What Makes Google Employees Happy and Satisfied?

Study Notes

Organizational Behavior and Motivation

Organizational behavior (OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact of individual, groups, and structure on behavior within organizations.
The goal of OB is to apply knowledge to improve an organization's effectiveness.

Motivation

Motivation is the processes that account for an individual's intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.
The three key elements of motivation are:
- Intensity: concerned with how hard a person tries.
- Direction: the orientation that benefits the organization.
- Persistence: a measure of how long a person can maintain their effort.

Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction refers to how much happiness or fulfillment one gets from their employment.
It includes aspects like day-to-day activities, work environment, relationships with coworkers, employee perks, work-life balance, and feeling valued and listened to.
Employees with high levels of job satisfaction hold positive feelings about their jobs, while employees with low satisfaction hold negative feelings about their jobs.

History of Job Satisfaction

Concerns about job satisfaction started in the 1930s.
Measuring worker attitudes was first developed in 1934.
In 1935, Hoppock conducted a study that focused explicitly on job satisfaction, which is affected by both the nature of the job and relationships with coworkers and supervisors.

Types of Motives

Primary Motives: unlearned and physiologically based (e.g., hunger, thirst, sleep, and avoidance of pain).
General Motives: unlearned but not physiologically based (e.g., curiosity, manipulation, activity, and possibly affection).
Secondary Motives: learned (e.g., power, achievement, affiliation, security, and status).

Need-Based Approaches to Motivation

Focus on what motivates employees to choose certain behaviors.
Examples:
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:
  - Physiological Needs: food, water, and rest.
  - Security Needs: safety and job security.
  - Social Needs: friendship and affiliation.
  - Esteem Needs: self-respect and respect from others.
  - Self-Actualization Needs: achievement and success.
- Two-Factor Theory (Herzberg):
  - Satisfiers/Motivators: related to the content of a job, increase satisfaction and motivation (e.g., achievement, recognition, and opportunity for advancement).
  - Dissatisfiers: related to the context of a job, prevent dissatisfaction but do not create satisfaction or motivation (e.g., company policy and administration, job security, and salaries).

Process-Based Approaches to Motivation

Focus on why people choose certain behavioral options to fulfill their needs and how they evaluate their satisfaction after achieving their goals.
Examples:
- Expectancy Theory: a person will be motivated if they believe that effort will lead to performance, and performance will lead to a reward, and the reward will satisfy an important need.
- Equity Theory: an individual's belief that they are being treated fairly relative to the treatment of others, which affects satisfaction and motivation.

Other Approaches to Motivation

Behavior Modification Theory: changes behavior by rewarding the right responses and punishing or ignoring the wrong ones.
Goal Setting Theory:
- Specific goals are better than generalized goals.
- The more difficult the goal, the better the performance.
- Only goals that are accepted improve performance.
- Goals are more effective when used to evaluate performance.
- Goals should be linked to feedback and rewards.
- Group goal setting is important.

Description

Explore the best practices at Google that contribute to employee happiness and satisfaction. Learn about motivational, job design, and incentive structuring theories applied at Google. Understand how creative collaboration and innovative work actions are fostered at Google and other companies.