Human Resource Paper

Human Resource Paper

     The industrial revolution has paved the way for the business world into a new horizon. And the world is still in the grip of that quantum leap of that of the commercial evolution. With time the patterns of the human relationship in the organisation has also seen a sea change due to the increasing complexity and emerging business of ever changing type. In search of solution, all the organisations around the world have created different departments or sections to seek help from. Human Resource is a unique section of an organisation that bridges the man power with the policy, growth and the goal of the company. To achieve this result of well ahead thoughts, it needs a formal module through which the Human Resource can mould the company man power to get the best out of them.

     The main focus of the paper is to introduce the methods of conducting Company Orientation and Training; where the employees break the ice to know more about the company philosophy followed by the training sessions to induce the work culture, the profile, the expectation, the compensation (variable nature) and etc. In this paper, this exercise will reflect the outcome of its potential. In order to juxtapose the scenario, two companies have been chosen, by the virtue of whose activities in the mentioned area the final picture will be projected with all its attributes.

     International Business Machines Corporation a saga of more than a century, founded as the Tabulating Machine Company in the year 1896 by Herman Hollerith, in Broome County, New York. The incorporation of the company was done in 1911, July 16 as Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR), and eventually listed on the New York Exchange in 1916 (Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, 2004). Otherwise known as ‘Big Blue’, today’s IBM got rechristened in 1924 after becoming an international manufacturing company. The 50s swung open the door to the company with its innovative models of IBM mainframes that made it enlisted as the dominant vendor in the growing computer industry. A journey of century has fetch the concern an impressive revenue of $98.8 billion USD (+4% as per FY ’07 to ’08) and a net income of $98.8 billion USD (+4% as per FY ’07 to ’08), with a growing population of workforce of 386,558 as off 2007 (Zeno Bank, 2008).

     The company has grown in different dimensions to cater its service in the fields of computer hardware, software, infrastructure services, hosting services and consulting services ranging from mainframe to nanotechnology (IBM, 2008). Though it is Hewlett-Packard that enjoyed the most profitable position since 2006, but IBM made benchmark in the recent history as the world’s largest computer company, flagging off more patents than any U.S. technology based company has till date (IBM, 2008). Supporting such an epic extension the company has to induce new methods of manpower operation for innovative result. As per the law of nature of any organisation this has to address by the Human Resource Department and will include the orientation and the training of the new employees to make them fit to handle the growing demands.

     Orientation and Training. IBM Learning, the orientation programme of 2003 has marked a significant development in introduction of the employees in the new environment of the company. The programme is a 90 days online global session, where the day ‘One’ holds a meeting with managers, followed by text based e-learning with new IBMer website introduction and coach to sort out problems. Then starts the 60-90 days session, where 2 days are for IBM classes and the rest in managed by the managerial support and periodic measurement of reaction to training, action based on training and the impact to business. As a result, the initial 18 months reflected a fare response by 90% satisfied global student. But a change struck the company’s demand strategy with introduction of new values and shift in the hiring mix, inclining more to the outsourcing through business transformation in the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the emerging economy. This major shift in the manpower operation has created a workload congestion for which some employees could not attend the 60 days class. The internal chaos of the company built up a lack of global consistency in delivering the programme to the employees, resulting different countries adopting different variation of the programme. The programme suffered the c-ordination gap and had to be abandoned for that phase.

     To address this issue and to resolve the functional problem IBM introduced an enhanced module, which is already customised by the target segment. Here the 2 days IBM classes have been included and merged with individual laptops and IBMer website along with coach to help out the problems in 1 day. After a quick recap of the system, the employees have been given access to the interactive e-learning classes of 120 days. Unlike last time tight measurements have been taken by holding quarterly webcast touchpoints to share valuable information among the employees in a routine schedule. This created an open domain for the employees’ world over to form a network and feel the part of IBM family. There was ample room to learn and unlearn from the experiences of the new employees and make the adjustments accordingly, which indeed showed a 90% satisfaction level. A through out managerial guidance and support have proved to be a motivational factor, where a periodic measurement of new employees’ reaction to training, action based on training and impact to business have been duly recorder as apart of system management. As a result of this exclusive and undisturbed parallel programme, it has gained more points in developing extended relationship among new employees existing employers, a fast track interactive programme to understand the system and to finish the ability check, a consistent global approach through the new employees’ network domain and a robust measurement of supervisions and managerial guidance to execute the program in a proper and timely manner (Rapid Acclimation: IBM’s Innovative Approach to Training New Employees, 2006).

     Largest Technology Company in the world, the Hewlett-Packard Company started their story from a garage nearby Palo Alto, California when William (Bill) Hewlett and David (Dave) Packard graduated in electrical engineering from Stanford University in the year 1934. A fellowship with a past professor, Frederick Terman at Stanford during the Great Depression proved to be the formation period of the company as he mentored the foundation of HP (Malone, 2007). Officially the partnership was formed on January 1, 1939 with an investment of $538 (Hewlett-Packard, 2008), now which has become world’s first IT company in the history to project growth crossing $100 billion with a market capital of $124.57 billion as of 2008, Revenue earned $104.3 billion as of 2007 and Net Income of $7.3 billion as of 2007 (Yahoo Finance, 2008) nurturing a manpower strength of 172,000 as of 2008 (Zeno Bank, 2008) operates almost across the world.

     For many years the company remained unfocused investing on various electronic products for and for agriculture even. Since 1940s until 1990s the company was heavily into production of electronic test equipments, after which it took a new initiative to target the university, research, business to expand the cliental. With a vision to serve this new segment; the company involved itself into whole new range of products that includes personal computers, notebook computers, servers, blades, switches, printers, calculators, networking products, software, telephones, PDAs, digital cameras, storage, communication platforms, and home media devices among other technology related products and services.

     Orientation and Training. With so much to cater to its new segment the company needs a revolutionary training and introduction process to set the new employees free to access the company resources to its fullest and in the most efficient manner. To attain this picture to the future in HP and the system to follow to succeed has to be flawless. This is a training programme of 2000 to standardise the management operation world wide in order to assimilate the $18.7 billion Compaq acquisition project. Thinq Learning Solution Inc. has taken the project to induce an understanding to solve the multiple proprietary and store brought training product which were not matching well with each other. Basically the system is to track the training investment, which is a main aspect in HP to measure the training investment and the application on it. HP believes that Thinq’s multilingual ability will give HP a remote access to operate.

     To support the issue of post merger assimilation and integration, it requires a holistic approach to support the situation from all the functional touch points. To do so, the company focused on two major aspects that are, introduction of the new customer-relationship management (CRM) or sales-force automation software to educate the same to the sales force who drives the end result to the client base, building the bottom-line of the company. It is imperative to know the after marriage functionality of the two brands to give the most effective presentation to the clients that can achieve the smartest way by including the sales force into it. And as an added advantage, the training can be monitored globally due to the CRM technology.

     The system also tracks the employees’ performance in their respective courses with the help of the system integrator which can take span of 18 months involving a budget of $200,000 to $900,000. But it is later HP wanted to round up the range from $10 to $40 per user by consolidating the training, which is already in a global mode. As per an IDC analyst the Thinq Learning Solution is not the complete solution, but can be the part of company’s E-learning curriculum (Tischelle, 2002).

     In both the situation, IBM and HP have tried to make their new or existing employees understand the system of the company for an improved result. The situation that struck the manpower operation is the hiring policy for IBM and merger for HP, for which they have taken proper actions too. The difference is that the IBM wanted an image projection globally through the training their mode and the HP concentrated on the spending aspect of the global training curriculum, thus missed the opportunity to build the intangible company asset by leaving mark on clients mind, which catch him or her back into the thought as per their proper time space. There is no doubt about it that HP’s fiscal factor has made it the most profitable tycoon of the time, where IBM still took the ace of being most patent holder in the U.S. technology based company to gain client’s faith from different angles, from different patents, by different patents what they speak. The battle of HR policies is a very subtle one to achieve the unsaid issues in the most innovative manner.

Reference

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Malone, M. (2007). Bill ; Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company. Portfolio Hardcover.

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