Google thinks it will be able to tell which of its employees are going to quit, maybe even before they know.The company revealed Tuesday that it is using its fabled data-collection and analysis powers for more than just search results. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google has developed an algorithm for assessing the number of employees likely to turn their back on the free lunches and multicolored walls of Google's Mountain View, Calif., campus in hopes of convincing the best of those folks to stay.
A few years ago, Silicon Valley workers were flocking to Google, and the company was hiring like mad. The world has changed, however, and Google is no longer automatically seen as the best place for a budding young coder or entrepreneur to hone their talents--especially as the stock price has declined since its late 2007 heights.
As a result, Google has seen recent defections to companies du jour such as Twitter and Facebook, and is determined to retain its best people, according to a company representative quoted by the Journal. The algorithm is still in testing (insert joke about Google's beta culture here), but the idea seems to be to identify disengaged employees before they lose interest in staying with Google.
It's almost like a kinder, gentler version of the "forced ranking" Six Sigma program that encouraged companies to regularly fire the bottom 10 percent of their employees to get rid of the malcontents. Google's not going down that road, but nor is it shy about using quantitative analysis to categorize its workforce.
The algorithm works by taking data from staff pay history, promotion history and employee reviews and appraisals of its 20,000 staff worldwide.The programme is still in the test phases, so the company is not ready to share information about the technical workings of the system, but a spokesman told HR magazine: "As anyone who has observed Google over the years knows, we are serious about keeping our employees happy.
"The work we do in predictive attrition helps us find situations that may increase the likelihood of some ‘Googlers' leaving the company so that managers and HR staff can work on avoiding those very situations. "These efforts don't identify specific people at risk of leaving but instead focus on the less obvious factors that may contribute to the decision to leave the company."Google does not intend to use the algorithm to prevent employees who wish to leave the company from doing so, but hopes to find out which employees are feeling demotivated so training and recognition can be used more strategically.
