Ping-Pong Tables At Google

This chapter will be about Google and their internal culture. The company is known for being one of the best places to work in the world, how Elisabeth Matsangou is pointing out in her article about Laszlo Bock. Bock worked as the Senior Vice President of People Organisations for Google from 2006 until 2016 and focused on improving the internal structure and the culture of this growing company. In 2016 he published his book “Work Rules! Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead” in which he gives big insights in the internal life of Google and in which he provides his philosophy how to develop new guidelines, structures and rules of a successful company. For this assessment I decided to analyse the free perks that Google offers to all employees. More precisely the ping-¬‐pong tables will be discussed as symbols of a modern company that has understood how important a diversified environment is for their employees and how much it can improve the internal communication and the success of the different departments.

So a normal ping-¬pong table is an object that we normally wouldn’t imagine in a work place because it’s more known for being a leisure object. If we have free time we’re playing a match with another person who wants join. Why did Google than decide to put “free time objects” like ping-¬pong tables in their offices? In an interview the Google Marketing Manager Fab Dolan explains: “We actually do take time and go play arcade for a little while and hang out and during those times you get an idea when you’re meeting with someone from a different department or a different team. ” According to Dolan it’s not only taking a break from work it’s also a way to find new inspira-tion and new ideas to solve a problem. So a ping-¬‐pong table offers the feeling of having real free time during work and the possibility to get connected to other colleagues. It helps to improve the internal communication in an easy way and people do have the intention to stay longer at the office and work more.

Google also provides micro-¬kitchens dotted around the campus, where every employee can get free coffee and just take a short break. Ross Brooks sees them as alternative way to bring people together and to create more opportunity for innovation“. Laszlo Bock point-ed out that most of the conversations in these breakout zones are about products, users and new ideas.

So symbols like the ping-¬pong table have the big advantage to improve the internal network and to give the employees the feeling to work at a company that really cares about them. It ensures to support the team building and in this way it also helps to share the company’s mission (one of the three important arguments for Laszlo Bock) between the different departments. There’s always the risk that employees misinterpret the offers like this and start forgetting about the real job, but how Google and Lazlo Bock showed it can work very good. Spots like these are important to provide an atmosphere in which the employees get motivated and try Ping-¬pong table in a Google office in New York do their best. They might also have the feeling to give back what they’ve received from the organisation. And in this way big companies like Google are so successful in these days.