Google Case Study

Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to analyse the problem Google is facing in order

to anticipate serious threats to its future performance and provide suitable

solutions and recommendations. Google is facing a diversity and

discrimination problem towards female, black and Latinx. Also, Google has a

gender discrimination problem, as women make less profit than men that

have the same position within the company. There are three possible

solutions to these: expand its points of entry by doing an internship program,

giving opportunity to females, black and Latinx, encourage women to take

courses that are useful to what the company is looking for and finally pursue

pay equity, to ensure women get paid the same as a man in their same

position. It is recommended to start pursuing pay equity as it is something

elemental and continue with the internship program to increase diversity,

solving both diversity and gender discrimination problems.

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 Google Case Study

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.................................................................................................................... 2
1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION.......................................................................................................... 2
2. GENERATION AND EVALUATION OF SOLUTIONS..........................................................................3
2.1 EXPAND POINTS OF ENTRY AND TRY TO MEET THE INCLUSION TARGETS.........................................................3
2.2 ENCOURAGING SOFTWARE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COURSES FOR WOMEN......................................4
2.3 PURSUE PAY EQUITY.............................................................................................................................5
3. RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................. 5
4. REFERENCES................................................................................................................................ 6

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 Google’s Diversity Problem

1. Problem Identification

According to Wakabayashi (2018), staff at Google are mostly white or Asian

males, which leads to a diversity and inclusion problem. Nowadays, diversity

has a positive effect on the performance and development of the company,

according to Sakpal (2019) having teams of age, gender, race and ethnicity

diversity will allow the business to better serve its consumers. Therefore, to

see better results Google should improve its workforce diversity. Google has

been sued numerous times because of diversity related problems. According

to Wakabayashi (2018) Google employees have presented charges against

the organization stating that it goes too far with diversity and others arguing

that it should have a more diverse work force, including females, black and

Latinx members. A recent article based on the company’s diversity report,

shows little progress for women and black. The number of people of color

employed in the U.S. grew from 4.8% in 2018 to 5.5% in 2019, rose by a 7%,

the biggest growth of people of color hired since Google started publishing

diversity data (Umoh, 2020). In addition, according to Google’s Diversity

Annual Report (2020), female employees dropped from 33.2% of global hires

in 2018 to 32.5% in 2019, which makes clear there has been little progress. It

is also noticed that in 2020, there are more than double male employees

(67.5%) than female (32.5%), showing that women continue to have overall

attrition rates lower than the average. Furthermore, a report by ‘The Guardian’

revealed that as a result of pay discrimination, women at Google lose out on

thousands of dollars (Paul, 2020). The calculations show that they may be

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losing out on $17,000 a year, even though some are software engineers and

might have higher positions than men, providing strong evidence that there is

a gender discrimination problem.

2. Generation and Evaluation of Solutions

After reviewing the diversity and gender discrimination problems, there are

three potential solutions that could benefit the company which are detailed

below.

2.1 Expand points of entry and try to meet the inclusion targets

Firstly, Google’s organisational culture focuses on innovation and excellence.

Although a big part of innovation is diversity and inclusion, the company does

not take this enough into account. Expanding points of entry within the

company with strategies such as internships and rotational programmes will

help acquire people from different backgrounds and achieve a more diverse

workplace (Slocum, 2019). Additionally, if all employees have similar

perspectives and backgrounds, they are more likely to share the same points

of view and blind spots, having as consequence only focusing on a way of

thinking and lacking innovation. While trying to hire and giving opportunity to

different people, the company should focus to meet the inclusion targets and

have a better performance than the year before.

Applying this solution would improve the diversity within the company as well

as the performance of it, by having a variety of culture and thoughts. The

drawback of this strategy is making the company overcrowded and

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experience difficulties to finance the old plus new employees, generating a

new problem.

2.2 Encouraging software and information technology courses for

Secondly, the lack of women is mainly because more men study careers

related to technology and areas focused on what Google’s work is related to

(Paul, 2020). By offering and encouraging women to complete courses of

software engineering or anything related to what the company needs, more

job opportunities will be available for women and as consequence have less

difference between the number of male and female employees. It can be

achieved by motivating women with campaigns or offering conditions women

can take advantage of and feel motivated by it, for instance the first part of a

course free and after they should pay a reasonable amount of money to

finish. Another strategy can be assuring them a position in the company for a

period of time, with the objective of making them feel psychological safety,

meaning they have a safety net after finishing the. studies.

However, the downside of this may be that the company’s profit could be

impacted by offering some free courses and having or hire more personal. In

addition, men could feel discriminated by offering these benefits only to

women.

2.3 Pursue pay equity

Lastly, apart from progressing in hiring a more diverse workforce, an

important part of making progress is retaining new employees. A significant

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complain from women within Google is being paid less than the other gender

(Paul, 2020), pursuing a pay equity will make women feel valued and included

in the work environment.

As consequence this will have a positive influence on the behaviour of the

employees, having as a result a better performance of the organization. This

solution is a simple strategy and might not have any disadvantage.

3. Recommendations

It is highly recommended that the company starts pursuing pay equity, as this

is fundamental in any business nowadays, as both genders in the same

position should have the same rights, these including salaries. Therefore,

there should not be a difference on wages and there is not a downside by

achieving. Secondly, continue with expanding its points of entry with an

internship program, by doing this the company might gain innovation and

improve results. Furthermore, start hiring more diverse people, as having

mixing attributes and different points of view will be reflected within the

performance of the company, although it would increase the expenses of the

business. By following these recommendations, the company should start

seeing an improvement and start gaining benefit from it.

Word count: 920 words

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4. References

Google (2020), ‘Google Diversity Annual Report 2020’ pp 23. Available at:
https://kstatic.googleusercontent.com/files/25badfc6b6d1b33f3b87372ff7545d
79261520d821e6ee9a82c4ab2de42a01216be2156bc5a60ae3337ffe7176d90
b8b2b3000891ac6e516a650ecebf0e3f866 (Accessed: 24 November 2020)

Paul, K (2020), ‘Women at Google miss out on thousands of dollars as a

Sakpal, M (2019) ‘Build High-Performance Teams’. Smarter With Gartner,

Slocum, D (2019), ‘The power of difference: How to hire and retain diverse
teams in brands and agencies’. Think with Google, June 2019. Available at:
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-154/future-of-
marketing/management-and-culture/diversity-and-inclusion/-diversity-in-the-
workplace/ (Accessed: November 24 2020)

Umoh, R (2020), ‘Google Diversity Report Shows Little Progress For Women
And People Of Color’. Forbes, 5 May. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ruthumoh/2020/05/05/google-diversity-report-
shows-little-progress-for-women-and-people-of-color/ (Accessed: 23
November 2020)

Wakabayashi, D (2018), ‘Google Is Trying Too Hard (or Not Hard Enough) to
Diversify’. The New York Times, 10 March. Available at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/technology/google-diversity-
lawsuits.html (Accessed: November 23 2020)

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Reflective Statement

During the past weeks I have been working on the Google case study. It is
the first case study I have written. At the beginning I struggled to start typing, I
did not know how to start. After doing research and planning how I was going
to do it, it was easier. I found the case study more difficult than the report, I
followed some advice from the report such as referencing better and make
clear my ideas, although as it happened in the first report I am lacking formal
academic language which is something I need to improve on. As a business
student, I think this will help me in a future to know the structure of it and how
to aim for the best mark.