Workforce diversity is the virtue or characteristic of a company or organization having the ability to attract and retain employees from different backgrounds, with different characteristics and experiences. The features of a healthily diverse company include age, race, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation and ethnicity. In the global economy, a company that fosters diversity can easily adapt to a rapidly evolving landscape, while maintaining impressive levels of productivity (Rundolph, 2015). Few companies display diversity better than Google.
Google is a global technological giant with offices all around the world. I paid a visit to their local offices to study workforce diversity in their organizational set-up. The publicly stated goal of Google is to organize all of the world’s information. The company also champions the undertaking of ambitious moonshot projects that seek to make the world a better place. By this account, it is expected that the staff and teams employed by the technology behemoth is fairly diverse. This essay explores all the visible signs of diversity that I observed during my visit. I will also explore the more nuanced indicators of diversity.
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At first glance, it is clear that Google employs a diverse workforce to carry out its numerous and ambitious goals. At the company’s offices, you will notice a variety of employees going about their businesses (Amidu, 2017). Among these are women, Africans, women of colour, Asians, teenagers, the elderly and even a few people with disabilities. Official statistics claim that women constitute approximately 30% of Google’s workforce. This is easy to see when you visit any of their global offices, as women make up a healthy number of employees milling about.
Latino and Black employees are also visible as you spend more time in the offices. Official statistics place Google’s Latino employee count at 5% and the Black employee count at 3%. Although white and asian males make up a majority of Google’s employees, recent statistics show a slight drop in the number of white males and a slight rise in the number of their Asian counterparts, in the official employee count.
At the company’s parking lot, it was easy to see the secluded handicap section that points to a consideration for employees with disability. You will also occasionally spot a ramp here and there, to assist employees who use wheelchairs to move around. Additionally, Google has a bring-your-pet-to work policy, which allows pet-owners to bring their pets to the workplace (Bock, 2015). Here the pets are well taken care of in a secluded space as their owners work in adjacent offices. A number of times a week, parent employees are let to bring their young ones along to the workplace. Here there is a free daycare system where the children are taken care of and engaged in fun activities as the parents work. Here we see that Google tries as hard as possible to encompass every possible demographic in their diversity policy.
On further probing I discovered that Google has a paid maternity and paternity leave policy. This is obviously wonderful for pregnant women and their partners as they can keep on being part of the company as they spend time away from the workplace taking care of their pregnancies and infants. This is another indicator of Google’s attempt to be as diverse as possible with their employees.
Looking at all these indicators points to clear efforts by Google to be as diverse as possible with its employees. Right from the recruitment and onboarding process, we see that Google tries to be as diverse as possible. This effort reverberates throughout the professional lives of the employees, as we witness the company’s efforts in trying to retain every employee of every, race, color, sex or caliber (Chamberlain, 2017). This is witnessed by the various perka and benefits provided by the company, in a blatant attempt to attract and retain as diverse a workforce as possible.
References
Rudolph, J. V. (2015). Edgar Papke. True Alignment: Linking Company Culture with Customer Needs for Extraordinary Results. New York, NY: AMACOM, 2014, 240 pages, $29.95 hardcover. Personnel Psychology , 68 (4), 939-941.
Shittu, A. A. (2017). An investigation of human resource management in the organization, on the example of “Google Inc.” (Doctoral dissertation, Тернопільський національний технічний університет ім. Івана Пулюя).
Bock, L. (2015). Work rules!: Insights from inside Google that will transform how you live and lead . Hachette UK.
Chamberlain, A. (2017). Why do employees stay? A clear career path and good pay, for starters. Harvard Business Review .
