Google’s Scientific Approach to Work-Life Balance

The Harvard Business Review has an article outlining a relatively new program within Google. 

Google's scientific approach to work-life balance

I found it interesting that Google is looking at this as a long term project (100 years). The following are recommended by Laszlo Bock the SVP of People Operations at Google if you want to implement a similar program within your organization:

1. Ask yourself what your most pressing people issues are.  Retention?  Innovation? Efficiency?  Or better yet, ask your people what those issues are. 

2. Survey your people about how they think they are doing on those most pressing issues, and what they would do to improve. 

3. Tell your people what you learned. If it’s about the company, they’ll have ideas to improve it. If it’s about themselves – like our gDNA work – they’ll be grateful. 

4. Run experiments based on what your people tell you. Take two groups with the same problem, and try to fix it for just one. Most companies roll out change after change, and never really know why something worked, or if it did at all. By comparing between the groups, you’ll be able to learn what works and what doesn’t.