Did you know API traffic for Apigee customers increased 46% year-over-year, to 2.21 trillion calls, between 2019 and 2020? If you have more questions on APIs trends and their role in disrupting enterprises digitally, you can catch up on key take aways from the Google Cloud’s State of API Economy 2021 report and insights from Google’s experts on API-best practices.

Many executives across the globe are feeling the effects of a recent pivot to hybrid work models. This massive transition represents a significant departure from existing office culture. As business leaders look to operationalize their flexible work model infrastructure, they’re also evaluating what it takes to attract and retain employees in this new landscape. Instead of seeing these as separate initiatives, business leaders have a unique opportunity to collectively overhaul corporate culture, focusing on hybrid work and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategies in tandem.

Combining DEI and hybrid work strategies provides a more inclusive culture

Focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion doesn’t mean business leaders are offering an underrepresented individual a specific role or platform because they fit a certain demographic category. Lack of job quality criteria leads to animosity and cultural inequality. Here, diversity means creating a meritocracy with equal pay and equal opportunity for all.

Organizations that thoughtfully combine DEI and hybrid work strategies will produce cultures that improve employee experience and business agility. Integrated DEI and hybrid workplace support better business outcomes by:

Increasing the total available talent pool. A business must cast a wide net for candidates by expanding how and where it searches. Adding a flexible work schedule policy expands potential talent by allowing parents, caregivers, and others to select the hours that work best for their family obligations. Remote work also holds a higher priority in job seekers’ desires. For example, a FlexJobs survey revealed that 24% of workers say the ability to work from home is so important to them that they are willing to take a 10-20% pay cut to work remotely, and 21% would give up some vacation time.

Creating a more inclusive culture. Job seekers want to work for companies that prioritize DEI. According to a recent CNBC and SurveyMonkey Workforce survey, nearly 80% of workers say that they want to work for a company that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. A DEI-centric work culture allows job seekers to feel like there’s a place for them.

Fostering innovation and profitability with broader perspectives. In general, diversity and inclusion promotes the expression of ideas from people with different backgrounds, leading to breakthroughs in creativity, innovation, and attracting new customers. Workplace DEI programs create an employee base that closely mirrors a customer base. A diverse team is less likely to miss potential market opportunities if representative of a broad range of ethnicity, race, age, assigned sex, and socioeconomic backgrounds. A 2020 McKinsey analysis found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity on executive teams were 36% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile.

Hybrid work should not derail DEI efforts

While there are numerous benefits to integrating DEI and hybrid work strategies, it would be naive to think it won’t bring challenges. Businesses run the risk of creating new inequities and exacerbating existing ones as they move to hybrid models. One potential issue lies in which employees can work remotely. An HBR article shared how pre-Covid less than 30% of all workers could work from home; only 16% of Latinx workers and 19% of Black workers had remote flexibility, compared to 37% of Asian workers and 30% of white workers.

Even for employees who can work remotely, it’s essential to eliminate “proximity bias.” A study by SHRM found that 67% of surveyed supervisors admitted to considering remote workers more easily replaceable than onsite workers at their organization. Additionally, 72% said they would prefer all of their teams to be working in the office.

A successful hybrid environment strikes a balance between flexibility and inclusivity where individuals feel valued, and everyone has equal opportunities for advancement. In another study, researchers concluded that remote workers and office workers were promoted at the same rate, but found that remote workers’ salaries grew more slowly. Leading companies recognize that physically being at the office full-time isn’t necessary to produce great results.

8 steps to creating a diverse hybrid work culture

As DEI becomes a new business imperative, organizations must work to minimize unconscious bias, creating market-based salaries for all workers, and introducing educational programs that support talent development. Here are some concrete steps you can take to get started.

• Educate current and future leaders on DEI and hybrid work issues. As you build hybrid work strategies, it’s crucial to discover and understand unconscious biases. According to Deloitte, companies need a holistic DEI learning strategy, including unconscious bias training and developing the conditions for long-term behavior changes.
• Embrace tools that support DEI and hybrid workplaces. Organizations can leverage technology and AI-enabled HR software to support their efforts. Collaboration tools provide everyone with a voice regardless of where they are (for example, using Spaces for team chats in Google Workspace so that everyone has access to the same information). Video call features such as transcriptions and translation can help the hearing-and-vision-impaired and employees who speak different languages. It’s also possible to purchase recruiting solutions with AI technology to reduce the chance of bias or discrimination when reviewing candidates.
• Strengthen culture by marrying DEI with meritocracy. There should also be explicit guidelines to ensure the systems and processes for hiring and promoting individuals are both transparent and equitable. One method for accomplishing this goal is to define detailed job requirements and metrics per role to understand what skills are associated with specific functions. It’s also essential to ensure you’ve designed these processes in a way that screens out bias. Leading companies will deploy analytics tools to evaluate the systems’ fairness and track if the systems are progressing against diversity targets.
• Create upskilling programs to train employees. Many organizations struggle to find talent with the right skill sets. One solution to this problem is to invest in educating existing employees. Companies must develop diverse talent at every level to create a pipeline of candidates that progresses into senior management. Similar to the way companies offered management training programs to college graduates, organizations should design programs that provide skills enhancement for entry and mid-level employees. Almost every job will require a certain level of technical skill—organizations must upskill existing talent.
• Restructure compensation before employees leave. It’s easier to retain an employee than to onboard and train a new hire. According to the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s wage growth tracker, wages for people who have switched jobs have outpaced those who’ve stayed at one employer since 2011. One way to retain talent is to right-size salaries to a competitive market rate.
• Remember that money isn’t everything. While individuals may switch jobs for money, they often stay in a position for the culture. Creating a leading employee experience helps organizations keep talent. Work from home programs, flexible work schedules, and advanced programs such as childcare benefits help build the foundation. But increasingly, individuals are looking for a sense of belonging. According to research from McKinsey, employees who feel included are three times more likely to report being excited about working for their organization and committed to its success. Another McKinsey report focusing on attrition shows that employees primarily leave companies because they don’t feel valued or don’t have a sense of belonging.
• Don’t forget to commit the resources. Most organizations built their cultures before DEI and hybrid work were requirements. These companies must invest in new work tools and educational programs, and create new hiring and talent management practices. A business can make a more significant impact with fewer resources by ensuring purchases and processes support flexible and inclusive work cultures.
• Make sure actions are backed up with DEI transparency measurements. The pressure to support DEI could lead to situations where activities are celebrated over results. While it’s not easy to be vulnerable and transparent about where the problems exist, employers should take stock of where they are today. They should present this authentically, create goals for the future, and design a measurable action plan to track its progress. With so many variables and unknowns, it’s crucial for talent leaders to track the way that hybrid work and DEI efforts advance.

Diversity should be part of your efforts because it’s the culture you want to create. However, ignoring diversity efforts can also come with ramifications. For example, Goldman Sachs announced in 2021 that the firm would only underwrite IPOs in the United States and Europe for companies with at least two diverse board members. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopted new rules this summer that require Nasdaq-listed companies to have at least two diverse directors – including one woman and at least one member of an underrepresented community.

In order for the benefits of diversity to emerge in the workplace, companies need to enact cultural and behavioral change. As stated in the ICSM report, “Never become too comfortable with your efforts, as there is always room for improvement with diversity at your organization, whether you see it or not.” It’s clear that what organizations have done to attract talent in the past isn’t resonating the same way today. A diverse workforce delivers better ideas and stronger communities, building deeper relationships with customers along the way. Moving forward, it’s expected that a company’s investment in a diverse, inclusive, and hybrid work culture will set it apart from its competition, leading to increased business agility and better financial outcomes.

Assembling thousands of parts into one motorbike or scooter every 17 seconds is a complex task requiring accuracy and precision. For Hero MotoCorp — an India-headquartered manufacturer of two-wheeler vehicles — workforce collaboration, security, and mobility complement these processes and provide the cornerstone of the organization’s global operations.

Based in New Delhi, Hero MotoCorp is one of the world’s largest makers of two-wheeler vehicles, with a production capacity of 9 million units from five manufacturing plants in India and one each in Colombia and Bangladesh. The business has more than 90 million customers and operates in 37 countries across Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. In its home market, HeroMotoCorp sells one in every two two-wheelers.

Innovation and agility

Innovation and agility are deeply embedded in Hero MotoCorp’s culture and operations. Its Center of Innovation and Technology at Jaipur in Rajasthan, northern India, undertakes extensive product design and development, testing, and validation.

Hero MotoCorp has also established a technology center at Stephanskirchen, near Munich in Germany, to develop new vehicle concepts and technologies.

For several years, Hero MotoCorp relied on a traditional email solution to enable its employees to communicate and complete tasks. However, this solution could not provide the functionality, performance, ease of use, and security the business needed to maintain its market leadership.

“Our Chief Information Officer, Mr. Vijay Sethi, was the first to migrate to and embrace the features of G Suite and set an example to our workforce.”

Sujoy Brahmachari, Sr. GM and CISO, Hero MotoCorp

“Security, in particular, is extremely important — we don’t want our product design and development details falling into the wrong hands,” says Sujoy Brahmachari, Sr. GM and CISO, Hero MotoCorp. “We needed a solution that would allow us to control and monitor the distribution of sensitive information within and outside our organization.”

In early 2015, Hero MotoCorp’s technology team began evaluating email and workplace collaboration applications that could help the business realize its longer-term ambitions.

Collaboration key to success

“We were focused on a product that could drive greater collaboration among our workforce,” says Brahmachari. “In addition, we wanted to use the product on our desktops, laptops, mobile devices, and other devices. Finally, we needed to ensure email, other applications, and data were secure and available as and when we needed them.”

Hero MotoCorp’s evaluation found G Suite met all these requirements while being intuitive and easy to use. Furthermore, the cloud-based suite of intelligent applications provided a lower total cost of ownership than the business’s existing email solution and potential alternatives.

A 45-day migration

The business completed its review and completed the migration in just 45 days in 2015. “We worked closely with Google and our partners to complete the process in an innovative way that prioritized speed,” says Brahmachari. “For example, we migrated only three months’ worth of emails from our incumbent solution to G Suite, rather than the entire data repository.”

“Our teams are very happy and collaborative – employees can use Gmail through G Suite without being concerned about storage limits and can connect with colleagues, partners, customers, and other stakeholders through the chat, video, and audio call capabilities of Hangouts Meet.”

Sujoy Brahmachari, Sr. GM and CISO, Hero MotoCorp

Hero MotoCorp started the migration with a function-wise approach, creating batches and moving them overnight to G Suite. It created an internal video for employees to learn how to work using G Suite. It also created intranet posts to provide easy reference to all employees and established a service desk to respond to questions.

“Our Chief Information Officer, Mr. Vijay Sethi, was the first to migrate to and embrace the features of G Suite and set an example to our workforce,” says Brahmachari.

Deployed to 6,000 users

Hero MotoCorp has deployed G Suite to about 6,000 users in its core business and many users in affiliate companies. The company’s user-focused approach to the deployment, and the intuitive, easy-to-use nature of the product, has prompted the business’s workforce to embrace the full potential of G Suite.

“Our teams are very happy and collaborative — employees can use Gmail through G Suite without being concerned about storage limits and can connect with colleagues, partners, customers, and other stakeholders through the chat, video, and audio call capabilities of Hangouts Meet,” says Brahmachari.

Employees can also create, store, and access Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other file types on Drive — helping to ensure new product development, delivery schedules, budgeting, and other activities needed to keep a leading multinational manufacturer ahead of its competitors can be completed quickly and collaboratively.

Deployed to mobile devices

“With G Suite, information is available in the cloud to any employee at any time. The collaboration this enables plays a vital role in sustaining our leadership position.”

Sujoy Brahmachari, Sr. GM and CISO, Hero MotoCorp

Hero MotoCorp has also been able to give employees access to G Suite on a range of mobile devices — with administrators using mobile management to secure access applications and data on iOS and Android devices. The business is using the feature to require devices to have a screen lock or password; remote-wipe information from lost or stolen devices; and monitor from a central console the devices that access corporate data.

Further, Hero MotoCorp can use G Suite features to set and enforce policies and control system configuration and administration, while taking advantage of independently verified security, privacy, and compliance controls to meet business requirements.

With G Suite deployed and delivering value, Hero MotoCorp is now implementing or evaluating a range of Google technologies. For example, the business is using Google Maps Platform to power navigation for owners of new Hero MotoCorp two-wheelers and use Cloud Vision AI to enable immediate recognition of spare parts. “We are also evaluating Google Cloud data search and management technologies for potential application within the organization,” says Brahmachari.

The business is now well-positioned to accelerate into new markets and product development. “With G Suite, information is available in the cloud to any employee at any time,” says Brahmachari. “The collaboration this enables plays a vital role in sustaining our leadership position.”

The combination of a vital need for IT experts among businesses and a digital skills gap is making lifelong learning increasingly critical. Beyond professional development, learning new skills offers additional rewards from building peer connections to boosting your creativity. That’s why in 2020 Krishna Deepak Nallamilli and I launched KIMO.ai to reimagine how people approach learning, especially in developing markets. Our team is building the artificial intelligence needed to generate individual learning paths through a wide range of quality digital learning content.

Google Cloud and its Startup Program have been instrumental in connecting our team with the tools, people, processes, and best practices to grow our business. 

Existing learning platforms lack engagement

Outside of traditional education settings, massive open online learning courses (MOOCs)—often modeled after university courses—can provide a flexible and affordable way to upskill or reskill. But the vast majority of people who participate in MOOC programs fail to complete courses. Based on our research, the challenge with existing learning platforms is a lack of engagement, primarily caused by limited direction on which skills to learn, whether AI, fintech, blockchain, or other in-demand disciplines.   

We’ve also received feedback that many corporate learning management systems–developed as online training systems to upskill employees–tend to be poorly designed and time-consuming to use. 

Overall, a significant challenge with most existing learning platforms is that they’re generic. For example, suppose you’re interested in learning about AI. In that case, you need AI-related coursework that applies to your industry and the job you want because AI in medicine is vastly different from AI in financial services. Today’s online learning options typically take a one-size-fits-all approach and fail to capture the nuances of what learners really need to get ahead. 

Building a future-proof learning platform 

The commitment to highly personalized, accessible learning inspired KIMO.ai, a platform that we believe is the future of education. Depending on your goals, current skills, location, and other factors, our AI-based platform will identify which coursework (and where to find those classes) to build the skills you need. The more personalized, relevant learning recommendations even take into account people’s preferences for podcasts, MOOCs, books, articles, videos, courses, publications, and more.  

In a mix of cooperation and competition we call “coopetition,” KIMO.ai will regularly recommend courses from other established online learning systems if, based on our automated assessment, it’s the best option for a learner. There’s also the option to access free content only. 

Google cultural alignment fosters trust

Our platform started with one developer exploring NLP models and Google APIs. As we’ve grown our team and launched our beta to 110,000 users in developing markets, we discovered there is a lot of interest in our platform, and we believe we can make a significant impact. In feedback forums, we also learned that we need to focus our efforts on the mobile experience to improve engagement since 99% of the beta testers use mobile devices. 

Beyond our team’s high level of trust in Google Cloud solutions, our team also appreciates the cultural alignment with Google. We value Google’s developer-centric approach and rely on tools like Dataflow for batch data processing and Cloud TPU to reliably run machine learning models with AI services on Google Cloud. We also build all of our deployments on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), which makes it easy to manage all our containerized workloads 

On the front end, Google App Engine makes it easy to deploy apps and experiment, and it integrates seamlessly with Firebase for authentication and more. BigQuery is our serverless data warehouse that efficiently scales to support the millions of articles, videos, and other learning resources we need to analyze to provide the targeted coursework recommendations our learners require.

As we grow our business having a network of trusted advisors is also extremely valuable. By working closely with DoIT International, the 2020 Google Cloud Global Reseller Partner of the Year, our team has access to their cloud, Kubernetes, and machine learning expertise. DoIT has already helped us quickly resolve IT issues and create analytics dashboards that give us insights to continually enhance our services. 

Building for a growing industry

The dynamic edtech market is growing rapidly and estimated to become an $11B industry by 2025. We’re proud to be part of the next wave of personalized education that has the potential to empower people in developing markets and beyond to grow their skills with coursework tailored to their exact needs and how they like to learn. This year, we will deliver our platform to at least 400,000 more people. We’re excited to see how they use it and where it takes them. 

If you want to learn more about how Google Cloud can help your startup, visit our Startup Program application page here to get more information about our program, and sign up for our communications to get a look at our community activities, digital events, special offers, and more.

Editor’s note: Today’s blog post is from Alberto Asuero, CTO of CARTO, the location intelligence platform. Today he shares more details about the source of the data for advanced data visualizations created with Google Maps Platform and deck.gl and how the CARTO platform enables this workflow.

During Google Cloud Next in October, the Google team announced the newest release of the deck.gl visualization library, thanks to a collaboration with our geospatial company CARTO and the vis.gl Technical Steering Committee (TSC). The deck.gl release includes a deep integration with the new WebGL-powered features in the Maps JavaScript API that allows deck.gl to render 2D and 3D visualizations directly on the Google basemap.

Our team built an example app that visualizes a variety of data sources that show the potential for electrification of truck fleets in Texas. This app showcases the different types of advanced data visualizations that can be created with Google Maps Platform and deck.gl. Today, I want to share more details about the source of the data for these visualizations and how the CARTO platform enables this workflow.

Google Cloud provides a strong serverless data warehousing solution, BigQuery, with support for geospatial queries. When you are dealing with spatial data, creating maps to explore and visualize these datasets is an important and common need. The CARTO Spatial Extension for BigQuery provides an easy way to create connections to the data warehouse, design a map with data coming from BigQuery tables, and then add these visualizations to a web app using deck.gl.

Making a simple map

To create a simple map using the CARTO platform, you can sign up for a trial account. Once you have signed in, you can set up a connection to your BigQuery instance using a service account. Then, you can go to the Data Explorer and browse the available datasets to find the table you want to use as the datasource in your map. For more information, check out the CARTO documentation.

To create a visualization of power transmission lines in Texas, you can start with the Texas state boundary to provide some context. In the Data Explorer, you can preview the table and click the “Create map” button in the top-right corner to start designing your visualization.

Using the CARTO Builder map making tool, select one of the available Google vector basemap styles and customize the layer style.

You can visualize tables and the results from queries executed in the data warehouse, which is a powerful feature because you can also execute spatial analysis functions using SQL, including those from the CARTO Analytics Toolbox. In this case, you can intersect the lines in the table containing all the U.S. transmission lines within the Texas boundary. Click on the “Add source from…” button and select the “Custom Query (SQL)” option to add the following query:

SELECT * 
FROM cartobq.nexus_demo.transmission_lines
WHERE ST_INTERSECTS(
  geometry, 
  (SELECT geom FROM cartobq.nexus_demo.texas_boundary_simplified)
);

Click the “Run” button, and the query is executed in BigQuery. The results are sent back to the Builder tool. Perform some style customizations in the new layer, and your map is ready.

Before adding the map to the Google Maps Platform application, you’ll need to make it public. Click on the “Share” button and select the “Developers” tab to copy the map ID.

Now, you can add the visualization into your Google Maps Platform application, which is as easy as adding these four lines of code:

const cartoMapId = 'b502bf53-877d-4e89-b5ad-71982cac431d'; deck.carto.fetchMap({cartoMapId}).then(({layers}) => { const overlay = new deck.GoogleMapsOverlay({layers}); overlay.setMap(map); });

You can use the map ID copied from CARTO Builder to call the fetchMap function. This function connects to the platform and retrieves all the information needed for the visualization, including a collection of deck.gl layers with all the styling properties you’ve specified. Create an instance of the deck.gl GoogleMapsOverlay with this collection of layers and add it to the map.

You can see the full example in this fiddle.

Visualizing very large datasets

One of the main features of BigQuery is the ability to scale processing to massive datasets. With the CARTO platform, you can also visualize very large datasets using tilesets, an optimized data structure containing pre-generated vector tiles for fast visualization. Tilesets are generated within BigQuery using the Analytics Toolbox functions in a parallelized process that can handle billions of points.

For example, you can create a visualization using tilesets with the whole dataset of transmission lines for the U.S., more than 100MB of geometries.

The issue with these large datasets is that they do not fit in memory all at once, so you need to split them into tiles for them to be rendered progressively. CARTO takes care of this, allowing you to create tilesets directly in BigQuery or dynamically generate them on the fly.

This method for data loading in maps can scale as much as needed; for example, take a look at this 17 billion point visualization of vessel data.

What about live data?

BigQuery supports streaming data that is continuously updated. In these scenarios, you want to be able to update your visualization at regular intervals, as the data changes. It’s easy to update this visualization using deck.gl. You just need to set the autoRefresh parameter to true when fetching the map and specify the function you want to execute when new data is downloaded:

const {layers} = await deck.carto.fetchMap({ cartoMapId, autoRefresh: true, onNewData: (parsedMap) => { … } });

You can add points to a table with an INSERT function on the BigQuery console and see the data updated on the map in real time.

Going further

In addition to the simple ways to create visualizations shown above, deck.gl has the flexibility to create a wide variety of visualizations. The CARTO platform provides you with the functionality to access data from your data warehouse and create these data visualizations with advanced cartographic capabilities, but you can extend it and go beyond that using any of the advanced visualizations available in the deck.gl layer catalog.

There are two additional options that give you more control over the deck.gl code. The first one is to use the CartoLayer directly without fetchMap. You’ll need to indicate the connection to use from the CARTO platform and the data source type and name or query. Then we can specify the styling properties.

const overlay = new deck.GoogleMapsOverlay({
  layers: [
    new deck.carto.CartoLayer({
      connection: 'bqconn',
      type: deck.carto.MAP_TYPES.TABLE,
      data: `cartobq.public_account.retail_stores`,
      getFillColor: [238, 77, 90],
      pointRadiusMinPixels: 6,
    }),
  ],
});

The second option is to use the fetchLayerData function that allows you to have more control over the format used for data transfer between BigQuery and your application and can be used with advanced visualizations that require an specific data format like ArcLayer, H3HexagonLayer or TripsLayer.

deck.carto.fetchLayerData({
  type: deck.carto.MAP_TYPES.TABLE,
  source: `cartobq.geo_for_good_meetup.texas_pop_h3`,
  connection: 'bqconn',
  format: deck.carto.FORMATS.JSON,
  credentials: {
     accessToken: 'eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJhIjoiYWNfbHFlM3p3Z3UiLCJqdGkiOiI1YjI0OWE2ZCJ9.Y7zB30NJFzq5fPv8W5nkoH5lPXFWQP0uywDtqUg8y8c'
   }
 }).then(({data}) => {
  const layers= [
    new deck.H3HexagonLayer({
      id: 'h3-hexagon-layer',
      data,
      extruded: true,
      getHexagon: d => d.h3,
      getFillColor: [182, 0, 119, 150],
      getElevation: d => d.pop,
      elevationScale: 2.5,
      parameters: {
        blendFunc: [luma.GL.SRC_ALPHA, luma.GL.DST_ALPHA],
        blendEquation: luma.GL.FUNC_ADD
      }
    })
  ];
  const overlay = new deck.GoogleMapsOverlay({layers});
  overlay.setMap(map);
 });

For complete code using both options, take a look at these examples.

Learn more

You can access demos and documentation on the deck.gl docs website and the CARTO Documentation Center. If you have questions, you can ping the CARTO team on the CARTO Users Slack workspace.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit the Google Maps Platform website.