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Google's Security Guards Are Now Officially Google Employees
jfruh writes People concerned about the growing gap between the rich and poor point to a common practice in Silicon Valley: going through staffing agencies for non-core jobs like janitorial and security work, leaving those workers disconnected from the company and lacking in the job security and benefits their co-workers take for granted. Google has now decided to buck the trend, bringing their security guards in-house.
Bring services in means more control, the actor will a have a higher degree of agency, lead to less disenfranchisement, and they will develop a better repoire with the coworkers.
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And by the same token, it's not uncommon for guards to be outsourced, especially since it's the sort of job that you might only need one guy for, and he can't ever call in sick. If you outsource the position, he comes from a larger pool.
Further, guards come with liability issues. You might not be well suited for managing them, arming them, training them -- especially if you're going to have one or two of them, at most.
Security guards, cleaning companies, the people who water your plants... ...all make sense for outsourcing if you're not huge.
Google is probably big enough to bring them all inside -- if they're not too stingy with the benefits.
Now, all they've got to do is hire all of their bus drivers -- or at least pay their employers to end split shifts for them.
Hire a cleaning company and I guarantee you they will bottom feed. You will have tweakers and ex-cons cleaning/stealing and cleaning crew managers demanding a cut of all theft as well as a share of pay. Honest cleaners _can't_ survive under that kind of deal.
You will lose more the theft then you can possibly save. Anybody with physical access should be an employee or contractor. So you have some control of who is in you space.
Replacing the cleaning company is no help as this is an industry that truly did spiral to the bottom.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
At a small scale, the fixed costs of running your own security are substantial relative to the total cost, meaning that it's cheaper to pay a contractor instead, despite the overhead that comes with having a middleman between you and the guards. At a large scale, such as Google's, the fixed costs are a relatively minor component, whereas the overhead associated with the contractor is rather substantial, so it ends up being cheaper to bring the guards in-house. You can even provide them with better pay/benefits thanks to the money you'll be saving by cutting out the contractor.
That's the most obvious answer, at least. Other possibilities are that the employees will feel more loyalty towards Google on account of the shared bond with the other employees (not to mention the better pay/benefits), which would make them more inclined to do their job well; they'll get to be a part of more of the corporate culture, which will help them to recognize things that are out of place better; Google won't be subject to the hiring whims of their contractor, meaning that they can work on hiring the cream of the crop; and that having them in the company is conducive to a healthier Google in the long-term, which is in line with preserving Google's value.