Leseprobe
Table of Contents
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
1.2 HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
2.0 BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANIES
2.1 TOYOTA
2.2 BMW
3.0 ORGANIZATIONS’ APPROACHES
3.1 THE PROCESS OF HRM AND HCM IN TOYOTA
3.2 THE PROCESS OF HRM AND HCM IN BMW
3.3 THE DIFFERENCE IN APPROACHES
4.0 HCM & PURPOSE ACCOMPLISHMENT
5.0 EVALUATION OF THEIR MANAGERS’ DECISIONS
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
Human Capital Management according to Baron and Armstrong (2007) and supported by Kalitanvi and Goldman (2021); is the set of practices for the purpose of the recruitment, management, development, and optimization of employees within industries such that their value and contribution to the companies are maximized. The authors further highlight on how human capital management plays an important and decisive part into ensuring the hiring of the right talents, satisfying the required skillsets to sustain the company’s workforce, the effective management of employees and the proportional increase of productivity. Hossain and Roy (2016) emphasize on the fact that the human capital management is concerned with the analysis and reporting of the acquisition process of companies such that the latter can have an informed management. The main management here is of the human capital which according to Alika and Alibieyi (2014), is the representation of humans in terms of their intelligence, the skills they may possess, their working experiences, their specific talents and soft skills which make organizations distinct from each other (see figure 1). Human Capital can pose as both a challenge in terms of the identification of relevant measures and the provision of information in respect to a company and as an opportunity when it comes to the evaluation and maximization of people's value (Baron & Armstrong, 2007).
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Editorial note: This image was removed due to copyright issues.
Figure 1: Human Capital Management Overview (Source: Watson, 2019)
1.2 HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Armstrong (1997) defines the Human Resources Management as “a strategic approach to acquiring, developing, managing, motivating, and gaining the commitment of the organization’s key resource - the people who work in and for it”. Aburumman et al. (2020) highlight that the human resource management is concerned with hiring the workforce of organizations but also to motivate and maintain by resolving issues in respect to when employees are hired, trained, developed, and compensated. The case study further emphasizes on how the human resources management is important for ensuring proper administration and communication flows for sustainable workforce management as when the employees of an organization feel satisfied, their contribution to the organization is maximized, hence achieving organizational goals. Bauer et al. (2018) refers to human resources management as the management of the policies, procedures, practices, and philosophies in respect to employees within an organization. Maurer (2022) highlights the number of processes which are included in the human resources management such that:
- Recruitment of employees
- Employee orientation and induction to introduce them to the culture and work ethics.
- The training and development of employees for better performance.
- Performance appraisal upon years of service in terms of promotions and incentives.
- The human resources department also has to look into the compensation and remuneration criteria within the company such that employees are aware of the process, the Editorial note: This image was removed due to expectations and are copyright issues. rewarded upon successful rendering and completion of tasks Figure 2: Human Resources Management Overview (Source: Rao and Raju (2015)
2.0 BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANIES
2.1 TOYOTA
According to Kamiyama (2004), the Toyota Motor Corporation is one of the largest automobile manufacturing companies which was initially founded in the year 1993 by Toyoda Kiichiro in Japan. The company is involved into the making of automobiles, commercial vehicles, industrial vehicles as well as automotive parts. The first car which they launched was in 1936 and was the first Model AA Sedan car. With the ongoing world wars and crisis then, the Toyota Company faced huge backlashes and it is only after the 1950’s that the company was able to gather their workforce and together started to establish their brand and partner with U.S productions later in the 1986 to increase their brand presence. As seen in figure 3, Toyota now has over hundreds of thousands of employees across their sixty seven manufacturing companies worldwide.
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Editorial note: This image was removed due to copyright issues.
Figure 3: Toyota Logo (Source: ("History of Toyota", 2022))
Furuta and Shook (2021), emphasize that the Toyota culture is one which is looked up by many other companies as Toyota has for goal that the heart and soul of Toyota is into ensuring their employees are equipped properly to succeed both professionally, personally and in their contributions to the company. Toyota has a well-established human resources department with the goal of valuing their employees and managing them in ways that they do not feel controlled but rather understanding the essence of a highly structured organization. Toyota has also seen transitions in terms of their human resources management as despite micro-managing their teams, they did face some backlashes whereby some sexual harassment cases amongst employees were recorded in their US branch (Orey, 2006). Nevertheless, the company still thrives up to day to enact and react to these situations such that their employees feel safe, empowered and secured.
2.2 BMW
According to its main website, the BWM stands for “Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH” which refers to the company upholding “Bavarian Engine Works” from its origin country which is the Bavaria. The BMW evolved in 1916 from the Rapp-Motorenwerke GmbH company which was first into the making of aircraft engines since the years 1913. From the gathered history from the main website ("The BMW name and its History", 2022), it is noted that the BMW is a German automobile manufacturing company which was founded by Franz Josef Popp and currently having more than hundreds of thousands of employees around the world. Evolving from, aircraft engines to motorbikes and to now the world’s luxurious cars, the BMW has come across a long journey of strategies, frameworks, and approaches.
Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten
Editorial note: This image was removed due to copyright issues.
Figure 4: BMW Logo and full form (Source: bmw.com (2022))
Lewin (2021) highlights that the BMW company allocates much importance to their human resources management as previously not much focus was being put into their employees; however, they quickly realised the ratio of quality of service to products’ manufacturing was not being balanced and hence after discovering the loopholes, it was realised that the company was not giving enough importance to their staffs and customer service. They hence came up with their new human resources goal which is to ensure that they need to invest into making their staffs and management team more productive and creative to thus seek their contribution in producing more unique and competitive products. Since BMW is indulged into the making of luxurious automotive products, the aims they set for their human resources are such that the latter need to be well trained and develop a highly capable workforce with the ability of producing more innovative products while achieving high task goals and ensuring their aims are fulfilled at all times. James (2022) emphasizes on the 8 personnel guidelines set by the BMW GROUP which when compiled together translate to each personnel having mutual respect for national and cultural boundaries and targeting solely the performance of employees for their remunerations; irrespective of any other conflicts at a point of time.
3.0 ORGANIZATIONS’ APPROACHES
3.1 THE PROCESS OF HRM AND HCM IN TOYOTA
According to Gao and Low (2015), the main human resources management approach by Toyota is a “comprehensive management framework” which has two main goals inclusive of their staffs’ improvement and respect. Klinvex (2022), depicts the lean culture approach undertaken by Toyota where the expectations are high as the company bases itself on:
- Higher levels of energy
- Employees who can thrive in a highly structured environment
- Employees who can survive in a non-collaborative environment
- Employees who can survive in a lean organization where much emphasis is put on the production scales.
The author further highlights on how other companies fail to adopt the same approach since they do not put into practice the same strategies and methodologies that Toyota makes use of. Toyota has its employees at heart and put into practice HR philosophies and strategies as below:
- The required competencies are well defined such that the potential candidates can be reviewed based on their behaviours and traits. The must-haves in Toyota are essentially the ability to work alone and in a team as well as having abilities such as problem solving, communication, integrity, and the attitude of keeping oneself motivated throughout challenges.
- Toyota is strict when it comes recruiting new employees, hence the human resources department follows the strict rule of hiring only the people who have the competencies which are defined prior to the candidates profiling.
- The human resources department ensures that employees are well aware of Toyota’s lean system and that training is provided for all employees irrespective of new and old such that high performance is encouraged, and the value of the performance management system is well communicated.
- The employees at Toyota receive coaching whenever there are new projects, new skillsets are required, lacking is spotted hence requiring new training to equip the employees. However, Toyota has a firm fundamental belief on its lean management system, hence chances and opportunities are provided to all but only those who are willing to adapt and embrace the high performing culture are retained, the rest are suspended since to maintain lean, the recruitment needs to be lean.
Matsuo (2015) highlights the fact that Toyota’s approach to human capital is such that the company regards its employees as knowledgeable and those who have the wisdom and experience to handle the company’s frontlines. Much emphasis is put on developing its Human Capital in ways as below:
- Toyota allows its employees to make judgement calls. The latter can call out on any strategy and working ways. Even during the training period, new recruits are encouraged to make judgement calls and define improvements.
- Toyota understands that employees might want to be promoted along their course of work, hence, to gain higher positions; equal chances are provided to all employees during their 10 years of service. The company equips them with problem solving methods, learning through experimentation, and developing modern day apprenticeship.
- The evaluation of employees within Toyota is based on the process performance and learning over results strategy such that focus is out on goals’ accomplishment, the fostering of organizational skills, the impartation of skills and techniques to colleagues as well as the respect and trust gained by other team members as coming back to their main objective is to base themselves on the framework of mutual respect.
- The Toyota company does not emphasize on a strict hierarchy. Instead, the employees are encouraged to communicate through different channels, voice out their opinions as well as any issue or concern they might have - even against seniors and the management.
- Since employees in Toyota are recruited based on their tested knowledge and skills, the company values each of them individually and as a team. As such, the company invests much of time, money, and energy to connect their teams and to enhance communication as they have experienced that a well-established team performs better than a team with issues.
- To empower their human capital across employees of all levels, Toyota has horizontal links across their employees’ functional skills and their locations they are based in such that thy are grouped based on specializations and the year they entered the company. The vertical development happens across hierarchies such that teaching, and mentoring are empowered alongside social groups including study, hobbies, and sports interest amongst others. The human capital management in Toyota serves as an example as with its strict regimen, it still holds its employees at heart while succeeding in the market.
3.2 THE PROCESS OF HRM AND HCM IN BMW
According to the authors mentioned in the previous Miciula and Miluniec (2019), the BMW has had a whole transition in terms of their organization approaches and strategies since it was realised that their human resource strategies had a directly proportional impact to their production, the quality of the services they provide, their customer satisfaction as well as the improvements in respect to their product innovation and creativity. The organization went from not paying much importance to their staffs to now looking into how to better treat and train their employees to better address the needs of the present and future while targeting long term goals and commitments. According to Lui et al. (2021) and an internal case study ("Case Study: Human Resource Management at BMW", 2022), depict that the human resource strategies by BMW are as below:
- The first task and strategy of BMW’s human resource management team is the recruitment and selection of the best suitor to the organization’s requirements. This process consists of the team to analyze the open roles, come up with the specific requirements and skill sets while defining the person’s specifications in terms of required education level, knowledge, experience as well as personal attributes. This process is undergone in an orderly sequenced manner such that the current demands may match the organization’s future plans and projects.
- After the initial requirements mapping, the human resources department has to then proceed to the screening of the potential candidates. The company stands by verifying the bio data of all their candidates before any are shortlisted for the next stage. In the screening stage, the human resources department keeps an eye for the process improvement while maintaining consistency into segregating the potential high- and low-level performers from the candidate’s pool.
- To further judge the candidates’ mental and physical capabilities, the human resources department follow the pattern set by the BMW which is interviewing - testing - checking references. The interview process at BMW is conducted by its line of managers where they follow the long discussions and knowledge examination methods to verify if the candidate measures up to their expectations but also to identify any standard of criticism from their side after which they are all scored. During the testing stage, the candidates are examined on their knowledge regarding the products and services as well as their aptitudes and skills. In BMW, the ability test is more favoured than personality tests; hence at the final stage the candidates’ references are checked before a conditional or unconditional offer is made; again, an approach undertaken by the BMW to satisfy the requirements of different teams, projects, and milestones.
As human capital management, according to Watson and Mathew (2021), BMW allocates much importance to the training and development of their employees. All their new recruits have to undergo a training period where the candidates’ personal and professional characteristics are developed, and exposure is provided to the company’s real working environment. The different types of training undertaken by BMW are the:
- Informal training which is provided both on-site and off-sites.
- Products and skills training
- Behavioural development training
- Technical training
The organization provides a stipend to both their existing and new employees during the training and development period. Usually, the training period is quite intensive at BMW as the human resources department want to ensure that the employees have access to the equipment, machines, tools, and resources they will be using for their new tasks. In this process, the managers play an important role in encouraging the employees to drive their confidence and upscaling their skills and endurance to match the new characteristics for the new tasks. Since in the past there have been incidents of health and security issues (Purcell, 2021) in BMW, the organization vouches for their employee’s health and hence also provide training based on Health awareness, security in the workplace and first aid training. From providing exposure to their new employees and providing a platform for them to adapt up to also training their existing workforce into venturing into new skills and undertaking new challenges to always be upfront into their expertise, gathering other skills so they are not out-dates especially with the new technologies and advancements. To further enhance their human capital, the BMW emphasizes on performance management (Walters & Helman, 2020) whereby the top management effectively communicates the company’s goals, objectives and plans across channels such that performance outcomes can be pre-defined and hence the workforce is aware of the performance management. The company stands by the goal of developing a culture where performance standards are maintained and improved in between the management and the workforce. The human resource department at BMW has to also identify issues, queries and complaints at both individual and group levels while understanding and finding solutions to problems and encouraging a nurturing environment with encouraged remunerations, rewards and benefits.
[...]