time to focus on their own projects and interests is a good intrinsic motivator. This motivation comes from the actual performance of the job. Google benefits from this because it keeps employees happy and also when a new product or service is created from this strategy, it could add value to Google as a company.

i. Weaknesses of the Organization’s Motivational Strategy: i. Weakness 1: Benefits
Google offers a great benefit package, but some of the benefits may be more valuable to some employees than others, causing some underpayment inequity. This lowers employees’ motivation because they feel that they are not receiving enough outputs (benefits) for the current amount of inputs (labor) (Jones & George, 2011). According to expectancy theory Google needs to work on their Valence to make people feel their benefits are equal. ii. Weakness 2: Founders’ Awards
Google gives out the Founders’ Awards very rarely. The Founders’ Award has no specific criterion that is required to be met to receive the award. When employees set goals they are most motivated when the goals are specific and difficult (Jones & George, 2011). The Founders’ Award is difficult to achieve but it is not a specific enough goal because there is no set criteria for receiving it. iii. Weakness 3: Lack of Intrinsic Motivation
Engineers at Google are allowed 20% of their time to work on a company- related project that interests them personally (Mediratta, 2007). This is good for those employees who are intrinsically motivated because it gives them the ability to work on something they enjoy doing (Jones & George, 2011). By giving the engineers this “free- time” Google may be wasting some employees productivity. Some employees wont have any personal projects that interest them so they may just be working on something they are not intrinsically motivated to do, so their productivity is reduced. j. Improvements i. Recommendation 1: Continue to add more benefit options. Adding benefits will help employees feel more at equity (Jones & George, 2011). When employees feel that they are in equity they are more motivated (Jones & George, 2011). ii. Recommendation 2: Google needs to make a better awards system. The Founders’ Award is given out only if the founders and executives feel it is necessary (Hafner, 2005). If Google set up a better awards system that included more achievable awards and a more specific criterion for the awards (Jones & George, 2011). This would increase the Employee motivation because specific and difficult goals create high motivation and high performance (Jones & George, 2011). iii. Recommendation 3: Engineer Free-Time
Google should monitor the projects that the engineers work on during their 20% time. They should quickly eliminate any projects that are not in focus with the company’s goals and set goals for the projects that continue. Setting some specific goals for these projects will help motivate the employees and be more time efficient for the company (Jones & George, 2011).

5. s k. Google has had continued success since it started in 1998 and the employees have been very fundamental in that success. “We love our employees and we want them to know it” (“Top ten”), is how Google feels about their employees. Google does a good job of motivating employees both intrinsically and extrinsically through their benefits, pay, and company organization. I think Google’s motivational strategy is similar to the goal setting theory and learning theory because Google gives it’s employees the easy going workspace and the freedom to be creative but motivates them to work hard and be productive. l. Google has always been known as one of the best places to work. They continue to shine by motivating their employees extrinsically, but also give employees jobs and workspaces that motivate them intrinsically. Google continues to give all employees a chance to make a difference and that is what has helped them create many of their best products. m. In this assignment I learned the importance of an organizations employees. Google has taught its employees that they can make a difference and that has helped with its success. This has also made me realize how important it is to motivate people within an organization. Without correct and fair motivation employees will not be as productive or happy. I also learned how important motivation could be in my career and helped teach me what to look for when I am trying to get a job.

References

Benefits. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/index.html

Company. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/about/company/

Hafner, K. (2005, Feb. 1). New incentives for google employees: Awards worth millions . The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/technology/01google.html

Jones, G. R., & George, J. M. (2011). Essentials of contemporary management. New York, NY:McGraw-Hill Irwin

Mediratta, B. (2007, Oct 21). The google way: Give engineer room. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/jobs/21pre.html

Mergent Online. (2011). Google company profile.

The engineer's life at google. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/jobs/lifeatgoogle/englife/index.html

The engineer’s life at google. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/jobs/lifeatgoogle/englife/index.html

Top ten reasons to work at google. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/jobs/lifeatgoogle/toptenreasons/index.htmls