MARIA ARBOLEDA: Hi, I'm Maria Arboleda, a people analytics
manager at Google.
Research on our people is my number one priority.
From day one, Google knew that people are our top priority.
From how we recruit and find the right talent,
to how we onboard our hires, to what programs and mechanisms we
put in place for their success, we know people really matter.
While we do a lot in this space, today I
want to share some research we did on managers.
Over the next couple of minutes, let
me unpack why managers matter a lot at Google.
Let's dig in.
At point in its history, Google questioned the real value
of a manager for an employee.
For instance, in 2002, Google ran an uncontrolled experiment
where we essentially got rid of the manager role
and flattened the organization completely for a short time.
Employees were confused about where
to go for questions they would typically ask a manager.
Even simple tasks like vacation approval
got escalated to Larry and Sergey.
Not a surprise, that didn't go very well.
Fast forward to 2008.
Google launched a dedicated team of researchers
to evaluate the role and value of a manager.
The team tested the hypothesis that managers don't matter.
So the question about why managers matter
became the question to solve for.
And so Project Oxygen was born.
Project Oxygen strives to answer the question, what
if every Googler had an awesome manager?
Our team studied the best managers
as rated by their direct reports and identified eight attributes
that make for great managers.
In 2016, we conducted additional research
and added the last two.
These 10 attributes are now incorporated into our feedback
culture and learning programs at Google
and are introduced to managers in our new manager training.
We also looked at the ways managers can grow.
We identified the low-scoring managers
and planned a series of interventions,
including offering managerial coaching.
Based on what we learned from Project Oxygen,
Google's People Team decided to incorporate a people manager
review into the performance cycle process.
Now for any manager with three or more employees,
we run a survey to allow employees
to give anonymous and direct feedback to their managers,
as well as to rate their managers on these 10
attributes.
Creating a constant forum for feedback
against these attributes is a great illustration
of how important we think managers
are at Google, because everyone deserves a great manager.
I wanted to share that Google has adopted a similar science
and data approach, as seen in Project Oxygen,
to make most of its people decisions.
Here are three ways Google is using data and analytics
to make important people decisions.
First, Googlegeist is our annual company-wide survey,
and over 90% of the company voluntarily takes it.
We get such a high response rate because Googlers
know that their leaders and organization will listen
and react to their feedback.
All the results are made available internally,
and annually and quarterly goals are
created to address issues raised by Googlers.
After figuring out what makes for effective managers,
the research team set out to answer the question, what
makes a Google team effective?
They identified 180 teams to study,
including a mix of high and low-performing teams
across the globe, and tested how both team composition and team
dynamics impact their effectiveness.
What did they find?
Who is on the team matters less than
how the team members interact, structure their work,
and view their contributions.
They learned that there are five key dynamics that
set successful teams apart from other teams at Google--
psychological safety, dependability, structure
and clarity, meaning of work, and impact of work.
Next, they created a tool called the G Teams
exercise, a 10-minute pulse check on the five dynamics,
a report that summarizes how the team is doing,
a live in-person conversation to discuss the results,
and tailored developmental resources
to help teams improve.
You can check out a team effectiveness discussion guide
to use with your team on our Rework blog.
To better understand the impact of distributed work,
the research team sent out a survey to 5,000-plus Googlers
and held focus groups with about 100 employees across the globe.
They measured well-being, performance, and connectedness,
among other things, and consolidated our findings
and best practices in a set of playbooks
to share with Googlers and other companies.
You can find these playbooks on Google's Keyword blog.
The hope is by sharing these tips,
we'll make it easier for teams to effectively
and happily work together no matter where they are based.
Those are just a handful of examples.
But if you want to learn more about what Google is learning
and sharing with our wider community,
please check out the Rework site.
There we share more details on our approach
to supporting people.
Thanks for listening, and I hope you too can advance the way
your business uses data to inform your people decisions.