Business 11th Edition by William Pride,Robert Hughes ,Jack Kapoor

Exercise 3

Why Do So Many People Want to Work at Google?
Imagine having a job where you could get generous pay, free gourmet lunches and dinners, free any-time snacks, a pet center, free gym membership, a game room, an onsite massage therapist and doctor, hair styling, generous vacation and maternity benefits, parental leave, adoption benefits, paid take-out meals for new parents, stock options, tuition reimbursement, free shuttle to the office, reimbursement toward the purchase of a hybrid or an electric car, telecommuting, on-site oil change and car wash, dry cleaning, fitness classes, bike repair, a sauna, roller hockey, an outdoor volleyball court, and much, much more.
That's life at Google, the Internet's dominant search company and one of the trendiest and fastest-growing businesses in the world. The company, based in Mountain View, California, boasts an informal, dynamic, and collaborative culture "unlike any in corporate America." With people's pet dogs happily roaming the shared work spaces, it is clearly unlike most office environments. Google's CEO explains on the company Web site that "the goal is to strip away everything that gets in our employees' way…. Let's face it: programmers want to program, they don't want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both."
Although a few perks are available only at headquarters, employees at all the company's offices can customize their benefits, including traditional health and dental coverage plans, life insurance, and retirement and savings plans, into a package that works for each individual and family. These benefits make for happy and productive employees, many of whom have become millionaires as the company's stock has appreciated in value. All these perks are one of the reasons that Fortune magazine includes Google on its list of 100 best places to work in the United States.
Because it must compete directly for top-notch talent with other high-tech firms like Yahoo!, eBay, Facebook, and Amazon.com, Google is committed to retaining those who fit well with its "Google-y" culture, that is, people who are "fairly flexible, adaptable and not focusing on titles and hierarchy, and just get stuff done," according to the company's chief culture officer. The company even conducts an annual "happiness survey" to find out how committed to Google its employees are, why, and what matters to them and their managers. The results are funneled into the company's continuing focus on career development and growth.
Can a company ever provide too many benefits? Google might be about to find out. It recently announced a major and widely unpopular change in one of its most enviable perks-access to its on-site day-care facilities. Saying the move was a response to a two-year waiting list for entry into the program, which it called "inequitable," the company sharply raised the fee for using the service to well above the market rate (from $33,000 to $57,000 a year for two children). It also started charging families several hundred dollars to stay on the waiting list. The list promptly shrank by more than half. After parents protested the price increase, the company scaled it back slightly and changed the company that operates the day-care program, but let the basic outline of its decision stand. It also offers five free days of backup child-care services per year to California employees whose regular day-care arrangements fall through unexpectedly.
Today, Google has trimmed a few of its traditional perks but still offers a lengthy menu of choices. It has not changed its long-standing policy of allowing engineers to devote up to one full workday each week to projects they themselves choose. With the freedom to pursue unusual and creative ideas during company time, engineers can work on their own or team up with colleagues to experiment with new technologies. The next big Google breakthrough might very well grow out of an unofficial project initiated by an engineer taking advantage of his or her right to doodle around with something new during spare moments on the job. 27
What do you think will be the long-term effect of Google's changed child-care benefit? Is it a good idea for companies to reduce or withdraw such benefits?