Motives for Google Benefits Package

http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~eckdoug/

Google Inc. has cunningly made itself famous for its generous benefits package.  A certain Forbes article discusses Google’s most recent addition to this package.  Apparently, the company will now be paying the surviving partner of a deceased employee 50% of their salary every year for 10 years.  This new benefit, in addition to others, such as “free haircuts, gourmet food [and] on-site doctors” have all earned Google a ‘caring’ reputation.

But why does Google want to be such a ‘caring’ company?  Why is any company, like the one we studied in class (Zappos), ‘caring’?  Laszlo Bock claims that the company offers these great benefits “simply because it’s the right thing to do”.  Immediately after, however, he states that employees prefer to work for a company that ‘cares’ about them.

That, alone, is an entirely different reason for improving Google’s benefits package.  By stating that employees prefer working for a ‘caring’ company, he is saying that it helps Google retain its employees and furthermore, it also helps attract more employees in the future.  When examining the benefits to Google’s ‘caring’ stance on employee policies, it is clear that its motives are not pure and selfless, but rather strategic.