Human Resource

Management

Managing Talent: How

Google searches for
Performance Measures
 Contents
How well does Google's approach to performance management meet the five criteria for
effectiveness of a performance management system? How well does it fit with
company's mission to organize information and make it universally accessible and
useful?....................................................................................................................................3
What errors could arise in the way Google collects performance data on managers? How
could it minimize these errors?............................................................................................5
Common Errors:................................................................................................................5
Ways to reduce errors:......................................................................................................5
Suppose you are responsible for delivering performance feedback to managers at
Google. How would you present the information so as to promote the managers' success
at the company?....................................................................................................................6
How well does Google's approach to performance management meet the five criteria
for effectiveness of a performance management system? How well does it fit with
company's mission to organize information and make it universally accessible and
useful?

The Five criteria of Performance management system are:

1. Strategic Congruence
2. Validity
3. Reliability
4. Acceptability
5. Specificity

Strategic Congruence: Performance management system extracting job performance that

matches with the organization’s aims, strategy and culture.
Google does it by their 360-degree review process.
The process starts with a back-and-forth between employee and manager, so as to pick a
representative, fair sample of peers to participate.
Peers are expected to give assessments in three different media: strengths and weaknesses;
rating each other on certain criteria and commenting on the reviewee’s contribution to specific
projects.

Validity: Google uses Validity tool by asking employees’ expectations of their supervisors. For
example, some expectations included technical expertise - the ability to write code ranked last
among Google's big eight” (www.nytimes.com, 2011). This indicated that supervisors’
knowledge of technical support, while helpful, was irrelevant to making them a good supervisor.

Reliability: Signifies stability of performance measure. A reliability measure is inter-rater

reliability – When two individuals give the same or at least similar assessments of a person’s job
performance. Another measure is internal consistency reliability – how related to each other are
performance measures.
Google uses Interrater reliability tool by asking employees about their supervisor and requesting
feedback on improvements that could be made to assure they get the needed support to perform
their jobs effectively.

Acceptability: Usefulness and reasonability of the Performance measurement system by those

use it. Google uses it to measure whether the feedback performance is acceptable to those who
are using it.
Specificity: Measures the extent to which the performance system gives particular guidance to
employees about the organisation’s expectations and ways to meet them.
Google uses specific feedback when asking what employees wanted out of their supervisors and
they get clear concise feedback by using this tool. This gives Google an idea of how to better
train their supervisors and also helps the supervisors give feedback and let the employee know
exactly what is expected of them and they are given support on how to meet those expectations.

Google's approach to performance management follows an ongoing communication between

employee and supervisor. Google's way is that the employee performance should be evaluated
within the context of an organization wide performance management system. Thus, fulfilling the
company's mission to organize information and make it universally accessible and useful.

What errors could arise in the way Google collects performance data on
managers? How could it minimize these errors?

Common Errors:
 1. Bias based on Similarity: Relationship with supervisor or employee could
lead to inadvertent discrimination. Additionally, there is tendency to rate people
considered similar to ourselves higher.
2. Bias based on personality: Leads to employee rating the supervisor's
behavior or personality, not their actual work performance.
3. Rating on the basis of partial observation:
a. Halo Error: refers to rating employees positively in all areas because of
strong performance observed in one area.
b. Horns Error: rating employees negatively in all areas because of weak
performance observed in one area.
4. Distributional error: Evaluating based on one part of a rating scale more than
another.
a. Leniency error: Rating at the high end of the scale.
b. Strictness error: Rating at the low end of the scale.
c. Central tendency: Rating at or near the middle.

Ways to reduce errors:

Errors can be prevented or minimized by:

1. Training raters on how to avoid errors. Specific scripts could be used to ensure
there are no errors.
2. Studying criteria of supervisors and knowing what is important to the company's
mission will also help to write a performance management system and keep a
script to reduce errors.
3. The use of training programs will also provide minimization of errors.
4. Studying a variety of different performance dimensions and the standards will
help employers evaluate employees’ and supervisor’s performance more
efficiently and accurately.

Suppose you are responsible for delivering performance feedback to

managers at Google. How would you present the information so as to
promote the managers' success at the company?
 Increasing flexibility of feedback
Ensuring all managers have a regular
system as and when required. This
and scheduled performance feedback
would enable faster and more
meeting on a monthly basis, enabling
efficient handling of performance.
managers with instant understanding
on their performance and
improvements needed. This would
also keep tensions under control as
everybody would be on the same
page.

Establishing self-assessments for Problem Solving Approach

supervisors in order to understand
their stance with respect to the
company’s standing.
To encourage supervisors/managers
and employers to work as a team in
order to solve performance problems.
It helps promote respect and
teamwork.