YOU might have thought that even in today’s fast-paced business world, some things never change – like the old adage “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.

Well, it’s not true any more. Free lunches are just one of the benefits that Google, the search-engine firm, provides for employees. And if the line describing the meals on its website – “healthy, yummy and made with love” – makes you feel a bit queasy, there is a lot more on its feel-good menu for staff. At Googleplex, its headquarters at Mountain View, California, they can have massages, saunas, play roller hockey in the car park, or work out in the gym.

And that, say the authors of a new book, could be a guide to the future. “Organisations seeking to create a content and compelling community that encourages engagement would do well to look at examples like this, and consider how they could provide more to their employees in the form of an interesting employment experience,” write Peter Cheese, Robert Thomas and Elizabeth Craig of Accenture, a consultancy, in The Talent Powered Organisation.

But it isn’t quite that simple, said Liane Hornsey, Google’s head of human resources in Europe. “It’s not about massages and saunas. A lot of our offices don’t have those facilities. It’s about the company genuinely believing that its strength is the people who work for it, and taking very great care to hire people who want to make a difference, who are innovative, pacy, energetic and see things differently – people who are going to enjoy working with bright colleagues.”

The company has more than 13,500 employees around the world, including about 2,500 in Europe. Its British headquarters is in Victoria, London.

Google’s working day – in fact its whole business plan – is built round the 70-20-10 philosophy of its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Employees are expected to spend some 70% of their time on their core work, 20% on work related to it, and 10% on coming up with original ideas. “It’s incredibly motiva-tional. Engineers always want new challenges, and this way of working builds that into their day,” said Hornsey.

The office is also run on a flexi-time basis. “There’s a lot of freedom in the company, based on a great deal of trust between the company and the Googlers,” said Hornsey – people at Google don’t seem to use the word staff.

But it’s not just California dreaming. There are, Hornsey stresses, firm business principles behind the philosophy. “A big problem for most companies is attrition – it is hugely expensive to replace people who leave. But we have very good stability. People stay with us, which is fantastic for motivation and productivity.”

Last year Google won an award in America as the best company to work for. It was the first time it had entered the competition . “We’re just completing our survey of employees’ attitudes,” said Hornsey. “I’m used to working in firms that have a motivation index of around 50, but at Google we are somewhere around the 70 mark.”

Cheese said that business could learn a lot from Google. “It shows what is possible. The ideas have to be tuned in with a company’s own culture and style, but a well-engaged and motivated workforce is going to perform better. The ‘happy office’ principle matters,” he said.

“People coming into the workforce today have new and different values. Openness, trust, and integrity are incredibly important. They aren’t prepared simply to wait for promotion, but they want some accountability and empowerment early on. They want clarity in their role, and a sense of where it is taking them, how they are performing, and what the organisation is doing to support them.”

Richard Reed’s Innocent, the smoothie company, is at the other end of the scale from Google, with just over 200 employees and a turnover of £115m – but he shares the same philosophy.

“Nothing is more important than getting it right at the beginning, and recruiting the right people,” he said. “We want people who share our values – people with humanity and warmth, who aren’t afraid to take risks and take the initiative. We tell them not to ask for permission before they try new things.”

Getting the right team, he said, means getting the right business result. “It’s partly motivation, but it’s more fundamental than that. Everything in business comes from human endeavour, and whoever has the best people wins,” he said.

Once you have found the talent, he added, keeping it is a matter of making people happy at work, seeing that they get detailed feedback about what they are doing right, and giving them the chance to develop themselves.

Some of what Innocent and Google preach isn’t that original – some ideas, like the homemade cake all staff at Innocent are given on their birthday, sound more like Blue Peter than business planning.

And the insistence that everyone has to buy into the company values has echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s observation, as leader of the opposition, that she “wouldn’t have time” for arguments in cabinet. “If someone doesn’t match our values, I’m going to have to ask them to leave,” said Reed.

On the other hand, Innocent has carved out a 71% market share since its launch in 1999, and is the fastest-growing fruit-juice company in Britain.

Google, meanwhile, has an annual revenue of more than £5 billion, and its share price has risen 700% in the past three years. Somewhere, some very conventional bankers and accountants are rubbing their hands with glee at the success of that laid-back, California style.

Who cares if it sounds like a rerun of the peace-and-love days of the 1960s? It works.

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