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Google’s HR Chief Eileen Naughton Stepping Down this Year
11 Feb, 2020 / 01:06 PM / OMNES

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Google has confirmed that its human resources chief Eileen Naughton is stepping down later this year. The company confirms to The Verge that her title was VP of People Operations.  The company was under criticism for sometime as Google’s culture hasn’t been in the best shape for a while. The company is still reeling from the revelations of lot of controversial issues.

Many employees have walked out and the employees complain that the company has retaliated against them. Employees claimed that Google opted to protect itself rather than employees. Two of the walkout organizers also quit Google after the company retaliated against them, and Google in a controversial decision Google fired five of its employee who were involved in internal activism. Four of them took up the issue with the National Labour Relations Board, which is now conducting an investigation.

Google’s HR department also wasn’t necessarily behind the big payouts to execs accused of sexual misconduct — those were approved by Google’s Leadership Development and Compensation Committee, a committee run by the company’s management, according to a lawsuit.

Google says Naughton is planning to stick with the company in a new role that hasn’t yet been decided, and Naughton says she’s simply giving up the HR chief role to be closer to her family in New York City. That makes some sense — Google’s main offices are in Mountain View, California, and it’s possible that People Operations wouldn’t be as effective run remotely.

But regardless of the reason, it’s not terribly surprising that the person in charge of Google’s culture for the past four years might not be sticking around to fix it. After all, even company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently stepped down, leaving Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai in charge of the companies they built.

“We’re grateful to Eileen for all she’s done and look forward to her next chapter at Google,” reads part of a statement from Pichai. Google says Naughton is leading the recruitment process for her successor, and credits her with improvements to Google’s misconduct reporting processes, as well as a $15 minimum wage, comprehensive healthcare and parental leave for Google’s temp and outsourced workers.