Google is starting to lose employees; Fortune’s best company to work for in 2007 and 2008 is starting to test an algorithm to predict which employees are most likely to leave – in order to proactively change their circumstances and prevent their departure.
Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can't make the same impact as the company matures. Several said Google provides little formal career planning, and some found the company's human-resources programs too impersonal.
The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula; Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. 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.
Applying a complex equation to a basic human-resource problem is pure Google, a company that made using heavy data to drive decisions one of its "Ten Golden Rules" outlined in 2005, reports The Wall Street Journal. This being said, so few companies apply intelligence to their organizational data. Millions are spent on data capture and storage, but the conversion of data and information to actionable knowledge is still an underdeveloped competency and practice in many companies. As Yogi Berra once famously said, “You can see a lot by watching…”
