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Best Practice HR Tips from Liane Hornsey, Google VP Operations | MeetTheBoss - YouTube
Channel: Meet the Boss
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welcome to meet the boss TV I'm Anna
Gilligan in this program I'm at Google
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headquarters in Mountain View California
to speak with Leanne Hornsey VP of
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people operations about how she manages
some of the brightest minds in the world
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we really tried to make this a place
where people want to be and I have to
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say it doesn't happen by accident
it does happen by design so I've read
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that Google only hires people that they
believe could be innovative thinkers why
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is that so important to the company well
I don't think it's quite true to say we
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only hire people who are innovative
thinkers we certainly only hire people
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who we consider to be incredible talent
and part of that talent could be about
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innovative thinking could you tell me a
little bit about the hiring process at
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Google I mean it's kind of it's like the
holy grail of places to work and you
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hear so many legendary stories about how
many interviews people had what is the
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process when I was hired four and a half
years ago I had 14 interviews across two
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different continents and it really was
quite grueling and it took you know
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several months nowadays we tend to try
to limit a number of interviews to
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between four six maximum possibly
possibly eight but the reason that we
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have so many interviews is that we
believe very strongly that we should
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hire through consensus so for example if
I was going to hire you to work for me
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I couldn't just make the decision that
you seem good and that we could get on
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we'd ask somebody who would work for you
to interview you and a couple of your
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would-be peers so we believe very
strongly making 360-degree decisions
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around people that we hire and the
reason that we do that is we believe
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that each and every hire we make is
probably the most important people
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decision that we're going to take we're
very we're very proud of our culture
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here and we and we want to protect it
and we want to make sure that we don't
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dilute it so we put a good deal of
effort into making sure that everybody
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we hire would be a creative to the
culture so
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what is the culture that each employee
has to fit into so well we try very very
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hard to not be hierarchical to be
reasonably democratic in our
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decision-making to be very informal but
formal when it comes to how we do things
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in terms of our decisions so we never
make decisions on the fly for example we
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always use data we're always very
rigorous in our thoughts but we're less
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rigorous and less formal in the way we
dress the way we eat the way we act
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Leanne horns II joined Google in 2006
and heads up human resources for the
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sales arm of the company Google has
become such a phenomenon that its name
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has become a verb now this presents a
unique challenge to Leanne who has to
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keep up with its growing staffing needs
without becoming bureaucratic I asked
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her how she does it and where a lot of
companies go wrong when it comes to
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human resources I think it's very
difficult I think I'd be lying to you if
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I said oh it's easy we can you know we
can scale to 50,000 people and still be
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innovative and still be creative no you
have to work at it you definitely have
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to work at it we do lots of things to
make sure that we don't become
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bureaucratic by default so one of the
things is we look very very carefully at
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the number of levels we have in the
organization we really try to keep that
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tight and light so every course or so we
have what we call bureaucracy buster
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which is basically anybody can write
into as senior guys and say look this
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thing is driving me mad
it's slowing down I can sense
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bureaucracy I can sense lots of
form-filling
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and we do our very very best to take
those ideas and eradicate the
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bureaucracy so we work hard at it I've
seen you guys put a lot of time into it
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when you said that you try to limit the
number of layers so it doesn't become
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bureaucratic what's that is there a
magic number where you say if we go
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beyond this we're in trouble we've toyed
with having magic numbers and we've
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found that that really doesn't work
because some of our organizations are
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very you know they're big they're
thousands of people and some of our
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organizations are hundreds of people so
we've played with magic numbers and with
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throwing them in bin and we've decided
that really we just need to take more of
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a common-sense
due to this but I think it would be
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would be pretty uncomfortable if the
number of layers got into double figures
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but that would feel very uncomfortable
for us oftentimes there's an issue an
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organization someone's a great
individual contributor but it's a very
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different job to then manage the people
that are doing that job you did so well
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how do you spot those people who will
become great leaders and managers and
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make sure that there's a smooth
transition so I think I've gone on
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record saying that my biggest worry at
Google my biggest difficulty at Google
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is managing Talent
my problem is I hire brilliant people so
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you know 95 99 percent of my people are
high talent they really really are the
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people here are good so we don't use
traditional methods it would be wholly
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inappropriate when you have a talent
pool such as Google has to have high
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potential programs for example so what
we tend to do and we do a lot of it we
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encourage a great deal of rotation and
mobility so for example in the sales
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organization we've had roughly about a
thousand people move jobs over over this
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last sort of three quarters and they
either move jobs permanently or they
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move jobs to go and see for a period of
time if they'd like to work in X Y or Z
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area we also bring people together into
project teams working on
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cross-functional big company issues so
that people can build skills and talents
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outside of their own that their own sort
of function and their own area of
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expertise so we work very very hard on
giving very bright people additional
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skills additional learning and
additional knowledge and of course we
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also have the normal promotional
processes and all that stuff we also
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spend an awful lot of time preparing
people for management you know I've
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often bother I've often said that you
know I was a manager for about 15 years
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before I knew how to do it and it's
often when you get very very good
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individual contributors who are used to
doing it themselves who are highly
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motivated it's very hard for them to
manage people because that's a very big
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transition so we put lots of support in
place we have mentoring programs you
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know all the stuff you would expect a
lot of leadership programs we run what
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we call career gurus where we give
advice to would-be mentor
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would be managers we have lower
expectations of managers when they're
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first in the job we don't suddenly drop
them in and say right we expect you to
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be able to do the same as when you're
managing for 10 years so we recognize
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very very clearly that it's quite a
difficult transition and some people
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don't want to make it so for example in
engineering a lot of people stay as
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individual contributors and they're
perfectly happy with that and our pay
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scales and our promotion scales are
absolutely allowed for that to happen
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now you said it took you 15 years to
realize how to become a good manager
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very personal yes yes was there kind of
a light bulb moment what was what did
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you learn that made that switch into
good management yeah there was a light
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bulb moment and I think it was very much
about really believing rather than just
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saying that my success was linked to the
success of my people I'd always been an
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individual contributor who sort of
succeeded and so my whole life was
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geared my whole working life is geared
towards what I did and I had a lightbulb
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moment when I realized it wasn't about
me anymore and that my success was
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absolutely linked to the success of the
team and that absolutely changed the way
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I managed I mean it literally turned at
hundred eighty degrees and I read that
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you said that you measure people with
positives not negatives for example you
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don't keep track of sick days why is
that so important at Google I guess
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because we believe that people are
grownups and adults and you know they'll
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do the right thing and that we don't
have to be monitoring them and measuring
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them and watching their every move and
in my experience that's right you know I
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mean so for example if you just take my
team I never look at their holiday I
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never look at their sake I never look at
what time they come in or what time they
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leave I do look at their output that's
what I'm interested in how they get to
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that output why should I bother you know
they're grown-ups do you believe in a
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work-life balance and if so how is it
encouraged here work-life balance is
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such such an interesting subject yes I
do believe people need work-life balance
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I really do but I believe it's different
for every individual so I actually think
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it would be paternal
dick and wrong to tell people that they
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have to leave the office at three four
five or whatever okay I think people are
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grown-ups and they have to make
decisions for themselves around how they
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work when they work and it's a little
bit like hi answer the question earlier
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I don't check on my people when they
come to work when they leave work if
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people want so for example if if
somebody who works me wants to go to the
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dentist or wants to go to the doctor or
wants to go pick up their kids or
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whatever I don't even notice it and nor
would I expect them to ask so I
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absolutely feel that we concentrate on
output not on how many hours you're at
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work so well I've balance is a different
thing to every individual but yes of
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course we care about it and we leave it
to the individual to decide so you keep
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mentioning that this focus on output
yeah so how frequent are the review
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processes and kind of what's the process
for that everybody in the organization
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and I say everybody but it never is
everybody right but the vast majority of
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the people in the organization do have
quarterly goals so they'll sit down with
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their manager and maybe with their team
and say right this is what I think I'm
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going to do this quarter does it sound
right and let's work out the measures
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around that and then every quarter that
will be reviewed and we review it quite
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formally you know we take it very very
seriously we are a performance related
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culture so the manager will review how
the individuals done sit down with the
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individual they'll have a long
conversation and the managers will all
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get together as well to calibrate how
they feel about the whole team's so we
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take that process very very seriously
and it does impact compensation etc as
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you would expect now for several years
Google has topped fortunes list of the
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100 best companies to work for what are
the traits or the characteristics of
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Google that you think places it so high
year after year so over the last six
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weeks I've been talking to a lot of
people who are new to the company and
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I've sat down with them and I've said
what do you like what don't you like
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what did you find that was as you would
expect what did you find that was
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different and universally
University in a hundred percent of cases
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people have said to me we love the
people so I have to say and I know I'm
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uh nut early boring around this it comes
around data hiring I think if you hire
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people who really want to work on shared
goals and shared products and shared
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things who you feel will be accretive to
the culture it really really impacts how
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people feel about the organization and
of course we we also do do a lot of
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things you know so you know there's all
the stuff that people might consider the
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fluff like the free food like the soft
areas like the fact that we don't check
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people's working hours or sickness
particularly we really try to make this
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a place where people want to be and I
have to say it doesn't happen by
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accident
it does happen by design for more
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