Unhappy Googlers may soon be supplied with about as many muffin baskets, pats on the back, and intriguing projects as they can handle. Apparently Google’s developing an algorithm to identify which employees are most likely to quit, and it’s acting on the info in an attempt to keep top workers around.
Google has lost a lot of important employees in the last few months. First went advertising exec Tim Armstrong and visual design lead Douglas Bowman. Then international operations specialist Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and another ad exec, David Rosenblatt, headed for the door.
This sort of thing isn’t good for either morale or the company’s actual business.
So a fix-it-through-data solution has been adopted with the new algorithm. Scott Morrison reports, “The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.”
It should be interesting to see if there’s a reduction in departures as a result. Or an increase, even, if employees don’t appreciate the attempt at monitoring their moods or feel they’re being set up to get fired.
In somewhat related news, striking Baidu employees have gone back to work for at least a short while.
