#spirituality #selfdevelopment #personaltransformation
Work or Health? How Companies Impact Us
Today’s topic is really interesting.
Google created all kinds of spaces where their employees are encouraged to go: gyms, yoga rooms, meditation spaces, and others. But over time, it turned out that only a small percentage of employees actually go to these places, almost nobody really uses them. So, Google hired someone specifically to look into the situation and come up with a solution. I talked with someone who suggested this idea: “What if Google made the workday seven hours instead of eight and required employees to spend that extra hour in the gym?” This person asked for my opinion. Today, I want to dive into this topic because it’s relevant to everyone: looking at how we make decisions about different activities in our lives, whether it’s work, family, or leisure.
Why Do Companies Create Special Spaces for Their Employees?
First, before asking why only a small number of employees use the gym, let’s think about why Google wants people to go there in the first place. Not every company sets up gyms for their employees. Some companies do it because it’s trendy, but many don’t bother at all. So, why did Google decide to do this? People might say it's because Google is innovative, cares about its people, and so on.
Think about it: some companies might set up gyms because they want employees to feel healthier or happier, while others might do it so employees feel better and work more. So, what's the real goal here?
When a company takes an action like this, does it fully understand the cause and effect? For example, could it be that an employee who meditates daily might realize they don’t want to work there anymore and leave? I won’t try to guess Google’s exact reason for doing this because I’m not sure anyone really knows. The original idea might have changed so many times along the way. The key is to look at the goal. When studying something like this, it’s crucial to understand the full consequences of what’s happening. What does that mean?
My Personal Experience, Strangely Enough, with Boxing
Let me give you an example. I took up boxing in 2013, as well as in 2005 and 2009, going with my “Business Youth” partner, Petya Osipov. Around that time, I met a Vedic astrologer who told Petya, “When Petya boxes, he becomes calm, releasing his aggression and finding peace.” And that’s how it seemed for everyone.
But then this person told me that when I box, it actually increases my aggression, and I start pressuring everyone at work. Amazingly, he was right.
Notice how contradictory these examples are: boxing calms one person’s aggression but increases it in another. The same action can have totally different outcomes depending on the person. Not only that, but for one person, boxing might be calming now, but in ten years, it could bring out aggression. I’m not even talking about other factors, like the mood of the person or the environment of the workout. So when a company offers social benefits like gyms and wellness rooms, it’s crucial to consider if they understand the reasons and effects behind it. That’s the first part of this topic.
Why Do You Work at This Job?
The second part, equally important, is why people make certain decisions when, for example, their company offers them to start doing yoga. Let’s look at it from the perspective of understanding the purpose of a person’s presence in that place: why did they come to work at Google? Did they come to make money, to save, to develop professionally, to get a good brand on their resume, to make new friends, to develop a certain skill (like learning how to communicate, or how to handle tough or easy situations)? Did they come because the job is hard or easy? Was it just a random circumstance that led them to the company, which invited them by chance, even if they went through 50 interviews, or did they specifically want to join this company since childhood, or knew they wanted to work there as one of the TOP-5 or TOP-10 IT companies in the world by value? Or did they come with the illusion that they are bringing value, or not an illusion and they really want to contribute something valuable? Or did they come because their wife or husband made them do it? Or maybe because they want to prove to their parents that they can work at this company? Why did they come there? When a person’s goal is known, any additions from the company will play out differently because of that.
My Experience with Hiring: Mass Interviews, Specific Leaders
Let me give an example.
In my life, I've managed various businesses, and when hiring people, I often used a method of mass assessment: 10, 15, 20 people come for an interview at the same time, and within an hour, I choose someone from the 15 people. We hired sales managers, marketers, analysts this way… Of course, there are roles that are difficult to hire for in this way, but that’s not the point today. I remember having a group of analysts in front of me. This was when we were building a trading platform with Andrey Rogachev. Andrey Rogachev is the founder of Pyaterochka, a large retail chain in Russia. I liked hiring people for various roles who had a good mathematical background, young women with limited work experience. The interview is going on with 15 people, and I asked them to ask their questions.
One girl asked, “Could you tell me, do people in your company celebrate birthdays, go to events together, have a lot of corporate parties?” Her name was Katya, she ended up working for me for a long time. I rarely remember such old moments, but for some reason, I remembered her. I’d been in business for quite a while already by then; this was around 2016, and I’d been working professionally for at least 12 years. Back then, I didn’t play board games with employees or go to clubs or bars. Although there was a time when I did that. I answered, “Yes, I guess there are people who enjoy that. Sometimes I see them interacting, making friends.” I didn’t say that many people get married, have children, travel together, and so on (a lot of my teams and employees from different companies met, became friends, and got married). I gave a positive answer, and we continued around the circle, people asking questions.
After about 10 minutes, another girl asked, “Could you tell me, is it okay to come to work and not talk to anyone?” She also ended up working for me, by the way. Why did she ask that? It was clear that she was very interested in this job, and hearing the previous girl’s question, she wanted to know if it was possible to avoid those types of interactions. She didn’t want to be in such spaces or in a state of interaction with other people. She viewed work as a place to gain professional skills or earn money. I told her, “Of course, you can work without talking to anyone at all if that’s your choice.”
Personally, I hired people not to socialize, nor to be silent, but to deliver results within the scope of their responsibilities.
I never had the notion that I needed all my employees to talk a lot or little. There are leaders who do like that. There was a very famous leader in Moscow who made his employees do very specific things: jump from buildings with parachutes, meditate, go on retreats, hike in the mountains. Everyone had to do it – not just managers but all employees. Did the business owner have the right to do that? Of course, it’s his business: he does what he wants. The most important thing is that he tells people about it. So, at that meeting, I also said that with us, you can both socialize and not socialize.
So, when things like gyms, yoga rooms, massage rooms, or other such facilities come up, the company has to decide: do we only hire people who need this (and there are always some), who will appreciate it and say, “This is great!”; or do we not focus on it and understand that some people don’t need it. Personally, I don’t need this: I don’t mind if it’s there, but it’s not a requirement for me.
Remember, we talked about goals, about understanding consequences – that’s a whole other story. But it’s important to look from the employees’ perspective on what is needed and what isn’t.
How GOOGLE Selects Employees
Google is very serious about selecting people based on certain qualities and characteristics. There are people whom the company will never hire. Maybe they would never have hired me in my life, maybe they wouldn’t hire such a person at all. Maybe they need someone who will appreciate it and be willing to stay in one company for 20 years because they definitely select people based on certain characteristics and details. I’m not saying they’re right or that they’re wrong; they definitely pay attention to this based on specific details.
There are other companies that select based on their own qualities. There was a time when all employees of Business Youth underwent a polygraph test. We had 200–300 people working at the same time, so we hired in hundreds and fired some. Every employee – from any director to a sales manager, to any programmer, designer, driver, security guard, cleaner, secretary – went through the polygraph. This was our specific desire or understanding. I had an explanation for why and what I wanted to “catch” through this procedure. I hired people by filtering them based on certain qualities.
Freedom and Stress Can Be Mutually Exclusive States
When we want to dive deeply into this question and help a person whom Google hired solve a problem, we need to start a process of study and observation of that breadth: study the company, its goal, how well the company sees cause and effect. “Sees” doesn’t mean it’s real or true.
I believe that for some people who go to the gym, it helps, while for others, it harms them. Many people run and damage their health, especially in the long term; some don’t run and harm their health by sitting and doing nothing. Question: what does this help with? Does it increase stress or truly give a person freedom? For a person, does this activity relieve stress? What happens to him: does he work better for the company, or does he start working worse?
Many people bring results to the company under stress. As soon as a person is without stress, they immediately stop producing results. In a long state of stress, I definitely worked more effectively: more hours, more meetings, more reports, more technical specifications. In a stressful state, my progress on these metrics was better. This doesn’t mean my progress was better in terms of decision-making efficiency. Therefore, in some stressful states, a person will work better than in a state of freedom, relaxation. They simply won’t engage in it.
And many jobs a person won’t engage in because they won’t be able to do it, especially if the job, for example, involves harming a person. If the job involves deceiving others, a person will be driven into stress to be able to deceive others, to lead them into a situation; otherwise, they won’t engage in it. Because a person in a state of freedom, true and not illusory, will never harm another. It’s impossible. Is there a solution here? There’s only a solution if we understand specific components: how to address it further, work, how much the company’s initial goal aligns with cause-and-effect relationships, to look at this relationship, whether it works, to look at the people we hire and how, adjusting various combinations for them to make them do it or not do it. I’m not looking for a right or wrong way to solve such a situation.
What is Large-Scale Thinking
So, for some situations, it might be right to reduce work by an hour, and for others – to introduce a requirement to engage in this activity in the employment contract (if you don’t engage, you’ll be fired).
We’re not discussing whether it’s legal in your country under labor laws; we’re talking about the system of reasoning around this topic. This will help you reach results. Such reasoning in a person – that’s the structure of a large-scale personality, a large-scale person.
It doesn’t matter what side you’re on right now – whether you’re an owner or a manager implementing such things, or an employee who feels pressure from the company or, on the contrary, the absence of pressure, and would like something introduced. Observe these things, look. **This thinking will lead you to other thoughts in the future, launching a mechanism in you that will allow you to make the right decisions in the future – over the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years… Not to solve the current situation you’re in (there are situations from which it’s already impossible to escape), but in the future. A true large-scale person is someone who lives their huge, complete life, not in a short-term time frame.