HR head of Google to move to new role

Eileen Naughton, chief of human resources, Google, is quitting to take on a new position, even while there is a growing conflict between the employees and the management.  Naughton, who has been with Google since 2006, had been serving as the VP-operations for the last four years. Though her last working day in this role is not yet known, she is reported to be moving to New York, probably to take up another role within the Company. She will be helping to find a replacement in close consultation with Sundar Pichai and Ruth Porat, CFO, Alphabet.

Over the past four years, on Naughton’s watch, the strength of the workforce has increased by over 70,000.

However, Google has also faced the maximum number of employee troubles in the past few years. In November, 2018, employees had protested massively against an exiting chief being paid $90 million in 2014, even though there were allegations of sexual misconduct against him. The staff had also raised their voices against Google’s plans to work with the Defense department on some artificial intelligence-based technology, which the employees considered unethical. They had questioned the Company’s intention to create a censored search engine for China, following which the project was discarded. Last year, Google fired four employees for allegedly leaking internal information.

For few months now there have been significant changes in the senior management at Google. Not only did the founders step down from their positions as CEO and president of parent company, Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, who had been CEO, Google, for some time, took the reins. The chief legal officer of the Company also retired last month. Interestingly, all the senior executives have been accused of inappropriate handling of cases of sexual misconduct at the Company.