Stress and well-being at work in Google

Name Lecturer Course Date Stress and well-being at work in Google The organizational culture that exists within Google Company is one that is quite interesting. The company does not have the most popular and useful search engines in the world, they equally have occupied a spot among the top 100 places to work in since 2007. Google has positioned itself to be recognized as the company with the fastest most reliable search engines in the World Wide Web, and in order to realize this, Google has made it their culture to hire the best of the best when it comes to technology discernment. The company recognizes the hard work of their employees and rewards them accordingly. Further, they create an extremely relaxed work environment that enhances and encourages creativity through the various fun activities such as roller hockey and a dress code that is not strictly formal. Moreover, the company encourages its staff to be conscious of their bodies and minds, by offering them the opportunity to work out in the gym and even get a massage inside the company (Weber, 12). According to the Google Corporate information, the company underscores the fact that they have put an emphases team achievements as well as the pride in individual accomplishment both of which they say are fundamental to the overall success of the company. Additionally, unlike many companies, Google recognizes that its employees have another life outside the job premises and that is why they encourage them to bring along those other parts of their lives - relatives, into the regular Google employee community. It is with such loyalty that Google builds with its employees that most of those employees look at each other as a family. The company appreciates that as long as you are dealing with people, it is important to give those people the best experience possible (Girard, 38). Team orientation primary characteristic are central to the organizational culture of Google. As earlier stated, the company encourages its staff to work and play together so that an intricate family bond is formed. According to Google, meetings at the company that would probably take a couple of hours elsewhere are usually no more than a conversation in line for lunch, moreover only a few walls separate those who write checks from those who write codes. This kind of a set up bolsters team environment, because everyone is virtually on the same level and everyone feels that they are part of the team. The limited wall setting serves to make employees feel like they are in the group rather than outsiders, even with the different departments (Weber, 13). The organizational behavior at Google is very strong. The company hires people who are oriented to carry on the values of the company, and feel the same strong desire for unlimited amounts of information. This intense desire that the employees of Google are usually endowed with allows them to work towards the same goals and aspirations which further reinforce the bond that they share. It is because of this organizational culture at Google that explains why the company has one of the lowest turn over rate besides the fact that they receive over 1,300 applications on a single day (Girard, 35). One can say that Google deliberately build workplace satisfaction. In what began as a two man start up, Google`s short lifespan so far has grown to this big organization that has over 40,000 employees from over 40 countries, and has managed and integrated this strong workforce while at the same time motivating them to remain loyal, innovative, ambitious and productive (Weber, 104). However despite the robust organizational structures at Google, the company has experiences an incident or two that are in consistent with what the aspirations of the company. A case in point is the 2010 infamous WiFi incident. The allegations concerned the collection of personal information from some unencrypted Canadian WiFi networks. It was alleged that Google collected personal information of people without prior identification and disclosure of the purpose for which the personal information was collected. Further, it became clear that the collection of that personal information was done without the knowledge and consent of the individuals and that the information collected was not truly for the purpose that that the company had outlined, or identified (Cho, 9). The central issue regarding the investigation that was carried out by the office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) was majored on the unlawful collection of personal information that was carried out by the staff of Google. It all began in May 2010, when the company realized that it had collected payload data from wireless networks that were unsecured in a number of countries that included Canada. This discovery was made when the company was undertaking its data gathering operation for its location based services. The payload date usually constitutes the core information that is carried within a transmission unit over the internet. In that regard therefore the OPC decided to concentrate its investigation on the extent in which that payload data that Google collected inclu...