In such a success company, it owned 334,402 employees till 31st March, 2006. As managing such big group of employees, Matsushita got its own method by keep improving its Human Resource Management.
Personnel Principle
Holding a doctrine of, “Developing People before Making Products” as fundamental, Matsushita extends this idealism into three principles to get along with his employees. Firstly, employees can have the opportunity to take part in company’s management, by aiming at “Customer comes first”. Secondly, under “Merit system”, fair evaluation will be made regardless of their internal dimensions. The last one is “Respecting employees”, since this can create a harmonic atmosphere between them and can help developing a more diverse workforce. As they do not discriminate minorities, i.e. women and disabilities, in which about 1.8 percent of the whole workforce in Matsushita Japan are people of legally mandated. Besides, Matsushita is highly focused on its occupational safety and health, so compare with other companies of the same industry, it results in a relatively better statistics than the others, i.e. fewer industrial accidents.
Matsushita has designed e-Learning intranet based for employees to upgrade themselves online. Besides, by strengthening employees’ management skill, management courses are encouraged to attend. For the overseas managers, they are assigned to attend human resources development courses in Japan, so that wherever Matsushita is located, it is carrying the same principle and methodology when treating their talents.
“Panasonic Spin-up Fund” is a fund established for capable employees to start up a new business, whereas he or she has to remain to be Matsushita employee; until 2003, 19 out of 350 applicants have made good use of his/her talent and run their own businesses successfully.
Hiring and Labour
Here are some general practices that Konosuke Matsushita regards as useful ways to cheer the employees on.
Let every employee know that his or her position is and try to discuss their performance with them is very important. Besides, it is necessary to praise the employees who have good performances and what they gain should be in proportion of what they achieve. If there is any change, employees should be informed earlier so that they can work efficiently. Moreover, let the employees join the decision making and planning can win their loyalty and dependence. And telling them how important they are can let them be responsible. Try to know about the employees’ hobbies or habits because the knowledge about them is your capital. When the company pays attention to the suggestions from the employees, it is easier to find out what the problem is.
Furthermore, it is better to let everybody know what your idea and explain the aim of what you do because no one likes to know nothing. By doing this, they can understand the company more and can do better. Although being an employee, when you have made a mistake, apology is still needed. If you try to shirk your responsibility and shift the blame onto others, your employees may look down on you. When you are going to give negative comment about one employee, it is better to point out his or her strong points and show your intention to help. When an employee is dissatisfied, it is necessary to find out the reason and sooth him or her; otherwise, other employees will be affected.
Finally, long term targets and short term targets should be set up so that everybody can know their advancement. Last but not least, as an employer, it is a must to protect the right of all the employees and protect them.
After doing some research, we found that there are seven ideas from Konosuke Matsushita about hiring talents. They are:
(1)Talents cultivation is the best tool during economy recession.
According to Konosuke Matsushita, there is a great opportunity to cultivate talents during the bad economy. It is because when the economy is declining, goods cannot be sold easily and the loan can hardly be received. It means the company may face difficulties. Doing nothing and wait is not a good way since only a positive attitude can help the company. At that moment, the company should grab the chance to train their employees and improve the system.
(2)Seek for talented employees with 70 marks.
Also from Konosuke Matsushita’s past experiences, higher level of employees does not mean they are good for the company. A normal employee requires less in the company than a high standard employee. It is because he or she can easily feel satisfied and would like to work for the company longer.
In other word, a company should choose a suitable employee with certain level of requirement but not try to find the best of the best. To get an employee with 70 marks is better than one with full marks.
(3)It is best of not hiring friends.
Konosuke Matsushita gives an advice: try not to hire your friends. It is because when you hire your friends, you cannot handle some serious issues seriously. You may need to care about the feelings of your friends. When he or she is against to your decision, the morale will be affected and thus, only when he or she has the sense of being an employee, you can hire him or her; otherwise, just do not let he or she is your employee.
(4)Establish vision and business strategy of enterprise.
To explore employee’s management concepts, one of the most important and fundamental methods is to establish company’s goals and objectives. This goal and objective has to be known and understood by each level within the company, since when everyone are holding the same vision, they can make the most ideal decisions the company desire. To put this into reality, understanding it is not enough, since practicing it is the most important, especially those managers have to do the first step.
(5)Empowerment is necessary for employees.
On the other hand, to encourage employees actively carry their responsibly, which is both fully undertake their jobs and duties and to admit their faults, certain extend of authorities have to be empowered. As carrying more responsibility, higher sense of dutiful will be built. In addition, this method can train every employee to “future managers”, so that they will use the same way to cultivate new generation, instead of just giving and receiving orders without thinking.
(6)It is better not to grab employees from other company.
Konosuke Matsushita claimed that he did not ever head-hunt people from another company, unless those employees held resigned from another company first, then actively applied to him. Although head-hunting may help capturing talent, he feels negative, and those head-hunted employees may not be relied on to him.
(7)Training of talents should focus on independence aspiration.
To build up a remarkable company and independent talents, individual deliberations, strategies planning and execution are dominate. As mentioned above, Matsushita aims to empower authority to employees; he believes this action can further help individual inspiration as well. Instead of giving every single step on problem(s) solving, it is much better by granting just the general concept on solution, since this helps cultivating or strengthening individualism.
Comments and conclusion
For the selection and hiring of employees, it is better to focus on knowledge-based. Seeking for talented employees with 70 marks is a quite special strategy in which it can attract and pick up those workers whom they think and assume to be loyal to the company and assure longer stay in the company. Also, we think that not to grab employees from other company is an outstanding strategy; it can reinforce the morale among employees and bring a positive image to the company. However, we think that not hiring friends might not be a good strategy in the human resources of the company. Although Konosuke Matsuhita claimed that by hiring friends, it might somehow affect the work efficiency of employees. However, the company might not fulfill the equal employment opportunities as might be those friends are of high quality and have the potential. As a result, it will be really a loss of talents to the company. The hiring criteria of the company are better to focus on “KSAOC”. They are namely Knowledge, Skills, Ability and Other Characteristics.
Besides, for the external recruitment in the hiring process, there are advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are there will be large number of talented applicants, so that the company could engage diversity in the management and business. Through diversity, there will be more ideas or creations arise which in turn will facilitate growth in the company. However, there are also several disadvantages. Those disadvantages are that the hiring process will be far more expensive compared to internal recruitment in the company. Besides, the person employed might not be suitable for the company as careless hiring might occur. Also, it takes time for the employed individual to adapt to the company culture, which is the adjustment and productivity period. Besides, it might also de-motivate the existing staff of the company.
Undoubtedly, letting all employees know the mission and vision of the company is good for the company. It is much better to understand the real practice of them and try to achieve in short-term or long-term. To achieve certain goals, empowerment is needed. Higher level of management should build trust to the employees, and by giving them decision making opportunities, the company can identify some core employees from all of them.
In conclusion, it is a good strategy to train or cultivate talents when the economy is experiencing recession. Training is not only focus on the technical skills, it is more important to develop the skills to work both in group and individual. By doing this, the employees can experience different forms of cooperation among them, getting familiar with this mode of working or overcome the difficulties ahead. The main reason is that training and retraining the firm-specific skills all the time is very important, even though if it is not making profit. It is because when the employees always keep their work quality, for one day, the company will definitely have chance to recover and gain after the bad times. Also, it can add as an encouragement and assurance for the employees since it implies that the company will not give up them even if the economic is not well.
References
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsushita_Electric_Industrial_Co.
- http://big5.ce.cn/gate/big5/mba.ce.cn/manager/rlzygl/200612/14/t20061214_9760162.shtml
- http://panasonic.net/eco/rpt/sr04e.pdf
- http://202.43.217.78/babelfish/translate_url_content?lp=zh_zt&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.hroot.com%2farticle%2f.%2fhtml%2f2005-11-18%2f20051118135450.htm
