‘Simplicity Sprint’: Google turns to its 1.7 lakh employees to boost efficiency

Amid the global economic uncertainty and declining productivity in Google, the global tech giant has turned to its 1,74,000 full-time employees to find ways to focus on getting "better results faster".

This new effort is called "Simplicity Sprint", which was announced by the CEO of Alphabet and Google Sundar Pichai during an all-hands meeting last Wednesday. During the meeting, Pichai said Google recorded a solid performance in the second quarter of 2022, with revenues of $69.7 billion in the quarter, up 13% versus last year.

The net income, however, saw a decline to $16 billion as compared to $18.5 billion during the same quarter in 2021. The earnings per share also declined to $1.21 from $1.36.

The Google CEO thinks the global tech giant is facing a challenging macro environment and there's no clarity as to when this uncertainty will end.

However, that's where Pichai sees an opportunity, and he wants all Google's employees to show a high spirit in these turbulent times.

He started the talk by addressing the elephant in the room --- the productivity issue. “There are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the headcount we have,” he said, as reported by a global media platform. Pichai exhorted the Google employees to be more mission-focussed i.e. to build great products and be more consumer-centric. He said Google will launch the "Simplicity Sprint" initiative to find loopholes and address these issues on a mission mode.

Under the "Simplicity Sprint" initiative, Google has floated an internal survey that specifically focuses on three key questions to sail through the tough times.

1) What would help you work with greater clarity and efficiency to serve our users and customers?

2) Where should we remove speed bumps to get better results faster?

3) How do we eliminate waste and stay entrepreneurial and focused as we grow?

Top-level executives at the company will reach out to employee respondents whose ideas will strike a chord with the company's goals. This way, Google wants to show its employees that their ideas matter and that Google wants to move forward with the efforts of its entire workforce. Additionally, to calm the nerves, Google has also vowed to bust "bureaucracy" on many levels such as performance evaluation, compensation and salary hikes.

In Q2 2022, Google's employee strength increased 21% to 1,74,014 full-time employees; its biggest hiring year in recent history. But, amid global headwinds, Pichai said the company will now slow its hirings and investments through the year 2023, and at the same time ask employees to work with "greater urgency".

This has already led to some anxiety among its employees, and many of them in Google's recent "Googlefeist" survey said the tech major is lacking on pay, promotions and execution fronts.