As HR professionals in Egypt; we have been recently facing the dilemma of how we can balance between the Employee welfare while applying a sound management system able to control my people by different means; tracking their attendance, their performance, their behaviors & their attitudes.
I have recently met with, whether management professionals or employees who have a misleading interpretation for the concept of “Employee Welfare” in their minds, which unfortunately results in: or a wrong application of management systems, in the case of management professionals, or a non-justifiable dissatisfaction, in the case of employee.
Now let us go in more details for the above case.
The misleading concept I have recently found for the “Employee Welfare” in the understanding of some of, whether management professionals or employees, which is most probably inspired from “Google” as they strongly assume, is that they believe that opening the utmost limits for flexibility is the right application for a “Google” working environment that will perfectly lead in a better employee satisfaction.
The problem is that just hearing “peels” about a workplace or a management style without going in details tackling what goes in the background of such application, will definitely lead to shocking ends.
It is quite known to all of us that “Google” was named for four consecutive years as the Best Company to work for, “the Employer of choice”, relevantly as a result of all the efforts they really exert to customize all suitable perks they can give for their people, and how they can foster a work environment capable of energizing people to give their best ever.
However, let’s go deeper in examining the “Google” Employee Welfare concept. Is it all about giving employees an utmost flexibility & bestowing them with swank perks? Could this be my only perception, whether as an employee or as a manager for the wished work environment I hope to work in or apply?
My dear employee, please don’t just take the story from outside ignoring the inside details which most probably represents the golden threads that mainly lead to the final destination you are limiting your view to it.
In 2015, Laszlo Bock, Google’s People Operations Department Head, issued the “Work Rules” book in which he explains with more details a lot about Google internal work rules & their people management perspectives.
If you just went in reading this book you will initially learn how much do they force a very strong system for hiring aiming to maintain the quality of people-in “Google” so that not to affect the “Google” life/work quality inside, to the extent that “Google” at a time became infamous for asking prospective candidates to endure lots & lots of interviews.
They do believe that focusing intensely on hiring processes, helps them in choosing people well and reaping the rewards from its selectivity. The Company is incredibly choosy with who it picks to become “Googlers”.
My dear Manager, a moment here please, aspiring to apply the “Google Environment” in your work place, are you pretty sure that you first have inside all the people fitting in to the maturity of the freedom you will be granting?
If yes or no, do you have an internal well-designed system capable of tracking whoever could abuse whatever freedom you will be granting?
Another example from “Google Operations” is that, they apply a goal-setting performance management system deliciously complicated to make sure that if the rating of an employee is a hair higher than someone else’s he would be rewarded, as a result, with a slightly higher raise.
My dear Manager/My dear Employee, I think we shall not debate anymore the necessity & the effectiveness of applying the right performance management system in place, with the claim of fostering a flexible work-environment. You can rather change your perspective for how you are going to manage the results of your people ratings and how you will relate them to impact on other HR functions, so the debate now is different! It is no more about applying or not the performance management; it is how to just apply it in the way that can most benefit the main stakeholders of the process: the Employee & the Company.
Don’t ever misinterpret the Google concept by having loose internal systems in place for people management, claiming that you are applying the “Google” flexibility style.
It was really astonishing to me to see this in reality, to the extent of refusing in some cases to implement an internal attendance tracking system, failing in this way to track any record by any means for the basics of employee systematic tracking.
I chose only those two functions as slight examples to support my idea, I don’t want to go in more details about their internal processes & policies, but I just wanted to indicate the complicated systems in the background that apparently seem to who doesn’t study well the case, as if it is only about applying flexibility without exerting all these efforts in the background for the control.
The main characteristics we can simply deduce from Google’s People Operations policies then, it is not the uncontrollable flexibility that can realize the “Employee Welfare” in its right meaning, but rather partnering the employee as much as possible in every perspective related to his well-being this is number 1, in addition to making all people decisions informed by data which definitely requires, first of all, implementing the right systems in place that can track consistently & accurately employees’ output by all means and in all functions, and thus foster fairness in each and every essence.
This is the title I chose for my article “Freedom within Control” it is neither an utmost Freedom nor a rigid Control; it is rather the art of balancing between giving your people their freedom within a mature essence of control, contributing effectively in formulating a such amazing and fair work environment.
I am totally with fostering every aspect of freedom & flexibility in the workplace, but I am against the illogic application of it, and the incorrect myths built in the minds of some employees about the “Freedom” concept applied in the most famous Companies highly rated internationally as “Employer of Choice”.
Written By: Mariham Magdy