¶ … workers being the critical factor in the company's success has, in many cases, some merit. Good workers are a scarce resource, and the ability of a company to attract, develop or retain quality workers can therefore become a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than in today's knowledge industries. Google is routinely listed as one of the world's best companies in which to work, but this is not a tactic that Google employees out of the goodness of its cold, capitalist heart. Google features a multitude of programs to attract and develop talent because it realizes that if it has the best talent in the world, it will have a near limitless ceiling for its ambitions -- it can outperform rivals if it has better people than those rivals. This paper will analyze some of the development strategies that Google employees to turn its great employees into the best. Google has embedded high performance into its management philosophy. The company wants to cultivate the best people, but it recognizes that attraction and retention are only two elements of that. Walker (2012) notes that Google hired 8000 workers in the past year, and needed to bring those employees up to speed with the skills and tools that they need to succeed. This goes beyond training, however. Google gives its employees time to work on their own projects, in the hopes that this will lead to insights and developments that would not have been unearthed if the employee was operating with the normal framework of his or her Google work.

Walker notes that many employers seek to train their employees in order to develop skills that will help the employees to think more critically, communicate better or generally be more creative and productive in the workplace. What differentiates Google's program, Walker (2012) notes, is that the company finds way to make its learning stick with the employees. The company went so far as to gather data about the qualitative benefits that good managers bring the company, so that it could train managers in those attributes and skills, such as the ability to coach workers (Goodwin, 2012).

One of the things that Google does as well is that it offers this development because it has studied the impacts of such development and found that investing in good employees is cost-effective. Google makes all of its human resource policy decisions based on evidence (Carroll, 2011).

One of the methods of employment development at Google is the personal time to work on projects, which flows from a general philosophy of engaging and involving employees (CEB, 2009). This is a relatively unique concept, but it recognizes that there are two distinctive features to high-level workers. The first is that they want to work on things other than company business -- such employees might well leave Google is they do not have the time to pursue their own projects. The other factor is that these projects provide opportunities for new learning. Employees learning strictly within the framework of their positions and tasks have a very slow rate of learning, but when given the freedom to explore other topics intellectually, Google provides opportunities for its employees to bring new ideas to the workplace that might otherwise not be there. Given that this has always been one of the core benefits to companies of workplace development programs, Google has found an innovative way of increasing the volume of new ideas in its workplace.

Another employee development tactic that Google employs is that it has set up GoogleEDU, which is a formalized learning program at the company. Relying on data analysis, GoogleEDU measures its effectiveness at teaching employees. Part of the program is simply to enculturate new employees to the company, but the formalized learning also seeks to teach new skills to employees that will help them perform better in their jobs. The company keeps metrics on the effectiveness of the programs, but does not reveal these publicly (Walker, 2012).

Some of the things that are taught in GoogleEDU are presentation skills, negotiation skills, entrepreneurial skills and other things related to business skills development. Presumably statistics is another area where employees will gain knowledge, given the importance of quantitative analysis within Google. The objective of the program is simple -- Google states that "we work really hard to get the right people. We want them to reach their potential" (Walker, 2012).

Other Methods

Google is a leader in employee development, as it begins with great employees who are attracted to the company, and then seeks to have them maximize their skills. The company's programs are the result of studying what works and using only those techniques that have been found, empirically, to be effective. But there are other techniques out there that other companies utilize, and these can work for companies that have a different...

Some of these different methods include personal development plans, leadership training, mentor development programs and core training (Jenkins, 2013).
Personal development plans allow employees to get a sense of focus in their lives, in particular their careers. These are valuable to organizations for a couple of reasons. First, the employee benefits from having a clear sense of purpose. This increases motivation and it increases employee loyalty as well, because the organization becomes part of that employee's vision for their future. Often, if employees are unclear about their future, part of that is not having clarity about the role of different things in their life over the long run, their employer included.

Leadership training is something that helps the organization in a number of ways. First, people do not always inherently have leadership skills, even people who find themselves in leadership positions. Leadership skills can be taught. The organization also benefits from having stronger and more capable leaders within its ranks, as better leadership should result in better outcomes for all types of metrics within the organization -- profitability, productivity, turnover among them.

Mentor development programs are a great means by which organizations can improve the caliber of their workforces. Workers often benefit from having direct one-on-one guidance in their careers. A mentor programs is a form of organizational learning, where the employees share their knowledge and experiences with one another, for mutual benefit. The company gains from having employees that work better together, to share their knowledge and make for a smarter, more savvy organization. Further, there is a motivation aspect to a mentorship program because it can give a sense of structure to an employee who might otherwise face uncertainty about their role and future.

Core training is somewhat simple, but can be overlooked. This reflects the need of the organization to provide training for its employees on tasks that are important to the job. Customer services skills can be taught and upgraded, for example. Some companies use tuition benefits for core training, allowing the employees to seek out those activates that they feel they would benefit from the most. For example, a sales person might upgrade their sales skills, or learn Spanish, or upgrade their Internet skills, in order to improve their sales output. This type of open-ended development program also empowers the employee to improve their skills.

Recommendations

Google utilizes some high-end employee development techniques, but it does not utilize all of the techniques that are available to it. There is little doubt that Google's employee development techniques have been a success. This is something that seems to be proven by the rapid growth and massive profitability of the company since its inception, and the status of Google as the most desired place to work in the world. For its success, however, there is little doubt that Google has the ability to improve its employee development programs.

One common tactic that Google can adopt is the educational benefit While its employees are generally very-well-educated people, there is always room for continuous learning. The GoogleEDU program does offer education about things like leadership and communication skills, but an education benefit is usually something that is open-ended. If the company is willing to dedicate some company time to allow employees to work on their own projects because of the ideas that will come from that, it is also worth considering that that company should allow the employees the same freedom with respect to an education benefit. Again, this brings new ideas into the company, and the employees already have a high level of motivation so can be trusted to use the benefit wisely for things that will help them in their careers at Google.

References

Carroll, S. (2011). Google's HR practices explained. Compensation Today. Retrieved November 15, 2013 from http://www.payscale.com/compensation-today/2011/06/google

CEB. (2009). Involve your employees, says Google CEO. Business Week. Retrieved November 15, 2013 from http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/dec2009/ca20091211_675764.htm

Goodwin, B. (2012). Google mines data to identify the best managers. Computer Weekly. Retrieved November 15, 2013 from http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240179949/Google-mines-data-to-identify-the-best-managers

Jenkins, A. (2013). Different employee development methods and their benefits. eHow. Retrieved November 15, 2013 from http://www.ehow.com/info_12114326_different-employee-development-methods-benefits.html

Walker, J (2012). School's in session at Google. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 15, 2013 from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303410404577466852658514144