Google is not just a technology and communications giant, it is also rated as the best place to work in Fortune’s 2013 ranking: “The Internet juggernaut takes the Best Companies crown for the fourth time, and not just for the 100,000 hours of subsidized massages it doled out in 2012. New this year are three wellness centers and a seven-acre sports complex, which includes a roller hockey rink; courts for basketball, bocce, and shuffle ball; and horseshoe pits.”
Why is this so vital? By hiring and retaining the best employees, Google is setting itself up for a very bright look-term future.
As James B. Stewart writes for the New York Times: “Google’s various offices and campuses around the globe reflect the company’s overarching philosophy, which is nothing less than ‘to create the happiest, most productive workplace in the world,’ according to a Google spokesman, Jordan Newman.” For example, “Google lets many of its hundreds of software engineers, the core of its intellectual capital, design their own desks or work stations out of what resemble oversize Tinker Toys. Some have standing desks, a few even have attached treadmills so they can walk while working. Employees express themselves by scribbling on walls. The result looks a little chaotic, like some kind of high-tech refugee camp, but Google says that’s how the engineers like it.”
Click the photo of Google’s “Truck Pit’ cafeteria to read more.
Photo by Karsten Moran for the New York Times