Saturday, August 22, 2009

Toyota Way 2001

Toyota is one of company that implement excellence Human Resource Model with comprehensive pattern in Toyota Way 2001. Every company may benchmark to Toyota to succeed its road to the competition and go out with success.

The insight of how Toyota manage its Human Resources presented below from Toyota website. Basically, Toyota put its Employee as valuable asset to make Toyota Way Happen. Toyota presented that:

"In order to carry out the Guiding Principles at Toyota Motor Corporation, in April 2001 Toyota adopted the Toyota Way 2001, an expression of the values and conduct guidelines that all employees should embrace. In order to promote the development of Global Toyota and the transfer of authority to local entities, Toyota's management philosophies, values and business methods, that previously had been implicit in Toyota's tradition, were codified. Based on the dual pillars of "Respect for People" and "Continuous Improvement," the following five key principles sum up the Toyota employee conduct guidelines: Challenge, Kaizen (improvement), Genchi Genbutsu (go and see), Respect, and Teamwork. In 2002, these policies were advanced further with the adoption of the Toyota Way for individual functions, including overseas sales, domestic sales, human resources, accounting, procurement, etc." (toyota.co.jp)


You can download supporting article here by click Toyota Human Resource Development

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Human Capital for Millenials

Research has found that its too important to ignore millenials role at work. View the presentation below about millenials from PwC Saratoga and download the human capital survey : Millenials at work

At nearly 70 million strong, Generation Y is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. workforce. They are techno-savvy, goal-oriented, excellent at multi-tasking, and require a completely different approach to management. These entry-level workers are also changing careers faster than their older colleagues, making it harder for HR professionals to retain these talented performers.

Researchers have found that millennials are both ambitious and high-maintenance, and they believe in the strong skills that they bring to the table. Generation Y believes in speaking your mind at work, and is less likely to respond to traditional means of management. They've grown up questioning their parents, and won't respond well to commands or authoritative methods.

With a basic understanding of how their workforce perspective differs from other employees, there are a few essential ways you can effectively manage millennials.

Make the Job Challenging

Generation Y workers are not afraid of change. They don't expect to stay in the same job for long, and are often skeptical about the idea of company loyalty. They excel in multi-tasking, and desire to be challenged in their work. You can increase retention by keeping them moving onto new assignments, and finding ways to help them expand their skills on the job.

Encourage a Sense of Balance

Unlike the baby boomer generation who tend to place their priorities on career, Gen Y workers want their jobs to accommodate their home lives. They value the work-life balance, which means that flexible schedules and telecommuting options are very attractive. You can also encourage balance through team-oriented activities or social company events.

Set Clear Expectations

HR managers sometimes assume that members of Generation Y understand the same rules of the office by which older employees abide. At times, they will have their own interpretations, so you should detail your expectations in the employee manual. If there is a specific dress code, you need to be up front about it. If you don't want them using company time to use their iPods, BlackBerry mobile devices or instant messaging, you need to mention that as well.

Gen Y workers commonly exhibit ambition, talent and financial smarts on the job. Along with these strengths, they also have a different work attitude and respond to different management techniques. Since traditional forms of managing won't be effective, HR managers have been able to effectively use these creative ways to help recruit and retain top millennials. To keep a deeper sense of the career perks that they value the most, you can use annual reviews and anonymous surveys at your office.

source ezine

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Mergers and Acquisitions Execution - Avoid the Failure

Mergers and acquisitions are a prominent phenomenon in business. It provide additional growth and profit opportunities. Entrepreneurs also often use it as an exit strategy and it is crucial in determining their ultimate success and financial independence. Unfortunately things do not always go smooth in the execution of mergers and acquisitions and sometimes it is a complete failure.

Why mergers fail? Here are nine deadly sins of merger failure
View more documents from triagung.

To Download the presentation, visit 9 deathly sins of merger failure

A successful merger and acquisition can be measured against two major factors:

  • Shareholders value increase. A sustainable increase in shareholders value should be achieved over time.
  • Synergies materialised. The achievement of expected synergies such as more efficient operations, increased profitability and an increase in market share.

A merger and acquisition is normally one of the most important strategies that a company will embark on. Unfortunately many mergers and acquisitions are failures (or at least in some aspect). One of the best ways to increase the chances of success is to plan properly for a merger and acquisition and to see it as a project and manage it in such a way. A merger and acquisition typically has all the important characteristics of a project - it is multidisciplinary, has specific objectives, is once-off and has time and budget constraints.

How to Deal With Employee's Turnover Rates



A turnover rate is the ratio of employees leaving the company (or some specific industry) in a given period. A company or industry has high turnover rate when the workers of that company tend to ditch their jobs more often than the employees of other companies (in the same industry). Some industries and jobs have high turnover rates because of the nature of work, however if your company has a high turnover rate than your competitor and you are not able to sustain your employees with you, there maybe something wrong with your policies. In case you don't pay attention, not only you will be loosing your good employees to your competitors, your business will also suffer from high costs of attracting, recruiting and training the new staff.

Atmosphere and working conditions:

At certain workplaces, you will feel the tense atmosphere as soon as you put your feet in, reason can be strict management or unrealistic targets. Being a manager, it is necessary to maintain some discipline but some managers overdo it by importing rules straight from the books of military. For many individuals (especially fresh graduates) it becomes really hard to adjust in this kind of atmosphere. Working conditions are linked with health related issues. Light, ventilation, air conditioning, heating systems and safety measures are some of the basic requisites. Sometimes, improving your high turnover can be as simple as loosening up some rules or dealing with some unhealthy environment issues.

Salary & Growth Opportunities:

Excessive work, no incentives and low salaries, these are all grounds for a high turnover rate. Employees are here to earn, and their morale is directly related to their income. If you are expecting them to give their 100 %, you should be giving back in form of good enough salaries. Your salary packages should be competitive if not the best in market. A good salary package will make up for many other factors, but if the salaries are low from the market standards, nothing can hold the employees for long. Similarly, motivating employees by providing growth opportunities is also necessary.

Choosing the right candidate and the nature of the work:

If your recruitment and hiring process is flawed, you are meant to have a high turnover. Many small businesses, in a hurry to fill out vacant positions, hire some unskilled individuals, thinking that he/she will learn the traits with the passage of time. Such hiring is nothing but wastage of time, both for employee and employer. The interviewee should have complete knowledge of the skills required for some particular job, and the successful candidate should be having most of them, if not all.

Sometimes the reason for high turnover is the nature of work, for example the jobs that require night shifts or excessive late sittings. These types of jobs are not suitable for everyone and they are supposed to have high turnover rates than others. These are some of the common reasons, apart from looking into these areas; you can approach your employees to get the exact idea about their reservations.

Article source

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Building Competitive Advantage

Checkout the presentation and see the article. To Download the presentation visit building competitive advantage and download the presentation

Where does your business success begin? If you want to secure a competitive advantage, what are the 3 key areas that you must address?

Your employees or internal customers are your competitive advantage if you want to create a high performance work culture where at least 35% of the employees are engaged in thinking intensive jobs. A reasonable question is the how does one build a foundation from which to develop and then maximize that advantage?

The foundation begins with three 3 and distinct areas or pillars: your systems, your strategies and your people. Each pillar needs to be assessed and then aligned to developing internal customer satisfaction.

When looking at your systems, you will need to look at team building, process improvement, customer loyalty and continuous improvement. Quality leadership will ensure that these systems are both efficient and effective.

Strategy is embedded in your strategic planning process that includes your Vision, Values and current measurable Mission Statement along with all the critical success factors. To develop internal customer satisfaction mandates that your strategy is well communicated within your entire organization.

One simple way to assess the effectiveness of your strategic plan is ask every employee to name the top 3 goals for the current year. And if you get more than 3 answers, you know this is an area that needs immediate attention. Using an organizational assessment tool that incorporates known and proven criteria such as Baldrige helps to determine where your directional gaps are.

The pillar of people include: self leadership skills (interpersonal skills), leadership skills, attitudes and behaviors and business plans for each department. Management development oversees this essential pillar.

When all three areas of systems, strategy and people are aligned to developing achieving the goal of internal customer satisfaction, something almost magical happens. Your employees experience moments of truth that lead to loyal external customers.

TAKE ACTION to think about your strategic plan and how will it is executed in your business. What would happen if every employee could name the top 3 goals of the business for the current year? Would your overall productivity increase? Would you find yourself with greater sales, greater profitability and less costs? Just imagine the possibilities.

article source

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Toyota's 14 Principles : Key Success Factor

Many things to be learnt at Toyota. You can download the toyota 14 principles pdf here and read the analysis below from ezine.

Toyota is clearly a dominate leader in automobile manufacturing today. The principles employed at every level of the company have certainly led to a standard of quality that no one in the automotive industry can argue with. What these principles are and how they are implemented within the Toyota Corporation can certainly help the automakers of the United States and indeed the world achieve the same success.

When these 14 principles are listed and compared with some of the strategies that United States automakers have employed, it becomes clear why Toyota has succeeded as it has.

The 14 principles are known as the "Toyota Way" and are listed below:

1. Base your management decisions on long term philosophies, even at the expense of short term goals

2. Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface

3. Use pull systems to avoid over production

4. Level out the workload

5. Build in a method to stop and fix problems when they are discovered, this ensures quality the first time

6. Standardized tasks provide the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment

7. Use visual control so no problems are hidden

8. Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves you people and processes

9. Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy and can and do teach it to others

10. Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy

11. Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve

12. Go and see for yourself so that you completely understand the situation

13. Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly consider all options; implement decisions rapidly

14. Become a learning organization through relentless self examination and continuous improvement

Just by a cursory examination of these fourteen principles, it is easy to understand why Toyota has experienced such a high level of success. The overall process does not allow for overlooking, either deliberately or by accident problems that exist anywhere in the chain of production. Every Toyota employee involved in the manufacturing process has the power to stop production if they see an issue developing. Just this one aspect alone works to ensure that quality vehicles are produced along the assembly line. The twelfth principle: go and see supports and encourages management to stay in touch with design and manufacturing concepts so that they stay in touch with what is actually occurring on the production floor. Number 13 inhibits the business as usual style that can strangle even the most creative of companies. By always encouraging employees to thing outside the box and bring the suggestions to upper level management, fresh new ideas are constantly stimulating innovative and original designs. This ensures that the product never goes stale.

By spending more time up front developing the correct process, the long-term goals of producing exciting affordable qualities vehicles is recognized. Unfortunately, for U.S. automakers, it many times seems that that they approach the production concept from the opposite direction. This might explain why Toyota has pulled away from United States as a leader in the car manufacturing industry. The philosophy appears to have worked well so far and one wonders why someone in America has not had the bright idea to adopt these strategies.

Could it possibly be that many Americans have grown fat and lazy with the early successes achieved by our ancestors? Let us hope that our philosophy as a nation changes quickly, for if it does not, we might find ourselves going the same way as our automotive industry. That is a scary thought indeed.

Human Resource Outsourcing & Benefit

Need the logic information about HR Outsourcing? View the article and research outsourcing research and statistics and read the short explanation below.

Nice Reading...

Outsourcing is becoming important in today's business. Outsourcing will help the organization as the certain part of the work is delegated to an external service provider. He will be responsible for looking after day-to-day activities of the work delegated to him. It would be better if the organization communicates with the service provider on a regular basis. The organization should outsource the work for a longer period so that they can maintain a good business relationship with the service provider which will benefit the customers. Outsourcing can be done for marketing, web design & maintenance, manufacturing, recruitment, logistics, distribution, editing. Outsourcing can be done when the process becomes difficult to manage or when the employees do not have the necessary skills.

Outsourcing is done to help the organization to reduce costs, so that they can concentrate on their main activities. It will help the organization to save time and the resources can be used for other important activities. The service provider has to finish the project on time. Credibility and efficiency of the service provider is known if he meets the project deadline. The service provider provides better service quality. The organization does not have to worry about introducing new technologies. The pros through outsourcing are it has reduced costs, tax advantages, removing of personnel problems, expert resources and staffing. It can control operating costs. It increases customer satisfaction. It reduces the overall management burden while retaining control of strategic decision making. It spreads the risk. Provides value added services.

Outsourcing the recruitment process will reduce the recruitment costs up to 20 %. Outsourcing recruitment has 4 major advantages like cost reduction, results, focused management effort and optimal resource utilization. Outsourcing is beneficial to corporate organizations and consultancies. They are inter-related to each other because the corporate organizations use the outsourcing services and the consultancies provide service to the corporates.

There are basically two types of HR Firms. One is professional employer organization (PEO) and Hybrid HR firm. Professional employer organization is for those companies who are contended with handing over the whole HR functions to a 3rd party organization. But if there is a problem in handing out the HR functions to someone else then you may opt for the Hybrid. To choose an employee for an organization the consultant will do certain things like it will define the requirements, advertise, attract the applicants, selecting the applications, interviewing, assessing, conducting tests, reference check and then short listing the applicants.

The organization has to choose whether it is interested in taking up a human resources outsourcing (HRO) provider or a professional employer organization (PEO). HRO provides the specific HR function and PEO provides services like the workers compensation, payroll etc. For smaller concerns a PEO can be beneficial as it can control HR costs such as workers compensation insurance, group health benefits and payroll processing. For larger concerns the HROs work better because they save more money in outsourcing certain specific areas like administration, application management, HR information systems. If only certain functions are outsourced then HRO is the best solution but for a full service solution, PEO will be better.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Key Trends in Human Capital 2008


It is clear from experience, as well as the vast amounts of information available to employers that the HUman Capital Trends are changing. Patterns of migration, issues of diversity and social or educational development are presenting employers the world over with an increasingly difficult and important challenge - where their talent will come from in the future.

In 2008 a large proportion of ‘baby boomers’ are set to retire, and according to large consultancies like Deloitte and BearingPoint, there will be fewer graduates with the 'right critical skills entering the market' who can act as 'ready replacements' for those skilled and experienced employees leaving the market.

Which organisations continue to win the war for talent will be based on many factors, and the demographics of the global work force aren’t going to stand still while businesses try and catch up. This makes having a transparent, consistent and strong employer brand essential, because it allows employers to align their talent acquisition and retention strategies to their corporate values. It also allows companies to project into the market a clear image of themselves, which a potential employee can buy-in to.


Friday, February 13, 2009

Blue Ocean Strategy

pdf version of the book is now available. Click the link below:

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Pay for Performance Strategies

‘Pay for performance’ envisages the concept of incentives and pay driven by actual performance. It is the returns earned by the employees on the basis of their efforts at a given task. It provides the basis for performance measurement strategies. The same is responsible for identifying skill gaps among the employees. Once identified, suitable training programs can be designed to bridge these gaps. The challenge before the organizations is to formulate effective ‘pay for performance’ programs.

Successful pay-for-performance design and implementation begins with solid total reward strategy. This gives the company a structured platform from which future program decisions can be made consistently across the company, even as the environments change. It can also contribute to ensuring that human resource programs are aligned with the overall business strategy and the company’s direction. Designing and implementing a total reward strategy is straightforward. An appropriate planning and a holistic approach are required to effectively link performance to these rewards.

These articles will help you to understand more about pay for performance:
1. Organization Differences in managing compensation
2. Pay for Performance : Evaluating performance appraisal and merit pay