Dubai: There’s good news for all UAE professionals looking to land a job at one of the best places to work in the world — Google Inc.
They are hiring and have several job openings in sales, marketing, YouTube account management and community outreach here in the Dubai office and elsewhere in the Middle East. They are looking for people who can be collaborative, have the learning agility and are ready to let go of their beliefs to embrace new ideas.
This was revealed by Dorothée Burkel, Director of HR Global Business Partners EMEA who talked about the unorthodox work practices, the relaxing use of space, colours and design and amazing incentives that bring out the best in innovation and creativity among employees at Google offices worldwide.
“At Google we invest in our team as they are valuable assets to the business. Happy, healthy employees are more productive and can focus on tackling some of the toughest problems in information technology,” Burkel said.
In an exclusive chat with Gulf News, going by Google best practices, Burkel gave her take on what she thinks are the 10 best philosophies that organisations must adopt for optimal employee performance.
1. People Matter
We don’t hire individuals for a job, we hire them for careers. We want to hire people who believe they can make a big impact, and use technology to transform the way people work, live, and do business.
2. Freedom
We believe that if we give people freedom, they will amaze us. Thanks to the collaborative tools we have developed, good ideas can come from anywhere, we simply have to listen. Take the Google Art project for example. The project started out in Spain a couple of years ago, where a young marketeer decided that it could be a great idea to digitise the main artwork from the Prado. Today, four years later, the Google Art Project features more than 100 museums from around the world. This art is part of the Cultural Institute, based in Paris which serves the entire EMEA region.
3. Transparency
We provide as much information as possible to our employees, to provide context for better decisions, and support our open-door policy at all levels. We are open when things go wrong, in order to demonstrate how we learn and move forward. We have quarterly meetings at the global level where we share our objectives for the next quarter and assess how well we have done in the previous one. Likewise, most of our “human KPIs”, which are opinion surveys, are also widely shared and made public internally.
4. Measurements
Measurements are directly linked to transparency and freedom. If we can’t evaluate what we are doing, it’s difficult to progress. We use data points as much as we can and we always ask ourselves “how can we measure the results of what we are doing” and “how can data help us better understand our business but also our organisation”.
5. Creativity and innovation
People often tend to think that innovation is something in lieu of a shiny new product whereas we consider this view quite limiting. Innovation can be anywhere and everywhere. Innovation is a mindset, be it trying something new, testing out an idea, accepting failures and learning from mistakes.
6. Ownership
We believe in getting your hands dirty. We encourage an all-hands-on-deck approach at Google where we all roll our sleeves up and get involved in details in order to get things done. This helps employees develop a deep understanding of the products. We believe that everyone is equally responsible and we see this even in things as simple as cleaning up a meeting room after you are done using it — regardless of your place in the hierarchy.
7. Agility
Agility is an absolute must-have, and more so as a company grows. One must be able to embrace new activities and adapt to the organisation organically — which requires a great deal of fluidity.
8. Learning ability
We believe that we cannot stay on yesterday’s knowledge. The speed at which new products, features and uses are being developed is on the rise. All of our employees must learn to enjoy experiencing and learning new things if they wish to stay relevant.
9. Think big
Google is all about solving big problems. We like to take on complex challenges in what we refer to as “moonshot thinking”. Examples of this Google philosophy include the driverless cars project, Project Loon, which aims to provide WiFi to remote areas on the planet and so on.
10. Have fun
We believe that we can get all of this done while still having fun! That’s exactly why we strive to create a space where people can hang out; we openly accept criticism and poke at our failures and successes.
