Employee engagement 2.0 has arrived courtesy of Google

By James Bennett, Managing Online Editor, Melcrum

If you thought Google employees were the most engaged in today’s cutthroat and recession-riddled corporate world, think again. Despite receiving more than 700,000 applications a year to work for the planet’s most forward thinking Web 2.0 outfit, the company has seen hiring slow, been forced to cut back on some of its infamous perks such as afternoon tea and its annual ski trip and has even seen some of its most talented Googlers jump ship to competitors such as Twitter and Facebook.

So what has it gone and done? Well being the most advanced and innovative algorithmic genius in its class it’s gone and done what it’s best at doing - created an algorithm - but this time has taken employee engagement 2.0 to an entirely new and never-before-seen level. It has produced an algorithm so advanced and so ingrained in the employment and engagement process that it can supposedly crunch employee data such as appraisals, salaries and promotion history and decipher who among its staff is the most unhappy and who among the 20,000 engineers, developers and nerds it employs is the most willing to leave. Not only does it know every move we as web users make online, it can now pry into the work-life habits of its own and work out who should stay and who should go. It’s hard to fathom but Google’s boffins know the answers before their staff do.

Currently in a test phase, the system, if proved effective – and it would have to be faultless considering the information it gathers and the consequences it could have on people’s lives – could forever change the way businesses and their internal communications departments around the world vet and engage or even dismiss their employees.

The web giant has so far, however, discovered one key trend. Those of its employees that feel underused are more likely than others to leave. But the further it looks into the problem and examines employee reviews and pay histories the more I can imagine it will uncover more detail about how its workers think, behave, and react to certain emotions and situations. The key element will be to determine whether or not this research is effective in engaging more staff, unearthing those that are unhappiest and crucially, considering the economic times we are living in, what result this has on the bottom line. Could this be the ultimate tool, the Holy Grail, that we’ve all been looking for, to finally and accurately measure how we can effectively engage our employees and return a healthy profit in order to keep share and stakeholders happy? The possibilities, as with anything this company seems to do, are endless.

Google’s engagement algorithm – why now?

• Crunches data from employee reviews, promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula to identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to leave.
• Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula that is still being tested.
• Google says the algorithm has already identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.
• Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can’t make the same impact as the company matures.
• Google's algorithm has been described by one HR commentator as “helping the company get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave”.
• In recent weeks several top executives has left the company including advertising sales boss Tim Armstrong and display-advertising chief David Rosenblatt, Doug Bowman, engineering director Steve Horowitz and search-quality chief Santosh Jayaram, both of which have switched sides to Facebook and Twitter.

Comments

[Emma Bridger]

I find this at best amusing. Am I alone in thinking it’s worrying that Google are relying on algorithms to identify who feels underused? What happened to talking, having conversations and listening? Companies are now so over reliant on the quantitative survey to give us key drivers of engagement, to demonstrate causality, to predict behaviours that we’ve lost sight of the original objective – to engage people. The data is a means to an end, not the end itself, companies want improve employee engagement but often lose sight of this. And using an online survey or worse still an algorithm is so at odds with engaging people it just feels insincere. Is there really anyone out there who feels more engaged by filling in an online survey or being told by an algorithm that they are unhappy and likely to leave? Yes I get that the data can be seductive but really so what? And of course I’m sure many people are now shouting that it’s what happens with the data that’s important and that I’ve missed the point. But so often nothing happens! At best companies issues action planning spreadsheets filled in at the team meeting in a tokenistic way. I believe the time has come for a new approach, to get back to basics, understand that we are humans after all. Any decent leader will tell you that you don’t need an algorithm to predict who’s going to leave. Why? Because a decent leader talks to their team, spends time with them, ensures they feel valued and not underused, and hey guess what, they’re less likely to leave. I’ve convinced a few of the companies I’ve worked for and with over the years to try a new and different approach to gathering engagement insight and then doing something about it. Why not use the actual process of gathering the data and insight to engage employees? Why not make it feel different, like the company does genuinely want to listen to what employees have to say? It’s hard to achieve this via the survey. So we’ve ditched the survey and started talking again and believe me the effects are astounding.

[Liz Smith]

I can see where data like this could be interesting but to me its value would lay in helping to ensure we talk to people more effectively.

Yes, a good leader talks to his/her people and knows when someone is unhappy. But the reality of the workplace is that sometimes we miss opportunities to talk. Or we talk to someone about what we think is important and miss the cues that there is something else bothering them. Or we manage so many people that we have to focus on the really difficult ones, so the 'sort of unhappy' folks slip through the net until it's too late. Data could help managers spot opportunities while they are still opportunities, i.e. before it's a lost cause.

[James Bennett]

Thanks for responding Emma and Liz. I'd love to hear more about this from you both, perhaps, if you were both willing, you could each write a For and Against piece on the subject of traditional versus more modern approaches to employee engagement? I'd love to use that on the Melcrum members only Hub. I think it would have a real impact and really get people talking.
Please email me at james.bennett@melcrum.com, find me on Linked In (Melcrum Communicators Network) or on Twitter @Geskey.
Thanks again
James

[Ryan Huckle]

Emma - completely agree with you. So much time is spent compiling data, and so little time spent either:

1. Communicating with the Line Managers who can effect change, or
2. Training Line Managers in how to manage/engage staff effectively.

And anyway, so much of the decision-making process lies under the surface - that's why qualitative discussions/focus groups are able to discover things quantitative surveys cannot.

More to the point, this Google story sounds like a PR exercise to me. Ryanair (low cost airline) uses a similar tactic - for instance, releasing a story saying they are considering charging a pound every times a customer uses the toilet.

Customer outtake: Ryanair are obsessed with keeping costs low.

Customer outtake here: Google is obsessed with the perfect predictive search tool.

[Tony Brice]

I agree for the most part with all of Emma's points. In Google's case, though, I don't believe a scientific approach in general is a bad idea. The focus of the approach, however, may be a bit misplaced. In my view, the things they're doing don't appear to be about employee engagement. Rather, they're about discovering 'opportunities' for engagement (or disengagement, one might suppose, depending on what is discovered regarding an employee).

One of the most valuable assets in most companies is their employees -- their talent, knowledge, and experience. The optimal way for any company to tap into those things is to promote engagement BETWEEN employees. This is especially true in, and a particularly big challenge for, large global companies where employees often don't even know one another, let alone understand the value they bring to each other.

At cubeless, we decided from the outset that this is where social media and the development of sophisticated, scientific engagement techniques should be focused. The question for most companies is whether they have the courage to take the open communications step. More and more are deciding they have no choice and that is a very good thing.

[Nate]

@ Emma Bridger "I find this at best amusing. Am I alone in thinking it’s worrying that Google are relying on algorithms to identify who feels underused?"

My thoughts exactly, surely the purpose of employee engagement is not to have a some robot joining up the dots then setting off an alarm... "Employee 24XC3 is disengaged. Please Engage this Employee" but more to try to attain an insight into what your employees are thinking on a human level, by communication and interaction.

It seems to me that google may be closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Interesting approach though.