Work Rules!

At Google, the HR Director is called the Head of “People Operations”; and this is not just a matter of labelling. Indeed, his approach to human resources management is inspired by the best practices of operational excellence.

He’s the author of this book. In each chapter, he covers an individual managerial topic, such as recruiting, decision making, annual performance review meetings, promotions and performance evaluations. He freely shares not only the best practices he has implemented, but also the failures he has experienced. Google’s practices—such as organizing peer feedback, replacing expense reports with photographs of the concerned invoices, making individual quarterly objectives visible to everyone, supporting deliberate practice training methods, seeking to model the practices of top performers, etc.—are sometimes surprising and of variable scope. Nonetheless, they often seem transposable to other environments.

Beyond practices, readers may also be surprised by the methodology. All practices have been tested methodically prior to deployment. The author is able to say exactly how much employee productivity or satisfaction have been improved by a given practice! Bock has indeed surrounded himself with talented PhDs who are experts in experimental methodology and quantitative data analysis.

This work is exciting because it goes far beyond the anecdotal character of Google’s original managerial practices. It invites readers not only to take inspiration from these practices but also to develop the reflex to test their ideas, formulate hypotheses and quantify the results obtained.