E1: Accurately describe the responsibilities covered by the human resources function in the business, showing a thorough unde

Interview

Selection interview is well organised in Bridgestone because Bridgestone is one of the best tyre companies in the world and they want to have better staff working for them.  It will be held at convenient time at convenient locations and also it will present to candidates a realistic picture of what the job entails and what working for the organisation would be like.  Bridgestone interview candidates to find our whether they are suitable for the job and the company so they will ask question which are based on candidates’ application forms or CVs to know more details about them and to see their confidence and personality.  In fact most interviews are decided in the first 60 seconds and therefore it is important that candidates give a good first impression at interview.

Organising an interview

An interview in Bridgestone usually takes 30 minutes.  Fist of all, once the candidates come into the room the interviewers may ask who they are briefly.   Then they will start the main part of the interview.  In this part, the interviewers will ask them probing questions based on their application form, CV and personal statement, which are about their experience, qualifications and interests.  After about 10 minutes, Bridgestone use about 5 minutes for candidates to ask any questions so they will find out more information about Bridgestone.  Then Bridgestone will explain what will happen next and they will close the interview tidily.  Afterwards, Bridgestone discusses and assesses the candidates whether they are the right person to employ for in 10 – 15 minutes and then they start to prepare for the next interview.

Appraisal

Candidates can get some benefit from preparing for interview by doing mock interviews in a simulated interview situation.  Through the mock interview, the candidates will know how they need to behave and talk in the interview and success it.   If they can do enough successful mock interviews, they can prepare and plan for a real interview in Bridgestone.

• Own performance – In the interview, the candidates ought to prepare an appraisal form because it may be helpful for them to analyse their own strengths and weaknesses in the interview situation so they can to talk and behave as they should do and they will not miss any important point which they have to show to the interviewers.  When they prepare the appraisal form, the things they should put on the form are eye contact, body language, confidence and answering questions because these are very important for interview performance.  They can appraise their performance into several level such as very good, good, fair, weak and very weak but it is also good to write self assessment.  Self assessment is good to analyse themselves more deeply and it will make their performance improve.

• Legal obligations – Every candidate should be treated fairly and employees have to make a decision without mixing company business and private matters.  Therefore the Equal Opportunities Act is followed carefully for interview to appraise candidates.  It is very important that all candidates have got equal rights when they have interviews.  Employers have to obey these laws and so candidates are protected.

• Ethical responsibilities – Under the law employers appraise the candidates ethically.  They will interview with honesty, objectivity, fairness and confidentially to find the most suitable person to work for Bridgestone.  It is quite important for both employees and employers because they work and spend a long time in the same company and maybe in the same department so they need to be able to work together.

Planning and evaluating interviews

 

If Bridgestone do not plan and structure an interview, they will get negative or bad image from the interview and they may select some unsuitable applicants.  So it is really important to plan seriously for an interview.  Before the interview, Bridgestone should take the following steps to organise a successful interview.

Conducting the interview

If Bridgestone want to interview successfully, they need to achieve the following objectives.

• Find out us much information about candidates’ motives and behaviour to evaluate their personality.

• To look through and check factual information which is already given.

• To give information about the company and job applied for.

 

• To be fair to all candidates and this gives an even better impression of Bridgestone and candidates will notice that they have equal opportunities in interview.

Criteria for evaluating the recruitment process

There are several ways of evaluating the recruitment process.  However, the common and easy way is to look at the recent recruits so that Bridgestone can see whether they are successful in the job that they are doing.  If there are many change in personnel, Bridgestone have to consider and change their recruitment process to keep the recruited person longer in the same job.  Bridgestone also can see whether their recruitment process should be looked at if the productivity drops.

Ethical responsibilities when recruiting

It is important to ensure honesty and integrity between interviewer and interviewee during the recruitment process.  Honesty and objectivity are ethical obligations.

• Honesty – If anything is promised but it is not given, an employee will get angry.  If there are any promises between an employer and an employee, they should fulfill these promises.

• Objectivity – In the recruitment procedure, nobody who knows candidates will be included otherwise they may not select a candidate subjectively.  When Bridgestone select candidates, they will not include any prejudice or preference and they will choose the best candidate for the job objectively.

• Fairness – It is very important that candidates are treated without any discrimination.  As a result of interview, the candidates will fail or succeed but all of them should be told why they fail or succeed and what the standard of selection is or what Bridgestone require them to have to be employees.  They should not choose candidates before interview on personal preference.

• Confidentially – Personal details of candidates are protected by the Data Protection Act.  Candidates are sometimes required to sign an agreement about not disclosing confidential material.

Equal opportunities and discrimination

Bridgestone should create equal opportunities for all candidates to treat them equally without any discrimination.  As candidates are selected, all of them should have equal opportunities and so many local authorities and organizations adopted an Equal Opportunities Policy.  There is still some discrimination for selection and not all candidates are treated equally.  For example, men are still taken into account more than women.  In order to reduce this discrimination and to carry out the Equal Opportunities Act correctly, candidates are protected by some laws.

• Race Relations Act (1976) – This states it is illegal to discriminate anyone on grounds of colour, race or ethnic background, e.g. black people should be able to get the same level of job as white people.

• Sex Discrimination Act (1975) – This states it is illegal to discriminate against anyone on grounds of gender or marital status, e.g. women should be treated the same as men.

• Disability Discrimination Act – This is the law that means disabled people should be treated equally, e.g. disabled people can get the same job position as others.  

• Disabled Persons Act (1958) – If an employer has more than 20 employees, the employer has to employ 3% disabled people so disable people can get more job opportunities

E4:  Explain and identify key aspects of the business’s training and development programme and explain its importance to the performance of the business

Training plays an important part in the competitiveness of a business.  Bridgestone must invest resources in training and development programmes.  Training and development is quite important for employees to keep them safe and increase their effectiveness.  If they are not trained enough and if they need to use some machines they may be hurt.  For certain jobs they need to be trained at a high level to prevent any accidents.  Another reason for training is to make their work more effective and efficient because Bridgestone can save on material costs due to reduced wastage and improved performance.  Also, because Bridgestone wants to produce better products or services in a short time, so training is essential to make employees work quickly but accurately with their high level of knowledge.  Also if they are trained well it is easier for them to achieve promotion.  If employees are trained in Bridgestone, it benefits Bridgestone because training costs less in the long run than recruiting fully trained workers externally.  Thus, if employees are trained, their skill will develop and they can work better to meet Bridgestone’s objectives and therefore make the business run better as well.  Training provides staff with personal development through increased employability or a sense of pride in a new skill and therefore increased job satisfaction.  

Bridgestone expects employees to take some responsibility for their performance.  They may be asked to identify the strength and weaknesses of employees while carrying out reviews or appraisals or suggest training or development which will help them to carry out their jobs better or increase their value to Bridgestone.

In Bridgestone, as they manufacture tyres, lots of employees have to be trained and developed for manufacturing, research and development.  Another reason that they need to be trained is that they use so many machines and chemicals, they require advanced skills to carry out these processes and prevent any danger.  More training and development is required in the technology departments and factories to produce tyres and other products.

Induction programme

Most new employees will get an induction or training programme designed to introduce them to the working practices of the business.  This programme may include health and safety procedures, how to report accidents, where every facility is located.  The reason for doing this as soon as employees start working is to let them know where or who every thing and everyone is so they can work better and they will feel more confident in their work and also be protected from any danger.  Some induction training will be done away from the work place and some will be done by experienced employees.  Induction at Bridgestone will normally take a few days at the beginning of employment and again a few months later.  Induction needs to cover health and safety and the organisation itself and they will be given some written material about their company which informs them about company objectives, pay, holiday and other information.  Employees are able to ask questions if they would like to know something they have not yet been told.

Mentoring

When new staff join Bridgestone or existing staff change roles, they do not know a lot and do not have confidence in their new situation.  They are therefore allocated an experienced employee who acts as a critical friend and guide.  It can be formal or informal and this depends on each individual.  However, it is actually useful if the mentor can help them discuss problems that may occur and how best to solve them to speed up development.  If they have a mentor, they will give encouragement and practical advice.  It is important to listen to what mentors say because the relationship is quite complex but the employees should consider their own views.  Mentoring is a good tool in Bridgestone’s training programme.

Coaching

This is a similar role to that of a mentor and is based on the principles used in sport.  Coaching involves providing individuals with personal coaches in the workplace.  Employees who have already got some skills and expertise need to help people who have got no or less experience to do their job much better.  As Bridgestone uses many chemicals to produce tyres, coaching is essential to avoid any accidents which might happen. This will benefit not only the person being coached but also the coach as he/she will further develop.  Bridgestone asks a coach to set increasingly difficult tasks for the new person which means Bridgestone expects people to become more experienced and skilled in their job roles.

Apprenticeships

A range of apprenticeships were provided in the past but many of them no longer exist.  Apprenticeships are set up for young people to learn in the workplace.  However, it is actually time consuming for both the person who is teaching and the apprentice who is learning so many businesses have stopped doing apprenticeships.  Instead, they provide training on the job and with day release at a local college.

In-house training and external training

If an organisation has their own training department, it will use in-house training, but sometimes employees have to go outside to be trained and this is external training.  Usually in-house training can take place on the job or off the job with in the company but external training always takes place off the job.  These different types of training usually depend on what sorts of skills and knowledge the employers require and employees needs to improve them and develop their performance.

• On the job training – This occurs when employees are trained during their working time and it is often at their place of work.  Observing, or learning by watching others, mentoring, and coaching are parts of on the job training in Bridgestone.  However training is not only for new employees or trainees as Bridgestone provide other kinds of on the job training.  One of the training programmes in Bridgestone is secondment or attachment.  Bridgestone sends employees who want to improve their skills to other departments or they give employees the opportunity to learn other skills.  This training is very useful to improve their awareness and understanding of other departments’ work and its problems.  Bridgestone also provides action learning training.  Sometimes employees are asked to work outside their department or even Bridgestone because this provides different kinds of experience that they may not have in Bridgestone.

• Off job training – This happens when employees receive instruction away from their workplace.  This can be done either internally within the company or externally using outside trainers.  Bridgestone does both types of training and they offer a great deal of internal off the job training.  Bridgestone provide off job training in house because some of the skills taught during this training will meet the specific needs of both Bridgestone and the individual concerned.  It is also cheaper to do in house training than go to an external place for training.  Bridgestone has several of their own training facilities for employees so many people who have just been employed or transferred are sent to these places to provide them with many experiences.  Bridgestone organise these training facilities because it has some advantages such as provision of an outside perspective, and credibility based on experience and knowledge.  Bridgestone also try to send employees, especially people in overseas department, to a branch in other countries to develop their communication skills between countries and bring back some ideas to Japan.

Training provided in Bridgestone benefits employees because they can improve their knowledge and skills and these improved skills can be transferable to different types of jobs.  Also training will give more opportunities for them to be more successful.  As well as training benefitting employees, it also benefits employers because training makes employees improve and it means that Bridgestone can improve the quality of their products and reduce waste resource, money, accident and time.  By saving these, Bridgestone have more opportunity to increase their output, sales revenue and profits.  Also they will have a better relationship with their customers.

E5:  Explain the purpose of performance management and describe how the business’s approach may be influenced by motivational theory

The success and failure of Bridgestone depends on the performance of its human resources.  Most employees will have the opportunity to be in contact with customers and they will make decisions for themselves and will not wait for an executive to tell them what to do.  So it is important to have employees who can work positively and who will be a strong workforce to help Bridgestone to meet their objectives.  Therefore Bridgestone need to develop systems and methods of performance management to ensure an effective workforce.

Performance reviews (including appears)

Each employee in Bridgestone works to meet the company’s objectives so Bridgestone need to set mission statements that employees are able to follow.  Then they create objectives in each department based on this mission statement.  The success of Bridgestone can be seen by monitoring and evaluating performance of individual members in each department.  

The Bridgestone philosophy is based on management deciding how to run the business and then following this business vision. Each division decides the policy in the division and yearly policy.  From these, each department decides an operational plan and all of these aims are presented to members of staff.  This is shown in the following diagram.

( from Heinemann AVCE Business)

Bridgestone’s basic policy is:

• Strategic development with better quality

• Make the most of environmental change into business opportunities

• Globalizing their management

A performance management system

Performance management is to operate employees to work in the right way to meet their objectives.  It is important to manage all works carried out in Bridgestone and encourage employees to do their jobs to be successful.  As Bridgestone wish to have a successful business, it is important to include the following in their performance management.

• A statement outlining the organisation’s value

• A statement of the organisation’s objectives

• Individual objectives

• Regular performance reviews throughout the year

• Performance related pay

• Training and counselling

Bridgestone decided individual performance will be judged against its standard.  By judging the performance achieved at each stage and establishing the reward system, it has enabled Bridgestone to achieve their company objectives better.  Performance appraisal is a process of evaluating performance systematically and of providing feedback on which performance adjustments can be made.  If their actual performance is taken from their desired performance they can find out if there is a need for action so they will know what they should do next.  Bridgestone uses performance appraisal to define a specific job standard against which performance is measured and it is possible to measure accuracy of past job performance.  Also it is possible to justify individual rewards so they can discriminate between high and low performance.  Another reason is to give each employee the experience they will need for their development.  Therefore employees can improve their job performance and prepare for future responsibilities.  The following things are common stages of staff appraisal in Bridgestone.

• The line manager meets with the employee to discuss what is expected and the expectation is agreed. It will be expressed as targets, performance standards or required job behaviours.

• The outcome of the meeting is recorded and signed by both parties.

• The employee performs his job for a period of six months or one year.

• At the end of the period, the employee and the line manager meet to review and discuss progress.  They will set new action plans to deal with any problems and agree targets and standards for the next period.

Self evaluation

This is one of the most important parts of performance management at Bridgestone’s.  Employees evaluate themselves individually and Bridgestone encourage them to set up their own goals which should meet Bridgestone objectives.  It benefits as employees have responsibility for their individual work.  It will be good motivation for them to work better.  As they evaluate themselves, they will have a better understanding of their working area and job than an external appraiser.  Also it costs a lot to have external evaluators, so self evaluation will reduce costs.  In addition, self evaluation will tell them clearly what they are doing so they will be able to develop even faster.

Peer evaluation

Employees at Bridgestone work as a part of a co-operative team or quality circle.  Therefore it is quite useful to use peer evaluation to see how many of the team members are taking part in the work of the team.  It is effective to take a collaborative approach to work and they will find out how they can help each other to improve team performance in peer evaluation.  In the team, they should respect and trust each other and they have to be honest.  Also they should not forget to value each other’s contribution and listen to each other.  They always have freedom to challenge, but they should not interrupt each other.  They should use these skills to be successful at peer evaluation.

Peer evaluation is positive but, unfortunately, there are also some disadvantages.  It often results in low levels of criticism so performance cannot be judged fairly.  In addition, people who are criticized can create a defensive position against Bridgestone and not see things from the organization’s side.

In Bridgestone, when carrying out business, it is certainly important to clarify the purpose and targets.  Bridgestone management must come up with a business plan every fiscal year, and a strategy and tactics to enforce this management policy.  Also each section decides upon an individual enforcement plan based on the management plan.

Measuring individual and group output / productivity

In Bridgestone, individual behaviours are appraised and rewarded.  These behaviours can be measured in 3 ways:

• Behaviour scales – These describe a range of behaviours, and supervisors who carry out an appraisal are asked to show the most accurate behaviour on a specially designed form.  This is Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS).  These statements are used to create scales and they are tested to make sure they are accurate.

• Job evaluation – It is the process of the organisation to assess each job in relation to another.  This evaluation affects payment for a job.

• Merit rating – If an individual has developed their skill level and performance they may get increased pay or bonuses.  Job evaluation sets the pay bands and Merit rating sets the individual positions in a band and these are; starter which is the degree of efficiency expected from a learner, qualified which is able to perform the basic job, experienced which is able to respond to any situations and superior which is ready for promotion and equivalent to the next grade.  This will assess factors such as volume and quality of output, initiative, adaptability, attendance and punctually, against the assessment done by managers, every year.  However there are some disadvantages, trade unions view this as subjective and open to favouritism and it is not popular.

Performance related pay (PRP)

This is a method of deciding a Bridgestone employee’s progress through their salary bands.  In a merit scheme, employees are rewarded as managers assess their personal characteristics from a subjective point of view.  But in the PRP scheme, performance or competence are used for deciding the size of the increase and so the rate of progress through a salary band.  Therefore the PRP approach is not based on someone’s subjective views but on an agreed objectives philosophy, which include;

• The key result areas of the job

• Clear standards of performance and target levels of competence

• Regular, objective reviews of performance and competence

As a result of assessment by PRP, a manager at Bridgestone may assess employees us outstanding, superior, standard or developing.  If employees have achieved a good assessment their percentage of pay will increase and it will be influenced by;

• The typical rate of pay for employees in Bridgestone at a particular time

• The financial state of Bridgestone

• The present position of the employee in the salary band

• Company policy of speed of progress through the salary band

Linking performance reviews and evaluations to training and development

All these appraisals have some relation to training and development.  In Bridgestone, to make better tyres it is important to train and develop employees to perform better.  Also if employees are appraised, they can communicate with employers about their personal development through appraisal or merit rating schemes.  Therefore training and development, and performance support each other to improve the business.

Legislation affecting performance

At Bridgestone, there are some laws which affect the performance of their staff.

• Maximum hours legislation – The working hours defined as the minimum standard by Labor Standard Law are called statutory working hour. (The working hours decided by labor agreement or work rules are called regular work hours).  Therefore Bridgestone cannot expect their employees to work more than 40 hours in the work.

• Leave agreements (including maternity and paternity leave) – Workers have the right to be paid maternity and paternity leave after a period of six months.

• Minimum wage legislation – There is a Minimum Wage Law in Japan which Bridgestone have to abide by.

There are some different types of motivation theories to be used in performance and management.  Motivation theories are useful to analyse employees’ needs and how they are satisfied and therefore encourage them to work better and improve themselves in Bridgestone.  Also it is helpful to use these theories to know employees’ personality to evaluate their performance.

Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’

This is based on meeting people’s needs in the work place.  Maslow showed that people’s needs can be shown hierarchically.

• Basic needs – These are things essential for people to live and survive like reasonable standard of food, water, place to live and clothing.  In Bridgestone, as people work, they receive a wage or salary to meet there.

• Security needs – This is concerned with self protection from anything harmful.  In work place, people should be protected.  It includes physical safety, security of employment, adequate rest periods, pension and sickness schemes.  Bridgestone provide health and safety because they often use chemicals to produce tyres so sometimes it is very dangerous.  Also they do not want any accident in the company so they protect employees by giving training.

• Group needs – Most people like to be in groups.  As Bridgestone grows, individuals may lose their identity so like to work with a partner, team or group.  The factory in Bridgestone has an assembly line so they need strong teamwork.

• Self esteem needs – This is based on an individual’s desire for self respect and that of others.  Employees should be individuals and they need to ensure that they are important so it is important to see their achievements.  Bridgestone try to reward individuals as much as they can to encourage them to work and take individual responsibilities.

• Self actualisation needs – This is concerned with an individual’s personal development and creativity to achieve their full potential.  To meet these needs in their work, workers at Bridgestone need to have opportunities to use their creative talents and abilities fully.  Bridgestone provide everyone with opportunities to use their ideas even if they are not at a high level so they can carry out their job with more confidence and responsibility.

Douglas McGregor’s ‘Theory X and Theory Y’

In this theory, McGregor showed that there are basically two types of managers and both of them have different views on workers.

• Theory X – Manager believes people do not like working and they want to escape from work as much as possible so they do minimum work only to earn money.  They are also selfish and ignore the organisation’s needs.  When they work, they usually do not take responsibility and have to ambition so they should be controlled and directed by managers to work to meet the organisation’s objectives.

• Theory Y – They believe employees enjoy their work.  They work hard to meet objectives and they take responsibility for their job.  Workers can be creative and they can apply their knowledge but it all depends on how they are managed.

When people work, it is important to think about earning money from their job to make a living.  Bridgestone expect their employees to enjoy their work because they think enjoying work will lead to better profits for their business.

David McClelland’s needs theory

McClelland was more concerned about the differences between individuals than understanding common factors in motivation.  He looked at three different needs and these needs influence the behaviour of individuals.

• The need for achievement – All employees want to achieve job satisfaction.  However this motivation is different for everyone and if their motivation level is high, they are usually interested in their individual improvement.  Therefore they wish to do everything themselves and also they prefer to take some risks.  Also they usually like to have feedback for the work that they have done.

• The need for power – When people have strong motivation or power, they prefer controlling somebody to being told by someone else and they have strong feelings to be a strong worker in Bridgestone.

• The needs for affiliation or belonging – Some people are very positive and like to make relationships with others but others are not.  When employees have strong motivation about this, they want to be evaluated well and they want others to like them.  Therefore when they feel tense, they become easily upset

If these needs are satisfied at a high level, Bridgestone is more likely to succeed.

 

E6:  Explore one human resources function in depth, giving effective examples of how the work is carried out and how its contribution to the activities of the business is evaluated

I am going to look at in depth training and development which is one of the human resources functions.  Carrying out training and development for employees is very important to improve Bridgestone’s business and to be successful.  When they manufacture tyres, they are trying to be environmentally friendly as well as make a profit.  Therefore, as well as training the workforce to do their job well, they are also training them to be environmentally friendly.

Basic view on personal training

Bridgestone wants their employees to work in a positive way and they try to provide the best working environment so that their employees can do their job well.  Consequently they tend to evaluate not only the results but also the processes which lead to the final results.  Bridgestone lay out clearly the profile and characteristics they require of employees so employees know what the company requires of them.  The profile of employees that Bridgestone require includes:

• People with a global mind – When employees in Bridgestone carry out their job, they usually need to be aware not only of Japan but also of other countries in the world even if they do not work in overseas factories.  Bridgestone prefer people who can think widely and who can work steadily.  Bridgestone want employees to think globally while they act locally.

• People who enjoy a challenge and work with a positive attitude – Bridgestone started to produce other diversified products other than tyres to sell globally, but this can be achieved only when each employee is trained to do this.  Therefore they want people who can have an open mind to their job because they think these people can expand their working field.

• People who show initiative– It is important to analyse the labour market and customers’ needs and to improve technology and develop sales strategies.  To achieve Bridgestone’s philosophy, which is to produce a better quality of products, each employee needs to have good ideas and to pay attention to any problems that Bridgestone is facing.

• Personnel evaluation system – Bridgestone evaluate people based on their track record basically.  Therefore Bridgestone produces better conditions for their employees to work in and do their job in a positive way.  Bridgestone judges their work results and output fairly and these results will affect their treatment.  This will encourage employees to work and develop better.

( From Bridgestone’s leaflet)

I show the personnel training cycle in Bridgestone as a diagram above.  Bridgestone wants to find value and capabilities in each employee and Bridgestone want them to use their knowledge in their job.  So they train employees to improve their ability and find out what ability each of them has.  Then Bridgestone send them to different departments which should be suitable for each of them.  Hence their ability will be used fully in their working position.  Bridgestone watch them and their job performance carefully and they tend to give promotion to these who have benefited from the training.  Once employees are given some jobs they can see the objectives or targets to achieve their job and for the business to run successfully.  Their hard work will affect results and their achievements are evaluated in Bridgestone.  Good appraisal will give employees a more confidence and therefore they will wish to have more training at a higher level to gain a better position and to be more involved in Bridgestone.  This personnel training cycle in Bridgestone is successful as it encourages employees to be more successful.

Training system 

It is important for employees to feel challenged in their jobs so Bridgestone provides a variety of training systems so that employees can take part in business more.  

• New employee training – Basically all new employees need to have foundation training to know more about Bridgestone: the company structure, the factory and the market and it usually takes 2 months from June to August.  First of all, they study the basics of the company philosophy and the general conditions of each section in the company for 2 weeks so they will get to know business manners and attitudes.  Secondly, they have a 1 month workshop in a factory to experience manufacturing products and working on the shop floor.  They will be sent as a trainee to one of the shops to learn how to sell products and communicate with customers.  After this training has finished, they will be sent to each department and finally they will have more specific training for the job they are going to do.

• Personnel changes – Personnel rotation is usually performed about every three or four years.  After people have enough experience and ability in one job, Bridgestone wants them to work at a higher level in order to qualify for promotion.  Like all new employees they will have specific training in their new department for their new position.  When employees undertake personnel rotation, they might just change their job to a higher level in the same department.  However, because there are four factories and the Head Office in Japan, they might be transferred from Head Office to one of the branches as a manager or to different job role.  A job in a different location gives them a variety of experiences therefore builds confidence.  They may be placed at a higher level and this means they have more chance to go overseas to understand and work in other countries.  When they are transferred to other factories they have the chance to produce other diversified products.  This means they are able to use their technology skills and knowledge.

• Instructor system – After assignment, people who have already got enough skills in the same department as a new employee will become an instructor and they perform OJT, based on a training plan.  Usually one instructor will train a new employee but depending on the training, sometimes new employees will be trained by someone in a different department.  If they are new employees, the instructors usually need to teach them for a year but if they are transferred employees, they usually have an instructor for 3 months.  There are responsibilities for instructors to bring on new or transferred employees to be able to work taking more responsibility.  Bridgestone organise a lot of off the job training because they think that there are so many things that they can learn outside the company.  So Employees have instructors and also other people who are specialized for a particular thing will train them while attending off job training in the Training Center which Bridgestone owns.

• Training in each job – In addition to the training which is sponsored by the Human Resource Department, there is training in each department to master the skills and knowledge for a particular job e.g. manufacturing technique, research and development, safety, accident prevention, quality, environment etc.  This training is so important because once they start their job in a department they will require knowledge for that particular job in order to bring some ideas to Bridgestone.  

• Job execution strengthening training – Bridgestone provides a training program which makes job execution stronger and this is for people who have been working more than 2 years.  Employees are given training in logical thinking, logical communication, financial basic training and leadership training to improve their knowledge and skills.  This training will allow them opportunity to gain promotion.  If they have this training, they will be able to think how they can develop or improve products and run the business more logically and this allows them to work more efficiently.  Also they may develop their communication skills which would improve communication with customers.  When they to move on a higher position, they need leadership so people working with them will have confidence in their abilities.

• External training – In order to learn to communicate outside the company and adopt different ways of thinking and points of view, employees who want to be a director or a manager are sent on external training courses so employees can learn how to carry out and organise jobs.  There are two different types of external training.  One is organised by the Human Resources Department.  In these courses Bridgestone aims for employees to gain more knowledge to think like a manager and also to understand and bring knowledge used in one department into another.  This course is separated into 10 parts.  Employees are usually sent to JMA, GLOBIS, Business Research Institute and CELM, which are all large scale business training centre in Japan.  Other external training courses are organised by each department.  Bridgestone aims for employees to understand the basic tools and the relationship between different jobs, which is separated into 6 parts.  Bridgestone usually send employees to JMA and Recruit Insight Learning, which are also external training centre in Japan.  They will be also sent to the Business Efficiency University.

• Self-education correspondence course – Bridgestone provides correspondence courses to support the self-education of employees.  Employees can study a wide range of subjects which they will need in Bridgestone such as management, language etc.  Course fees are subsidized partly or in whole by the company.  This is off job training which they can learn at home and they do not need any other facilities.  It is very useful training especially when they want to improve their knowledge but do not have enough time to have training in other facilities.  They are able to study when they have time and because time and training is not restricted, this training does not put so much pressure on them.

• Language training – This is English language training for employees who need English for their jobs or for overseas business trips and who will require language skills later.  People who leave for a new post overseas have to take language training such as English, Chinese, Spanish etc. for about 30 to 50 hours before leaving Japan.  English is the most popular language in the world so it is important to train employees to be able to speak English as Bridgestone want to work globally.  

• Overseas training system – The aim is to give people the experience of working overseas and to bring back to the company in Japan their expertise and experience.  At the moment employees who have worked more than 3 years are seconded to overseas offices especially in the USA and EU for 2 years.  Around 25 young employees have already taken up such positions.  Bridgestone has already expanded globally although they want to expand more.  At the moment Bridgestone has 135 factories in the world and 83 of these factories are in overseas.  Therefore there are a lot of opportunities for employees to communicate with overseas factories and so it is important to learn and improve their language skill.  Also there might be a slight difference between products so they have to learn these differences.  In overseas training, employees will see the difference between countries and so they will obtain some ideas about how they can improve products and develop their technology.

Furthermore, a 'personnel training college' which includes various types of training, was established in 2003 to provide opportunities to highly motivated employees.   This personal training college aims to further develop employees not only through jobs but through more training.  Also it is good to improve people so they become a strong work force for Bridgestone and reinforce the organisation.  The main forms of training in the college are;

• Role enhancement training – Management and a leadership strengthening program, business Strategy and finance lecture

• Job execution training – Logical thinking through lectures， negotiation skills and Finance lecture

• Self development support – Business management, Self-education   

There is also training related to the environment.  Manufacturing tyres actually damages the environment because the process uses many chemicals and machines.  However Bridgestone try to protect the environment and to produce tyres which are environmentally friendly.  In Bridgestone, all employees have to do some training in the environment department.  Training is divided into two sections and one is for everyone and one is for people who work in the environment department.  

One aspect of training for everyone is to study environmental protection that Bridgestone carries out.  Everyone receives this training when they are first employed.  The other one is more specific and there are three different types of training which are carried out for three different types of people.  One is for people in a managerial or directorial position in the environment department and this training is carried out every time the person in this position changes.  Another is for the ISO 14001 internal environment inspectors and this is carried out once or twice a year.  In this training they learn about the environmental management system inspection.  The other is for a manager of facilities for environment refinement and this is carried out only once a year.  They learn about a system which can avoid dust pollution and how to protect the environment by giving lectures and practical training sessions.  Following this, trained personnel look at the environment facilities in each factory and are required to report back on these.  Bridgestone encourages employees to take a qualification to protect the environment.

Expense and time concerning personnel training

Talented people are essential for Bridgestone’s existence. Bridgestone wants them to develop not only through their job but also through education and training to encourage them to be an essential part of the Bridgestone team.  Therefore Bridgestone organises many training systems and this means that Bridgestone spends a lot of time and money on training employees.  However, this time and money must be efficiently spent.  Bridgestone thinks that a rise in skill levels of its employees contributes to the growth of the company as a whole.  Bridgestone thinks that training which results in the greatest good for the minimum expense is efficient and advanced.

C1:  Analyse relevant labour market and internal staffing information to create a plan for human resources within the business

Bridgestone need to increase the number of employees to expand their business globally.  Bridgestone are increasing the numbers of factories in Japan and also in other countries.  Therefore they actually need more employees.  However, they wish to reduce their labour costs so it is, in fact, difficult to employ a lot of people as fulltime staff.  So I think they should employ more people part time or on temporary contracts.  Bridgestone should reduce the rate of employees in each department and ask them to work more efficiently and transfer some of them to new sites and employ new people as well.

As the composition of the labour force has changed, the workforce that is required in Bridgestone has become more flexible.  A flexible workforce can adapt more easily to new products and methods of working.  To achieve flexibility, their workforce is usually divided into core, periphery and external groups.

• Core workers – these are full time employees who have skills in a variety of tasks.  They usually get a good salary and working conditions and a high level of job security.  Bridgestone can pay these higher salaries to them by reducing full time workers and employing peripheral workers.

• Peripheral workers – these are temporary or part time workers and they receive less salary than core workers and also their working conditions are not as good.  Other benefits are not as good as core workers.

• External workers – these people are not employed by Bridgestone directly.  They normally carry out non core functions like catering, cleaning, and computer or machine maintenance etc.

Bridgestone has found different ways to achieve this workforce flexibility

• New contractual arrangements – As jobs have changed, contracts of employment also have changed and more employees are now on short term contracts.  If Bridgestone use their employees flexibly, they may be required to work in the middle of the day more than in the morning or evening which is not as busy as during the day.  This reduces the costs for Bridgestone and it has some benefits for employees because if they have young families or elderly parents, they can spend some time with them.  

• Teleworking – As technology has developed it is now possible for people to work at home for the organisation unless they work to create product in the factory using machines or special computers.  Nowadays many people have computers and faxes and so they can send e-mails or faxes and reports.  However if there are any problems in the organisation and if they are at home they cannot see what has happened or what is wrong so they sometimes cannot provide a solution to the problem.

• Flexitime – This is when employees need to work a number of hours in a week which is decided by Bridgestone.  Workers are asked to work from 10:00 am to 15:00 as these are core hours.  However this gives employees some opportunity to choose their working time within limits.  Flexitime may be good for employees because some like to start working early and finish early but others may like to start working late and finish late.  

• Shift work – The company uses shift work where workers carry out their jobs with different groups of people in rotation.  This is a good idea in manufacturing because Bridgestone uses a lot of machinery and an assembly line, so do not need a lot of people at one time.  If employees are divided into several groups, they work the same amount of time but the organisation can carry on production for longer times and this means they are able to produce more products.  If a group of employees work during the night, they may get additional payment.

• Job sharing – A job for a core worker is divided into two or more parts for two part time workers but this could lead to lack of continuity in the job.  If employees who are sharing a job and do not communicate with each other a task may not be completed.  This will be just waste of time and money because someone needs to repeat the same job again.

The ratio of different type of workers in a Bridgestone factory

The ratio of core time and flextime

Flextime in Bridgestone is specified in a labour agreement and an operation rule and also it is prescribed clearly by the unions and the company.  Bridgestone sets core time between 10:00 and 15:00 (12:00 – 13:00 is break time) in each factory and office.  Bridgestone decide how many hours each employee has to work in a month.  Therefore if the amount of working time is more than core working time, employees can decide when they want to work the rest of the time.  So they might start working early or finish working late.  Flextime is available only for regular staff and this means about 40 % of regular staff have adopted the flextime system and this is approximately 10 % of all employees.  Bridgestone has about 12,000 regular staff so 4,800 workers are flextime workers.

                

Recruitment

Bridgestone recruit people twice a year for people working in the main office, which is usually March and August.  However the recruitment for factories is different slightly.  Each factory need to recruit for three different types of job.  One is the recruitment in March for people as regular staff or direct workers.  Another one is also done in March for women who work in the office as regular staff.  The other one is recruitment during the year for direct workers but it is only part time work.  The part time recruitment will be done only when Bridgestone think that more workers are needed.

Working condition differences

As my chosen company Bridgestone is based in Japan, the way of thinking about the workforce and its legislation is slightly different.  I will show some basic differences about labour conditions between Japan and Western countries.  

As I have shown above, Japanese employees prefer working in one place permanently because they want to have a stable job as they understand it is difficult to get another job once they resign from their job.  They also know it is difficult to make a living if they do not have a stable job.  However, nowadays the treatment of part time or temporary job employees is getting better.  They can have better rights such as sickness and pension rights and maternity and holiday pay.  

Change in ways of employment

10 years ago the economic bubble burst.  Employment in Japan has changed greatly, especially for young people.  They have become free-lance workers and therefore the employment of foreign people in temporary jobs has increased.  Also many companies have reduced the employment of regular staff and employ more part time workers.  In the past, when people are employed on a part time job, if they could work well the company would employ them as regular staff later.  But this has been changed and a lot of employment depends on the economic situation.  The economy in Japan has changed and Japan has developed.  The labour market has changed and this has influenced human resources in Bridgestone.   Japan’s economy is not strong at the moment.  A great many companies are going bankrupt and restructuring is taking place.  In such a situation, it is quite important to have a flexible workforce instead of just having core workers in the organisation because it is cheaper to employ a part-time person rather than full time staff.  

In Japan, as I already said, the economy is not good and therefore after people graduate from universities or college, it is hard for them to get a job.  Although there is a declining birth rate in Japan, there are more people who cannot get jobs.  These people have several part-time jobs to make a living.  However, from now on, many people will be forced to retire and Bridgestone is worried about a decline in their workforce because they know skilled people are a big part of their workforce and if they employ new people there is not enough skilled people who can do the job properly.

Japan is one of the developed countries so it is possible to employ cheaply someone from a developing country.  It causes problems for young people who cannot get a proper job or cannot stay in one job and this leads to the problem of no pension which has become a big social problem.  Therefore it is important to encourage young people to work positively to be a strong workforce in their job.

Many businesses are becoming globalised.  Business globalisation is good to be more successful.  However if Bridgestone want to work internationally, because Japan is not an English speaking country, employees have to be trained or Bridgestone have to employ people who can speak English.  The need for English is increasing in companies and the need for English teaching has also become better.  It is very important to be able to contact companies in English if they expand overseas and employ foreign people to work together.  It may be necessary to employ foreign people overseas because the Japanese culture might be different from other countries so they might need some local knowledge.

Number of employees in Bridgestone

This shows the change in the number of employees in Bridgestone from 2000 to 2004.  This includes all kinds of employees such as core workers, part time workers and temporary workers.  Every year the number of employees increases because technology has developed so more people are needed to operate machines and to make tyres to be more environmentally friendly.  Also the number of factories is increased as they start to produce diversified products so more people should be employed to run the business better.

There are so many people in Bridgestone as they are world wide and one of the biggest tyre companies in the world.  There are 9 tyre plants in Japan and 11 in other countries.  Also there are 43 plants for diversified products in Japan and 16 in other countries.  It is difficult to look at the workforce overall in Bridgestone so I looked at one of the tyre companies in Japan and this is not so much different from others.

Type of employees

People who manage the factory usually work as regular staff but otherwise employees are not necessarily regular staff.  However when they manufacture particular products a lot of people are employed as part time or temporary workers because it will be cheaper to pay them than employing everyone as regular staff.

Bridgestone staff changes in a Factory

There are few temporary employees and this does not change a lot.  Part time employees are always about 100 people but this number can either increase or decrease.  When I looked at Contracted employees and Regular staff, up to the middle of 2003, there are more regular staff than contracted people.  After 2003 more people become contracted employees and this is because Bridgestone want to reduce excessive costs.  The number of regular staff suddenly decrease between January and March in 2005 but the total number of employees in a factory in Bridgestone is increasing over this 3years.  This is because Bridgestone have new departments and also they are trying to be more environmentally friendly so new technology may be used.  This means more people are needed to use new technology.  Another reason is that Bridgestone always aims to sell more of their tyres and so if they want to produce more tyres, more employees are essential.

Part time job:  enrollment, new employment, withdrawal

Part time employees are increasing every month, but new people may only be employed as replacement for people who leave because there is not much difference in the numbers of leaving and new employment.  I think some of employees who were regular staff changed to part time job as I can see the number of part time workers increased more than new employment.

The change of direct staff: enrolling, entering, leaving

Indirect staff increased more than direct staff.  When I look at these two diagrams, I can see there are more recruitments than retirements or staff leaving.  For direct staff, there are about twice the number of recruitments or transfers in a year even if as many people do not leave Bridgestone. However lifetime employment is expected in Japan so there are not a lot of people leaving unless they retire.

It is actually still important to have full time employees because these people are trained and have better skills.  They can develop over the long term and this means the business can run more successfully.  However Bridgestone want to use money effectively to produce better product by reducing excessive labour costs.  It is necessary to think about workforce flexibility.  A flexible workforce and short term contracts both have some advantages and actually it is possible to reduce excessive labour costs.  If I look at the organisation structure in Bridgestone there are so many departments and divisions and all of these have to contact each other.  In addition, these are divided into several factories so that it is really difficult to have much flexibility.  

To develop employees and expand their business, Bridgestone changed their organisational structure.  They established more variety of departments and therefore Bridgestone needs more workers in the company.  This means Bridgestone have to pay more to the employees so they now like to have flexible employees as these employees cost less.

C2:  Analyse the key recruitment documents and evaluate the quality of information in relation to the purpose of each

There are different types of recruitment documents which are essential for employers to use to secure the right person for Bridgestone.  The following documents are usually used for recruitment.

• Job description
• Person specification
• Advertisement
• Job application form
• Curriculum Vitae (CV)
• Application letter

Depending on those documents, employees are offered positions therefore Bridgestone need to prepare good documents and candidates have to write and make themselves appeal to Bridgestone.  When Bridgestone recruit people there are only a few vacancies but because Bridgestone is an international company and one of the most famous companies in Japan, the numbers of applicants is high.  Therefore preparing good recruitment documents is essential for applicants and also for Bridgestone to carry out the right selection process.

Job description

There are job descriptions for every job role which analyses the content of a job and the working conditions.  This gives the Human Resources Department a clear view of each job so it is easy to inform applicants about a job.  Job and working conditions might change as technology has developed and Bridgestone expand their company so every time when something has changed the job description will be changed.  Bridgestone include skills, duties and responsibilities in the job description because Bridgestone want the best candidates to perform well in their job.  A job description is essential to give some idea of each job to applicants and to have good applicants who meet Bridgestone’s requirements.  Also it is important for applicants to have a clearly analysed and well informed job description to get a good understanding of the job in Bridgestone.  It will be helpful to give an idea of each job role because Bridgestone has a leaflet and this tells what Bridgestone does but not what each job consists of in the company.  Also when people apply for this job, they do not just think if they like the type of job but they also think about the working conditions, salary and other benefits.  Therefore a job description will be the basic information needed to apply for a job.

This job description provided by Bridgestone is simplified information of a job so it is easy for people to understand their job.  However because Bridgestone has many factories and branch office, Bridgestone should show where people who apply for a job would be located and if there is any possibility of transferring to another office.  Bridgestone would be better to mention about it because sometimes they prefer not to be transferred to another location.  Also Bridgestone can show holidays which applicants have approximately through a year.  When Bridgestone describe a job, it might be clearer to see to a list of tasks they are required to do in that role.

Person specification

This describes skills, qualifications, abilities and personal qualities needed to perform a certain job as described in the job description.  Bridgestone has a person specification to see whether applicants satisfy everything that Bridgestone requires for them.  Bridgestone can set this as foundation to select candidates so it will be easier to select candidates rather than just comparing qualifications from many applicants.  If Bridgestone use a person specification for selection, it will be easy to compare each applicant’s ability for a job and it will reduce the time to select candidates.  A person specification is usually created from a job description because Bridgestone may need some particular skills or qualifications for a job.  This is a necessary document if Bridgestone has a lot of applicants for a job and only a few can be employed because Bridgestone must carefully select the right person for the job.

This person specification is very clear what Bridgestone employer desire for applicants to be and it is good to look at personal details, qualifications and skills, training and experience separately.  However if they just list what Bridgestone require, when analysing applicants they have to comment on each of those listed in person specification and comment will be different for all applicants so it may be difficult to compare who is better than others.  Therefore it would be better to make a table and give a choice of 1(strong agree) to 5(strong disagree) on a check list on applicants and so Bridgestone can compare and select better applicants.

Advertisement

Recruitment advertisements should not be complicated but they need to be informative.  Bridgestone advertise on the internet or in Job Centres but not in local papers and magazines because they do not usually recruit many people at one time.  Bridgestone is a popular company where a lot of people want to work so they think if they advertise in local papers or magazines they might get too many applicants.  Bridgestone is able to get numbers of applicants without advertising because they are so popular for people who are looking for a job and even if they do not advertise many people apply to Bridgestone.  

This advertisement for recruitment contains enough information for people to apply for the job and it is easy to understand the locations and their expectation. Also it is good that Bridgestone shows their company name quite big at the top of the advertisement so people can easily know which company they are. However, everything is written in the same font so it is a little bit confusing and it might be better to change font size where Bridgestone want to make things clear.   Probably it would be better to make the address and other contact details bigger so it is more helpful for applicants to know how they can apply for the job in Bridgestone.  Also it might be good to include their web site at the bottom so that people who are interested in that job can find out more information from the internet.

The company name of Bridgestone or its logo is well known in Japan so they put their company’s name on advertisements so applicants can see their name and they will understand Bridgestone needs to recruit.  It is good to have basic details with phone number and e-mail addresses on the advertisement so if applicants want further information about recruitment they can easily contact Bridgestone.

Job application form

People can apply for a job on the internet or otherwise they need to ask for a job application form.  However if they want to apply for jobs located in Japan, Bridgestone provide a paper form only in Japanese so if they need a form in English they have to apply on the internet.  

 This internet job application form is good for international people to apply for jobs with Bridgestone and it is easy to get it from web site.  Bridgestone provide a lot of space for applicants to write down additional information so it will be good for applicants to write more about themselves.  However these spaces for additional information are shown in small scale on screen.  So there are some difficulties to scroll horizontally and vertically and see all the details.  Bridgestone may be better to make these spaces bigger so applicants feel it is much easier to fill in and also Bridgestone can see their details more clearly.  In the contact column, Bridgestone has only one address that they can write down but if they are from overseas it might be better that they put their address in their country as well.  Even if they are Japanese, they either live alone or live with parents and if they live alone Bridgestone will want a permanent address so they can contact applicants more easily.

When people apply on the internet it is easy to access because everything is organised as a simple easy to understand form.  It is easy to fill in and also applicants only need to choose from several choices in some parts so it is a quick way to apply for a job.  However there are some disadvantages for this.  If applying on an application form, applicants can write down whatever they like if it fits into the form but if on the internet, sometimes the area they can write in is restricted or choices may not suit some applicants and in this case they will have some problems.  Therefore sometimes it is better to apply on paper although they have to be careful about the date the form has to be in.

The application form is organised, informative and it is very helpful to understand applicants and also to contact them.  It is very good to know about applicants’ ability, skills and qualifications which Bridgestone expect them to have.  Bridgestone leave some space to write about their skills when they fill in their application form.

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

A CV is another form of document for the applicant to write about themselves.  Applicants might write whatever they put on the application form again.  However, a CV is not as organised as application forms.  They could write down their details and education, and career achievements with dates and this information need to be written as a list and not like a letter for Bridgestone to understand easily.  A CV may be sent with an application form but is still important because it gives further details which applicants cannot write on an application form and so Bridgestone may find something interesting about their skills, qualification or ability in a CV which might be useful.

I have created two CVs and both of them are applying for the same role in Bridgestone.  I think Bridgestone prefer sample (1) to sample (2), although sample (2) has got more detail about the applicant’s educations and skills.  There are too many details to put on the CV and some of them are not necessary to apply for a job in Bridgestone.  Bridgestone does not want to know every detail for every single qualification, skills and abilities which the applicant has got but they are only interested in what qualification they have got related to the job they are applying for.  When writing a CV it is necessary to write down name, date of birth, address and phone number so Bridgestone can see who the applicant is and how they can contact them.  It will be better to show those details clearly as shown in sample (1).  Therefore instead of writing down everything in a CV, applicants need to consider which skills are necessary to write down and which one is not to simplify their CV.

Application letter

An application letter is often written instead of completing an application form or CV.  Bridgestone prefer candidates to write an application form by hand rather than a word processed application.  This means they analyse the contents of an application letter and they may also want to analyse an applicant’s hand writing.  In Bridgestone employees need to write a lot of things as well as word processing so employers in Bridgestone will look at hand writing as one of the applicants’ skills.  Also they can add further information about them which they cannot put into other documents.  So it is worth asking applicants to write an application letter although they may complete an application form and send a CV.  

I have prepared two sample application letters and both of them are applying for the same job role.  When comparing those two application letters, I think employers will prefer sample (2) than sample (1) because when they first look at them, they can see the applicant’s qualification more clearly in sample (2).  When looking at sample (1) every entry is shown as a sentence and it looks so complicated.  Because Bridgestone will get so many application letters they have to be eye catching and easy to read for employers.  Also it is better to have two references like sample (2) in case Bridgestone cannot contact one or the other.

C3:  Identify and analyse the relationship between the business’s training and development programme and its management of performance and explain how these two functions may be influenced by different motivational theories

The training and development programme in Bridgestone is linked to management performance.  Performance management is to lead employees to work efficiently in the right way and encourage them to carry out their job successfully.  To do so they need to be responsible about their job and therefore they need to be confident.  If they want to bring confidence and responsibility to their job, they need training to improve their skills and this gives them the feeling that they are doing the right thing and whatever they are doing is targeted at Bridgestone’s success.   Performance management can encourage employees to work hard and therefore need more training.  Moreover training and development can lead to a better performance when their performance is evaluated. Training and development and management performance are linked and these are influenced by different motivation theories.  There are three different theories I looked at to relate to Bridgestone.  To make a more efficient business, organising training and performance management should be based on motivation theories.  This is because motivation theories will help Bridgestone to analyse each employee and also this might give some idea of what training they are better suited to take to perform better in their job.

When people are first employed, they usually have an induction programme as a part of their training.  In this training, employees are taught in depth about Bridgestone and what they are aiming for.  It is important for employees to know about Bridgestone as much as possible because it will be helpful for their performance appraisal.  Performance appraisal is a part of performance management.  This shows what employees need to do in their job role, so the more they know about Bridgestone the more they can work efficiently and successfully.  It is essential to have a good induction programme to improve employees’ performance.  Induction programme and performance appraisal, therefore, affect each other.  These are also influenced by a motivational theory, which is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy needs.  In this theory, there are different types of needs and one of them is self esteem needs, which is based on an individual’s desire for self respect.  Employees should be individuals and they need to ensure that they are important so it is important to see their achievements.  Bridgestone try to reward individuals as much as they can to encourage them to work and take individual responsibilities.  In training, Bridgestone will explain many advantages of what they are doing and what they provide for employees.  Also Bridgestone tell them about the company’s objectives which supports their performance in their job.  These will show that Bridgestone thinks each employee will be a good worker for them and they have a high expectation for every employee.  Therefore employees will be encouraged to work well for Bridgestone and they can have confidence and responsibility for their job.  If employees have more confidence and responsibility for their job, they can actually perform better.

During on the job training, Bridgestone provide a variety of training for employees.  Especially when first employed, every employee can have different training from different departments.  Their job role may not be in that department but they still have to have training because it would be helpful to know different kinds of jobs.  After employees are put into a department, they are still able to have more training to improve their skills if they wish.  On the job training is easier to carry out than off the job training because it is not necessary to go somewhere else so it is acceptable for anyone who wants to work better.  This training helps to measure individual and group productivity.  The more training employees are offered the more skills they can acquire.  If skills of employees improve, the quality of products will get better and the quantity of product will increase.  This means that they have more opportunities to sell more of their products to customers.  Therefore Bridgestone can be more successful.  Bridgestone can measure their successful performance by behaviour scales, job evaluation and merit rating and employees might get increased pay or other benefits.  These encourage employees to work as one of a strong workforce and this leads them to have more on the job training.  So on the job training and individual and group output/ productivity are related each other.   These are influenced by a motivational theory, which is Douglas McGregor’s ‘Theory X and Theory Y’.  Bridgestone want employees to be Y type of people, which means they expect employees to work not only to earn money but to enjoy their job.  Bridgestone assumes that if employees have more on the job training, they can improve their skills and they can understand more about their jobs therefore they might be more interested in working harder.  Also on the job training is organised inside the company so it is easy to run so it will not put too much stress on employees.  If employees are interested in their job through training, they will be able to perform better so they might be rewarded with extra benefits.  

Mentoring is also one of the important training methods in Bridgestone.  This training is very helpful for new employees and when being transferred to a different position because those employees do not know a lot about their new jobs.  This will help them to be familiar with their working.  A mentor will help employees to solve some problems and give some advice to carry out their job more efficiently.  This ties in with peer evaluation.  Peer evaluation is used to analyse group working.  In this, Bridgestone can see how each employee is taking part in given jobs and therefore how they can improve their business.  It is important for each employee to have their own ideas or opinions about their job and to be involved to improve the business in Bridgestone.  Peer evaluation shows how they work together and from this they may find how they have to change to improve their performance.  When employees think it is necessary to bring up different ideas to a team, they might ask their mentor to help and support their ideas.  If mentoring and peer evaluation relate to each other well, Bridgestone will be more successful.  These are influenced by a motivation theory, which is David McClelland’s needs theory.  By working in a team, they have needs and in this theory three types of needs are considered.  There are the needs for achievement, for power, for affiliation or belonging.  When working in groups, individuals are very important because responsibility for the job is not just for one employee but for all of them.  So each employee is expected to have these 3 strong needs and this makes their work successful.  This theory will be helpful for peer evaluation because this theory shows good and bad practice.  For example, if employees have the need for over achievement, they are not good team players because they are incapable of undertaking individual pursuits and can cause frustration for those working in a bureaucratic organisation.  So when Bridgestone ask employees to work in a team they can choose who is better be take part and this will be seen by peer evaluation.  Also if it is necessary they might be asked to use a mentor to help improve their team building skills.

A1: Use your analysis of staffing within the business to show how the business relates to the external labour market

As the external labour market changes, it is important to forecast employee demands so Bridgestone need to look at their human resource plan.  If Bridgestone work out how they can enlarge their company, it is possible for them to find out if they need to establish other factories or branch offices and therefore how many more staff they need.  Also they will find that some of the factories are not successful so that they are going to close them and therefore reduce the number of employees.  Moreover, Bridgestone has their own market strategies and they work to achieve those strategies so if they change those market strategies, employees might have to work in different ways so that employers have to consider their working conditions to work more effectively.  There is some legislation to protect employees such as Equal Opportunities and Minimum Wage, and this legislation has to be followed to encourage employees to work better and for Bridgestone to be successful.  Another important thing that Bridgestone have to look at is job efficiency.  Bridgestone would like their workers to work for longer but this sometimes does not mean they work better.  So Bridgestone have to make sure that employees work for sufficient hours to do their job and to increase their productivity.

It is important for Bridgestone to know about the external labour market to recruit employees and to manage employees in good conditions in the company.  The external labour market gives some information to Bridgestone to decide what kind of people they are going to recruit and what kind of working conditions they will offer.  There have been some changes in human resources over the years in Bridgestone.  Bridgestone employs people on full time, part time or temporary contracts, I have already shown these changes in the different diagrams in C1.  The number of employees in Bridgestone has increased as the number of departments and factories has increased but the ratio of employees of each site has decreased.  Also Bridgestone nowadays employ more people on part time or temporary contracts than full time.  Therefore human resources management is affected by the external labour market.

The pie-charts below show the percentage (%) of employees working full or part time.

• In Tokyo Japan

• In Bridgestone

Education levels have changed in Japan and nowadays most people go to University.  Therefore Bridgestone know that there are more highly educated people than in past years.  In the past when less people went to university, Bridgestone needed to treat these people much better than people who did not go to the university.  Because it is getting common to go to university Bridgestone do not need to provide people with university education with better conditions of working and they can now recruit those educated people with less salary than before.  Now they treat people who have got degrees or any other qualification as a specialist. There is another reason that Bridgestone can employ people offering reduced conditions and salary.  Japan is one of the developed countries so it is possible to employ people from developing countries more cheaply.  Therefore in recent years, a lot of young people who have finished their university education have had difficulties getting a proper job to make a living.  Therefore Bridgestone are providing less salary than before and they can employ enough educated people easily because more people in Japan prefer to have a regular job as a permanent employee.  Increasing higher education for young people has lead to more improvement in technology and research and therefore improved products and a more successful business.

The graphs below show the percentage of employees with graduate levels of education

• In Tokyo in Japan

• In Bridgestone

However, some young educated people still feel that if there is little salary, they prefer having several part time jobs so they can earn more money.  This means that Bridgestone might lose the opportunity to have better people than those who are actually employed.  Therefore although they are successful at the moment, they might be able to make more profit than they do now if they employ young well educated people and offer good pay and conditions.  

As Bridgestone want to reduce labour costs, they have employed more people on part time or temporary contracts rather than full time because it is much cheaper and also it is easy to recruit numbers as more young people want to work free lance.  If people are employed as part time or temporary staff, Bridgestone may ask them to work at different time so they can run the business for longer in a day and it also benefits employees because they can arrange their time more easily.  They could have time for more training to improve their performance if they wish to do so.  

In recent years more females have started to work in Japan.  Therefore more females are applying for a job in Bridgestone.  Bridgestone is a tyre company and making tyres is their main job so not many females are employed in the factory.  But Bridgestone treat females and male equally as much as possible and Bridgestone recruit females for office work.  As more females are involved in Bridgestone, they can offer a wide range of ideas to improve the business because the view point of males and females is usually different.  So an increase in the number of female employees would be helpful to the success of the business.  

The pie chars below show the percentage of employees by genders.

• In Japan

• In Bridgestone (in 2004)

There is a problem about employees when looking at the external labour market.  The number of children in Japan is decreasing at the moment and this gives less opportunity for Bridgestone to select employees.  Also it would be a problem if not enough people apply for a job in Bridgestone.  This is not happening now but it might happen in the future if the number of young people is continuing to fall.  Also while the numbers of births are decreasing, old people are increasing and more people are retiring from their job in Bridgestone.  This means less well skilled people are left in Bridgestone to be instructors for new employees.  This problem makes the workforce in Bridgestone weak and if less people are trained in Bridgestone they will not be as successful.  Therefore now Bridgestone have to decide what they can do for new employees if more people retire early from Bridgestone.  Bridgestone might offer more external training which they can no longer cover in the company but this means they have to spend more on training so if they have to make the same amount of profits as before they have to increase sales.  This might put pressure on employees so it is actually difficult to solve this problem and they have to be careful to manage both their business and human resources at the same time.

The graph below shows the change of the numbers of birth in Japan.

Japan’s economy is not very strong at the moment and therefore the external labour market has changed.  There are plenty of people looking for a job as many businesses have reduced their human resources.  But these companies also want to increase their sales and to be successful.  They prefer having fewer employees who are highly educated therefore those who have got degrees are employed quickly by any companies.  It is getting difficult to recruit the right people to work for Bridgestone.

A2:  Understand the contribution that effective human resources management can make to improving the competitiveness of the business and illustrate your points effectively

Not only the number of employees but their performance based on their skills, ability and knowledge affects the competitiveness of a success.  Human resources is one of the most important parts of Bridgestone’s success and to improve these even more could make Bridgestone more competitive.  Depending on the human resources Bridgestone have, will be decided whether they can increase their sales and profits.

Human Resource Planning

Bridgestone think that they can reduce the number of people working on the assembly line as they can work more efficiently to produce their tyres.  Recently, more research and technology and chemical experiments have been considered to find out new ideas for their tyres.  This gives Bridgestone more opportunities to produce more tyres and therefore to increase their sales and profits in the market.  

Bridgestone has reduced the ratio of employees in each factory or department as they have provided more machinery and other technology.  However, this system actually works better than the old system because if there are less people in each place, there is less confusion between employees because information is passed more smoothly between employees so they can reduce the time of complex communication and they can carry out their jobs more efficiently.  Therefore they can produce more products in less time and they can deliver more products to the markets.

Competitiveness depends on how Bridgestone use money efficiently while carrying out their business because Bridgestone needs to spend a lot of money as well as making profits.  Human resources is one area that Bridgestone can reduce costs.  Therefore Bridgestone needs to work out the minimum number of employees that they need to carry out production properly on time.  If Bridgestone succeed in reducing employees from each department, this money can be used in other part of business to improve products and this leads to better tyres and therefore increases competitiveness.

Recruitment and Selection

The first thing they have to think about is how to advertise to recruit the right people into the right positions.  Also other documents needed for recruitment have to be prepared very carefully.  It is important to know as much as possible about applicants because they want people who can be a strong workforce for Bridgestone to survive in the world competitive market.  It might be worth Bridgestone preparing documents in several different languages so it will allow people from different countries to apply for a job in Bridgestone easier.  If they could recruit varieties of people from different countries, Bridgestone have more opportunities to have more ideas because people from different counties may have different points of view.  This would give more chance for Bridgestone to be more competitive.

To increase sales and profit to be more competitive and to keep being the best tyre company in the world, human resources in Bridgestone have to be managed really well and if they find any skill shortages in employees they might need to think about recruiting other employees.  Bridgestone have to think about recruitment and selection very carefully as this process takes a lot of time and cost.  They have to prepare enough to employ suitable people for Bridgestone.  This means they have to spend more time to prepare recruitment documents.  Also they need to research externally to find the right applicants and so they can set the condition offering to employees.  Once candidates apply for jobs in Bridgestone, employers have to undergo several processes by the time they ask some candidates to come for interview.  They have to recruit people who would be a strong force in Bridgestone to be competitive and worth spending lots of money on the recruitment process.  Recruitment and selection is a costly process but this problem would be solved by recruiting the right employees and being more competitive in the markets.

Training and Development

Bridgestone provide a variety of training for the improvement of employees.  Training employees and therefore their improvement and development is helpful to increase their competitiveness.  Bridgestone is very good at communicating with customers and this is one of the most important parts when selling products to customers.  However it seems easy to get on with customers but any problems can be caused so easily with customers.  There might be a lot of arguments because of the opinion of customers and Bridgestone side could be different.  Therefore if Bridgestone want to communicate with customers well to raise their sales, employees have to be careful about their behaviour to customers.  Therefore they need to be trained well and usually when they are first employed they are sent to a shop to have training actually in that situation with customers and this gives more views of what they should do rather than just listening to lectures inside Bridgestone.  Hence, employees sent to shops from Bridgestone are usually very friendly, kindly and helpful to customers as many customers do not have knowledge about the different tyres and which one is suitable for what situations.  Therefore if employees have more knowledge and if they can give a lot advice which is easily understandable to customers, they will sell more of Bridgestone products and increase their competitiveness.  

As Bridgestone is an international company they also sell products overseas so they really need to contact each other about their sales and also how much stock they have.  Trainings provided by Bridgestone, especially off the job training, gives more confidence to people because from different off the job training they can learn different things depending on situations and these would be very helpful to manage the business in Bridgestone and run the business more smoothly.  It is important to expand their market to employ people who have got language skills in order to carry out business between different countries.  If they can contact countries they can develop their products and therefore it gives more opportunity to Bridgestone to be competitive and increase their sales.

Sales of Tyre and diversified products

Profits of tyre and diversified products’ sales

Bridgestone have started to pay attention to the environment when they produce tyres.  They try to reduce chemicals and they also tend to recycle tyres.  When Bridgestone do this, employees are required to have skills and knowledge about the environment and they need to be trained well through lecture and other experiences.  Bridgestone has quite a large environment department so they recruit specialists and also they work in teams and individually.   In this department, employees need to discuss what should be environmentally friendly and so they need to bring so many ideas.  As Bridgestone have training overseas, there is more chance for employees to bring different ideas.  Then when tyres are produced successfully customers prefer having those tyres because in recent years, environmental issues have been taken more seriously.  Therefore more of these tyres can be sold better than other companies and they will be successful.

Performance Management

Bridgestone employ people either part time or full time and employees, nowadays, have more temporary contracts.  It allows employees to work with less stress because they can choose their working time.  They can either start the job earlier or finish later and it not only benefits employees but also business in Bridgestone, because a lot of employees in the factory may not be needed at the same time.  So if people have to work at slightly different time it allows Bridgestone to run their business and to produce products for a longer time.  However it does not mean each employee needs to work over time and make them feel stressed.  They will be able to enjoy their job more as they are given some opportunity to choose their working time and so they can concentrate on their job so that they cause less mistakes in their job.  So they can use their working time effectively and therefore produce a good amount of products efficiently.  Therefore their products can be more reliable and this means they can compete more strongly with other companies.

Bridgestone have to be careful about performance and management.  As Bridgestone thinks that it is important to be competitive, they provide a lot of effective training for employees as well as working hard everyday.  However, too much work for on each employee may cause some problems with their health and safety.  Also if they have too many things to do, this might cause stress and this may reduce their motivation.  Training is actually one of the most important things to increase competitiveness, but Bridgestone manage their performance following legislations.  The way that Bridgestone treat employees will make a difference in the way they work.  If Bridgestone increase their salary or gives more benefits depending on their work, employees can actually see Bridgestone is satisfied with their work and they will have more confidence.  Therefore employees can motivate themselves in a positive way and this will lead Bridgestone to be more competitive.  Employees will expect to work if they are offered good working conditions.  Bridgestone will evaluate employees’ performance in several different ways and from this Bridgestone will have some ideas of how they can train and improve employees.  So Bridgestone have to carry out these evaluations strictly and accurately.  Bridgestone will get ideas of what kind of people they are going to recruit as new employees or what kind of training they can establish additionally.  These ideas will be helpful to Bridgestone and so they could be more competitive in the markets.

A3:  Evaluate the potential conflicts between different human resources management activities within the business

Human resources are divided into four different departments and each department need to have good communication. This makes it easier to run the business accurately in Bridgestone and it is an efficient way of saving time and also cost.  However, there are some conflicts between the different departments in Bridgestone as every employee has got different opinions and each department sets up different objectives although their final objective is the same.

Every year there are numbers of employees who leave their jobs in different departments.  Therefore the Planning department always needs to know how many employees have left through a year, and so they can see how many vacancies there are in each department.  So they can make sure how many people should be employed for what kind of jobs.  Bridgestone might want to recruit more people than there are vacancies as they want to improve and expand their business.  Or they might want to recruit less as they improve and rely on more technological systems.  So the Planning department also pay attention to these changes in Bridgestone for their expanding business.  The Planning department also analyses what Bridgestone requires in recruiting people.  Then the decision they make about how many and what type of people need to be recruited and what jobs are available should be passed to Recruitment and selection department.  Otherwise the Recruitment and selection department cannot make a specific person specification which is to be used in the interview and therefore they may recruit people which Bridgestone do not want.  Also they might recruit more people than they should do.  If the wrong types of people are recruited, Bridgestone might need to do the recruitment process again.  It will cost a lot and take time as therefore many process in recruitment.

When the Planning department decides how many people to recruit, they need to contact the Training and development department.  Bridgestone provide a wide range of trainings.  As well as new employees other employees use the training system to improve their further skills.  Therefore if too many people are employed, there may not be enough training places available and it will be difficult to find enough trainers.  If all new employees are transferred to the training centres, other employees cannot have training.  This will stop the improvement of not only their skills but business in Bridgestone.  Therefore the Planning department must liaise with the Training and develop department for the acceptable numbers of people for training or conflict could arise between these two departments.

The Planning department might also come into conflict with the Performance management department.  The Planning department decides how many employees are needed.  However, their planning may demotivate new employees because they have to work too hard because there are not enough employees to do the work.  For example, the Performance management department might consider having more rewards to satisfy employees.  However, if they provide them it will cost much more and prevent the business from being successful.  The Performance management department encourages employee motivation by following some motivational theories.  Therefore they can see that different types of people can be motivated in different ways.  So these two departments need good communication to satisfy as many people as they can and to avoid potential conflict between the two departments.

The Performance management department wants employees to be happy in their jobs and also suggests training.  Some of the training may be compulsory but others are not, but Bridgestone will expect them to take as many training programmes as they can to improve their skills and apply it to their jobs.  If the Training and development department are not very careful about following laws e.g. health and safety, employees may not want to continue their work as they feel they are not safe enough.  Or if they force employees to do too much, they may feel stressed and this reduces their motivation although Performance management department aims for them to be happy and to encourage motivation.  Therefore there will be conflict between Performance and management and the Training and development department.  The Performance management department should tell Training and development department how they should help employees during training to keep their motivation high.  Otherwise, although a lot of money is spent on their training, not many people will learn what Bridgestone expects of them and therefore the workforce in Bridgestone will become weak and less competitive.

The Training and development department wants employees to improve their skills to be a strong work force in Bridgestone.  Therefore they may expect new employees to have a certain standard of skills and qualifications.  However, if they do not communicate with Recruitment and selection department and do not ensure that they are recruiting people at a certain level to train them, the wrong type of people could be recruited.  The Planning department passes the information of what type of people Bridgestone wants to the Recruitment and selection department.  However, it is better to communicate with the Training and development and Recruiting and selection department so not to cause conflict.  If the Training and development department do not confirm about training levels they require, it will take a much longer time to train new employees and therefore increase costs.  This will affect Bridgestone’s competitiveness and could lead to conflict.