Organisation and stress management
It’s no surprise that job-related stress has serious consequences–both on an individual level and for
workplaces as a whole, costing U.S. companies alone an estimated $300 billion a year.
Research has shown that chronic stress can take a beating on our bodies, affecting everything from
our heart rate and blood pressure to our digestive track and immune system. The more stressed we
are, according to Sharon Bergquist, professor of medicine at Emory University, the more vulnerable
our bodies become to sickness.
And work-related stress in particular has been shown to have a direct connection to poor health.
According to the Behavioural Science and Policy Association, particular work stresses like job
insecurity, for example, increase the odds of reporting poor health by about 50%, and high work-
related demands up the odds of having an illness diagnosed by a doctor by 35%, not to mention long
work hours, which have been shown to increase mortality by nearly 20%.
Working long work hours has been shown to increase mortality by nearly 20%.
The researchers, who conducted a meta-analysis of 228 studies, each of which looks at workplace
stressors on health, urge companies to pay attention to the serious effects on employees and take
measures to prevent them. “Policies designed to reduce health costs and improve health outcomes
should account for the health effects of the workplace environment,” they write.
Companies are taking notice and also getting more creative in the process–trying out
unconventional approaches to help employees better manage their stress.
WORKPLACE VENTING SESSIONS
Like a growing number of tech companies, app development agency Appster offers perks like free
meals and rides to work in an effort to minimize stress. The California office has a pet husky named
Howl who helps employees blow off steam, and Appster pays for outings so that employees can do
fun activities together outside the workplace. “If people are stressed, you don’t want them going
home stressed,” says cofounder Mark McDonald.
But McDonald recognizes that all the perks in the world won’t make everyone happy. While venting
about the boss or job has long been reserved for hushed cubicle whispers or happy-hour rants
outside the office, Appster, which has around 380 employees across offices in the U.S., Australia,
and India, put in place what McDonald refers to as a “weekly vent report,” an online board where
employees can post complaints and concerns anonymously and publicly.
The cheapest, most effective way to help stress is simply listening to staff.
The company’s three offices also each hold monthly town hall meetings where issues raised on the
weekly vent reports get addressed openly and in person, says McDonald. Appster also prioritizes
monthly one-on-one check-in meetings for all its employees so that they are given a chance to talk
about their career, and any concerns they might be having on the job regularly. “The cheapest, most
effective way to help stress is simply listening to staff,” says McDonald. “It doesn’t really cost us
except for a little bit of time, but the impact on morale is really big.”
OFFERING ONE-ON-ONE ATTENTION
Feeling heard and acknowledged when it comes to stress management is such a critical factor that
one company, Lantern, has focused on pairing stress management coaches with individuals through
a virtual platform. Linking smartphones to cognitive behavioral therapy is a growing area of interest
for start-ups and researchers looking to tap into the $200 billion mental health industry in the U.S.
In the workplace, you can’t remove stress from life. All you can do is, react better to stressful events.
Lantern takes this approach a step further by offering users not just virtual stress reduction tools like
10-minute deep breathing techniques or muscle relaxation exercises, but by pairing those with one-
on-one stress management coaches who recommend specific exercises to users based on their
individual needs. “The novel thing that’s happening is that companies are starting to deploy services
that address these issues,” says Lantern cofounder Alejandro Foung. “Companies are promoting this
alongside Fitbits, walking programs, and nutrition information.”
To date, more than three dozen organizations are deploying Lantern’s services, including employers,
universities, and insurers, says Foung. Lantern currently has eight stress management coaches, each
of whom can work with up to 250 individuals. “In order to service everyone within the population,
there needs to be something that’s a little bit scalable,” he says.
MINDFULNESS ON DEMAND
If there’s any one company pioneering stress management for employees, it’s Google,
unsurprisingly. But the company realizes the perks that come with working there, which are
plentiful, are not enough to address the stress pandemic head on.
Taking a more targeted approach, Google also offers specific classes to employees with Zen-centric
names like Meditation 101, Search Inside Yourself, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. The
company also has created a both virtual and in-person community called gPause to help support and
encourage meditation practice, including features like daily in-person meditation sits at more than
35 offices, what the company calls “mindful eating meals,” and day meditation retreats at a handful
of locations. Given its pioneering status in the world of company perks, it should be no surprise that
other companies will follow suit.
“In the workplace, you can’t remove stress from life,” says Foung. “All you can do is react better to
stressful events.” Why not get creative in the process?
MANAGING STRESS AND
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE:
A CASE STUDY IN GOOGLE
Introduction
Google is a highly successful company in the recent decades, whereby the
innovations created by Google had effectively changed the world in many
ways. The are many factors leading to the success of Google, and one of the
most critical success factors is the power of the people management in the
company. With the ability to manage talented, aggressive and creative
individuals, Google able to growth by leaps and bounds to become the
industry leader in the Internet industry. That makes Google an ideal candidate
for researchers dealing with the subject of organizational behaviors or human
resources management to study and investigate in details. In this paper, two
key aspect of Google will be discussed. Firstly, the methods used to managing
stress in Google will be discussed. Then, the special and yet innovative
culture of Google will be analyzed, in order to understand how the special
culture of Google can lead the company to become industry leader in such a
fast pace.
Theoretical Frameworks and
Concepts
Managing Stress
In the fast changing, dynamic and ever challenging business environment,
workforce around the world is constantly facing stressful working environment
and demands. This is particularly true for firm operating in the technological
related sector, whereby workforce is required to keep up with the pace of
technological evolution, while to work hard in handling challenges from the
competitors (Dessler, 2011). The negative impacts due to stress are serious
and significant. In the organizational context, excessive stress may cause the
workforce to fall sick often, to become less efficient, performing poorly, facing
deterioration of inter-personal relationship with others, more prone to
accidents as well as to engage in serious absenteeism and eventually resign
from the job (Wilson, 2004; Beardwell & Clayton, 2007).
Different researchers tend to have different definition on stress. However, one
of the widely adopted definitions is from Cartwright and Cooper (1997).
According to them, stress is the forces that exert psychological as well as
physical function beyond its range of stability. To be more precise, stress
might occur due to the interaction between an individual with the environment.
Technically speaking, subjecting to the perceptions of the events occurring in
the environment, the particular stimulus from the external events may trigger
stress within a person (Briscoe et. al., 2004).
As mentioned before, stress can cause serious issues and harms to the
individual experiencing stresses as well as to the organization. However,
stress is a very common phenomenon occurring in workplace. Many issues
can trigger stress among an employee. For example, the change of new
technology, the ever demanding task, customer complaints, uncertainty in
work roles and responsibilities, bad relationships at work, lost of vision and
passion in job, improper and badly designed organizational structure,
unsatisfied with the monetary and reward system implemented by the
management, excessive request from management, workplace harassment,
and threats of retrenchment. The list can be very long, and depending on the
psychological conditions of the worker, he may suffer badly from excessive
stress. Those stressful employees can then become harmful to the other staffs
in the workplace, the organization, or even to the society. Thus, proper
methods to handle employee stresses are crucial (Budhwar, 2004).
A review of the literature found that many techniques are available to reduce
or mitigate stresses in workplace. Both individuals and organization have the
respective roles to deal with stress (Price, 2007). For the organization, it is
crucial to provide flexible and limited work time for the employees. Such a
policy will enable work-life balance among the workforce, and to reduce the
possibilities that the workforce became overworked and burn out. Besides,
management can also implement work sharing, by splitting a career position
between two or more people, so that the workforce will experience less time-
base stress between work and family (Beardwell & Clayton, 2007). With such
arrangement, workers can work on different parts of the week, and the
workload and urgency matters from work faced by them can be reduced.
Besides, company can also provide telecommuting convenient to workers
(Budhwar, 2004). Workers may need to leave the office, or to take care of
children from home, and thus telecommuting reduces the stress due to the
need to reporting to office on time. Not only that, some company even offer
child care support. Child care supports are argued to be effective as many of
the employees will not need to rush off to take care of their children, and
become less worried about their children during working hours. It is also good
for company to provide sport facilities, so that the workforce can exercise to
reduce stress faced in workplace. Not only that, management can also
organize stress awareness program to train the workforce how to deal with
stress properly. In some instances, job redesign will be necessary. This
happen when a job can be too demanding and the person handling the job is
overloaded (Wilson, 2004).
Organizational Culture
In the study of organizational behavior, organization culture is an important
topic, as it is often argued and found that organizational culture has direct
influences and linkages to the performance of a firm. To begin, one of the
widely adopted definition of organizational culture is proposed by Schein
(1990), whereby organizational culture is defined as ‘the deeper level of basic
assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organization, that
operate unconsciously, and that define in a basic “take for granted” fashion
and organization’s view of itself and its environment.’(Robbins, 2005;
Beardwell & Clayton, 2007)
Following such a definition, culture is made up of several basic assumptions,
which are often unconscious, and that basic assumptions will form the values
of the organization, and represent itself as visible indicators in a particular
organization. There are several manners on which an organizational culture
can be observed and deciphered. To understand the culture of an
organization, we can look at the following: architecture, artifacts, rituals,
ceremonies, communication system, stories, control systems, behavioral
norms, mottoes, slogans, power structure and documentations (Legge, 2004).
In several researches, strong culture is argued as the contributor of successes
of high performing firm. This is not hard to understand, as many high
performing and profitable firms tend to have strong and distinctive culture,
which is contrast to the industry norms, and with that culture, lead the people
in the organization to behave differently, and in turn contributing to the high
performance and growth of a firm. In contrast, many of the slow growth or
financially troubled firms have less vivid culture, whereby the employees are
observed not to act in a certain way, in a particular spirit or passion towards
achievement of the organizational mission (Beardwell & Clayton, 2007;
Wilson, 2004).
There are several ways to strengthen an organizational culture. According to
McShane and Von Glinow (2010), four key strategies to change or strengthen
an organizational culture include: (a) to shape culture through the actions and
personality of the founder, (b) creating or altering artifacts (such as stories,
behaviors of management, reward system, and company policies), (c)
introducing culturally consistent reward, and to attract, select and orientate the
newly hire employees.
Applications of the Theories to
Google
Managing Stress at Google
Google is a leading company in the Internet industry, and thus the employees
are facing great challenges daily to innovate, being creative and to work hard
so that Google can stay competitive and maintain its leadership position. It is
found that Google utilized several methods to manage the stress level of
employees. All of these methods are discussed as follow.
Providing a fun to work environment. In Google, fun and enjoyable activities
are available for the employees. For example, employees can relax, listen to
music, doing their hobbies, and etc during working hours. Such a fun
environment is not only motivating, it able to reduce the stress faced by
employees significantly. This is consistent to what is proposed by theories,
whereby flexible workplace can reduce the stress level faced by employees.
With a fun workplace, the focus of employees are diverted away from the
problems, instead they view the problem as a challenge to be solve, and may
feel fulfilled by solving these challenging tasks in the workplace.
Flexible working environment. In Google, workforce enjoys a large degree of
flexibility. There are no specified or formal uniform to be worn by employees.
By avoiding the need to be rigid, formal and always abide by the rules,
employees working in Google can avoid unnecessary stress due to non-value
adding activities, demand or policies. Instead, they can focus better on their
work, being creative and solving the critical problems arises in workplace.
Such a flexible working environment also ensures the working atmosphere is
relaxed, not tensioned and stressful.
Provide sport facilities. Gym (ranging from various fitness facilities, weight
lifting to light execise equipments) is available to the usage of employees in
Google. It is stated that Google cares about the health of the mind and body of
the employees, and thus provides sport facilities for the employees.
Consistent with theories, providing sport equipments and facilities able to
encourage the employees to exercise, and through exercising, employees can
relax their mind, feel refreshed and take the time to take care of their personal
health. With this, they may be able to perform better the next day, and their
work performance can be more sustainable, when stress is managed properly
and channeled away through exercises.
Helping the employees to relax. In Google, employees can get a massage
service prepared by the firm. Besides, the corporate designs, workplace
arrangement and the various playful facilities in Google able to provide an
extremely relaxed workplace for the workforce. To provide massage facilities
and services is indeed an outstanding innovation by Google in managing
employees’ stress. Such a strategy needs little explanation, as everyone
understand the refreshing effects from a massage after a day of tired work.
Encouraging the employees to bring their hobbies and even pets to the office.
To work for full 8 hours can be highly stressful; especially the work is
challenging and demanding. However, Google allow the employees to bring
their hobbies and pets to the office. When the employees are stressful, they
can get relaxed by playing with their pets, feel refreshed, and then continue to
work in a more effective manner.
Corporate sponsored childcare. Google is reported to have a corporate
membership with childcare and tuition centre providers. The employees in
Google can enjoy these services provided by Google, and to enroll their
children in these programs, which is partly sponsored by Google.
Organizational Culture of Google
It is widely acknowledge that Google has a culture of its kind, one that is
suitable to perform in the highly competitive, dynamic and fast changing
industry. Besides, the special Google culture is said to be the key success
factors contributing to the high performance of Google in beating the
competition, leading the industry, being learnable organization, and is creative
and innovative in delivering services and products to the marketplace. A
review of the scenario in Google reveals several insights of Google culture as
follow.
Team oriented culture. Google is famous for cultivating a team work culture in
the firm, whereby individuals achievements are encouraged, and the team
performance are rewarded. In Google, the hierarchical power distance is
minimal, whereby everyone is pretty much about the same level and work
together. The people working in Google are expected to perform in a team,
and to achieve goals together rather than to compete against each others.
Workplace is arranged in a way that people can share ideas freely, and to talk
about ideas freely and conveniently.
Work hard and play hard culture. In Google, employees are encouraged to
work and play together, so that a family bond is created. For example, there
are bicycles or scooters for efficient travel between meetings. Dogs and pets
are allowed in the office, and lava lamps and other creative designed are
encouraged in workplace.
Creative culture. In Google, employees are expected to be creative and to
think ‘outside the box’. To conform to the norm is considered as abnormal.
Employees are encouraged to take risk, and risk taking is essentially
considered as creative problem solving. A higher than average degree of
freedom is allowed for the employees – whereby the employees are allowed
to make decisions that benefit Google users.
Besides, it is also acknowledged that Google has a strong culture. It is
reported that the corporate culture of Google, is essentially a replica of the
culture during Google start-up. The flexible, informal working environment is
similar to that of the environment of a ‘garage’ when Google is still in the
infancy. Besides, it is also argued that Larry and Sergey’s values have been
long adopted by Google. They are helpful, work in team and creative. In the
corporate website of Google, the management admittedly mentioned that up
to date, the company is still maintaining a small company feels in Google.
Apart from that, to achieve a strong culture, the company has been careful in
employees’ selection and training processes. For example, Google is said to
only hire those that embrace the company’s values and share the same desire
to growth, innovate and being creative. It is mentioned that interviewers in
Google prefer to look for candidates that able to contribute ideas, instead of
those that will wait for the teammates for ideas. With careful selection, Google
will be able to ensure all the employees are indeed working in a similar
direction, and this in turn will build stronger bond within the workforce.
Discussions
A study on Google reveal that the real scenario in managing stresses and
organizational culture in Google is similar to those proposed in theories. The
only different is that Google able to come out with more creative ideas, and to
implement these ideas effectively in workplace. For example, both academic
theories and evidences from the success of Google suggested that it is a
great idea to reduce employees’ stress by providing flexible workplace, fun
and relaxing working environment, childcare to the workforce and provision of
sport facilities. However, Google go for the extra miles, whereby the company
even allows employees to bring along their personal hobbies and style to
office. Pets are allowed! Employees are allowed to play while working. Even
the CEO is found playing Lego during working hours. Such a fun and inspiring
workplace is definitely helpful to reduce a large amount of stress faced by the
employees. However, it is also acknowledged that the policies implemented in
Google do not only help to manage stress in the organization in a proactive
manner. In fact, such policies can cultivate a working environment to produce
more creative and innovative workplace. When the employees are less
stressful, they can think better, with a clearer and better mind. Not only are
that, the strategies also has powerful effects against employees motivation
and retention rate.
Besides, theories suggested that strong corporate culture is often associated
with high performance. That is true for Google. Not only is that, theories also
argued that the corporate culture and values are often originated from the
personality and style of the founders, and that is true as well. Apart from that,
the method in which Google uses to enhance the corporate culture is
consistent with the strategies proposed by theories. For example, it is
suggested that to strengthen corporate culture, management should select
and recruit properly, and to only select those who will embrace the company
culture. This is what is happening in Google. The culture adopted by Google is
also relevant and competitive in the dynamic business environment.
Particularly in the competitive internet and information technology industry,
creativity and team work are essential to the success of a firm (i.e., both these
values are adopted by firm such as Intel, Microsoft and IBM as well). It is
reasonable to believe that the strong corporate culture is indeed the key
factors leading to the success of Google, as what is predicted by academic
theories as we discussed previously.
Overall, it is apparent that theories are useful and helpful as guidance on how
the ideal corporation can be formed, structured and managed. With proper
alteration to the strategies, managers can even create a better management
style that may bring a company to great success, as evidenced in the case of
Google.
Conclusion
Google is a successful company. There are many lessons to be learned from
the successes. The methods to manage stress among employees are
creative, and outstanding. The organizational culture is a strong one. With
proper policies, methods and careful employees’ selection strategies, Google
able to further enhance the corporate culture of Google, which is a creative,
work hard play hard and team-oriented culture. This paper offer many ideas
for new start-up company to learn from the successes of Google in the
dynamic and competitive business environment.
