Dive Brief:
- Laszlo Bock, the superstar HR leader at Google, is retiring. He will be replaced by Eileen Naughton, a current Google executive who comes from the company's sales area, according to Fortune.
- Owned by Alphabet, Google named Naughton the company's new head of people operations, moving her from vice president of sales and operations for Google in the UK and Ireland.
- Bock's reputation as a leading HR thinker is legendary. His book "Work Rules!" is a winner of numerous awards. Bock is the force behind Google's unique methods to hiring and employee benefits, a quirky (often lavish) approach to workplace management that influenced much of Silicon Valley.
Insight
Interestingly, Naughton's background is not in HR. She is an alum of Time (formerly Time Warner) Inc., serving as the general manager of Fortune Magazine from 1993 to 1998, and was also president of Time Magazine from 2002 to 2005, according to Fortune. She then moved to director of sales at YouTube and quickly took a career path upward as vice president of sales for Google to her last job heading up sales and operations in the UK and Ireland.
Naughton, Fortune reports, was one of the highest employee-rated managers at Google and is a founding member of Google’s women’s organization, Women@Google.
When it comes to sheer HR numbers, Google's are breathtaking. Naughton will have responsibility for HR, recruiting and benefits globally for the search giant, which has 64,000 employees. However, in the past year alone, the company added 7,000 new workers. So, as Fortune reports, recruiting is a massive part of Google’s HR efforts, with 2.5 million people applying for jobs with the company annually.
Bock will remain on as advisor with Google.
