For instance, Karen, the president of McDonald’s East Division USA (2009) stated that “as the world leading fast food retailer, McDonalds serve more than 58 million people in 118 countries every day.” The know-how and strategies of operating restaurants that lead McDonalds to the epitome of success has been widely studied and imitated by the competitors. This high performing fast food retailer is also being researched by the university professors and students all around the world.
One of the main factors that lead McDonalds to succeed is the recruitment and training process and the crew development programme as these activities would raise the human resource performance. McDonalds understand the crucial of creating learning environment “as people learn more and are more likely to retain information if they are able to practice while they learn through floor based or on the job training basis (McDonalds 2008, page 5).” Hence, based on the report from McDonalds (2008), “all new employees will be given an initial training period. They are shown and given the opportunities to develop their skills to a level where they are effective in each area within the restaurant. The status of employees in term of part time or full time would affect the timescale of training.”
The crew development programme is done with the aid of ‘station observation checklists’ which include a score sheet for the skills needed to work in each part of the restaurant. The ratings from checklist will go towards their performance review (McDonalds 2008, page 5).” Therefore, the performance of each individual would be indentified and informed. The obstacles would be removed through ongoing training. Such human resource practice helps underperform individuals to enhance the performance. In addition, “the employees are also required to attend a training course held by the training development before returning to the restaurant in a management position (McDonalds 2008, page 5).”
Citing another example within the same organisation, “McDonalds is the only restaurant organisation awarded credit from the American Council on Education (McDonalds 2005).” The Hamburger University under McDonalds has well been known as a worldwide management training centre. The purpose of setting up Hamburger University is to provide higher education and the qualification to the management teams and look forward for an effective management teams help the organisation to achieve high performance and successful results. As according to McDonalds (2005), “100% of restaurant managers and mid- management curriculum is eligible for approximately 2 years of college credit.” Also, “in order to create diverse workforce, Hamburger University teach in 28 languages including Spanish, German, French, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese (McDonalds 2005).” Even as the market leader in fast food industry, McDonalds is still putting numerous efforts to train and develop its people and fully support the human resource practices which have the potential to advance the organisational performance.
Besides, “Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle (2008) argued that, human in all imperfections, not machines are at the heart of the company.” Hence, a series of activities such as training programme and seminars no matter within the human resource department or at the organisational level, should be planed, organised, led and controlled in order to uplift the overall performance of the employees.
Furthermore, motivation of employees would also affect the performance of an organisation. So, in order to get employees to be motivated, organisations should offer rewards and bonus such as extra pay and vacations and profit sharing for the purpose of encouraging employees to put more effort and contribution in their job. This is to create a sense of belongingness and satisfaction to the employees toward the organisation. As according to Jim Parker, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines, “employees who love their company are going to create customers who love the company and employees who hate their company are going to create customers who hate the company.” Therefore, to take care of the employees’ welfares is crucial especially in the service industry as they are the one who has face to face interactions with the customers every day. Their behaviours will directly affect the brand reputation of the organisation.
Another excellent example from Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle (2008), “Southwest Airlines was still be able to gain profit after the 9/11 attacks on New York. That was the time where most airlines had reduced the planes in the air and dismissed many staffs.” However, Southwest chose not to follow the policy. “A better way was found to keep the staffs and ‘reconnect’ with customers as soon as possible by keeping all the routes going (Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle, 2008).” The staffs were being motivated by receiving large amount of dividend and eventually, Southwest Airlines was the only one in the industry made profit. “Customers appreciated the service – and staff appreciated being appreciated. So, Southwest Airlines continue with the existing policy to serve customers well by looking after staffs (Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle, 2008).” “As the mission statement of Southwest is dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit (Southwest 2009, page 1)
Furthermore, “according to Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle (2008), Southwest was the first company in US started profit sharing with the employees.” However, Parker – the former CEO of southwest Airlines pointed out that, “financial reward alone is insufficient, the ‘total package’ through which employees are valued, with staffs understanding implicitly the company’s missions and what their role is within the organisation are more crucial (Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle 2008).” To sum up, “Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle (2008) emphasised that, culture of respect has been created in Southwest, both in terms of company attitude to staff and the qualities it wants those people to protest.” Consequently, this human resource approach has brought Southwest a competitive advantage which lead to high performance.
The example above shows the importance of human resource practice to an organisation and the relationship with organisation’s performance. Citing another example, Panasonic was established in Japan, and has grown to be one of the top global electronic companies. “Training and development is crucial to Panasonic’s success and the basis of this can be found in part of the company philosophy which states - people before products (Smith 2005, page 1).”
“Smith (2005) also emphasised that an understanding of the needs of both organisation and the people themselves and to be sensitive of the fact that people develop in different ways and respond to different situations are crucial in order to develop people.” Therefore, several of training solutions have been introduced by using different approaches and different mechanisms for transferring learning. The traditional workshop approaches were replaced by innovative solutions which would be able to catch participants’ attention. “Panasonic focus at the areas of e-learning, coaching and how to increase managers’ involvement, these areas have been viewed have real added value to the development of people (Smith 2005).”
E-learning has been widely introduced by most of the organisations over last few years. At Panasonic point of view, e-learning has proved to be one of the effective ways in leadership development. Managers form 39 Panasonic companies operating in Europe are invited to take part on the online case study which asks them various questions regarding the content of the coming development programme. “Smith (2005) pointed out that, by doing this, the knowledge gap between the managers’ capabilities and company’s expectation will be indentified. It would also allow managers to understand clearly on the content of programme and the expectations of the company.” It “... allows participants to ‘meet each’ other and clarify objectives as well as covering any basic theory and general introduction to the overall programme (smith 2005, page 2).” “After certain times, participants come together for an interactive workshop where they have already ‘met’ each other and could use the time effectively to practice techniques and learn new skills (Smith 2005).” This could help to enhance the organisation’s performance.
Next, “coaching is seen as a tool that can greatly impact the bottom-line success of the business as well as supporting people in their development by allowing them to maximise their own performance (smith 2005, page 3).” Hence, Panasonic started to create coaching culture. “It focuses on providing managers a toolkit that they can take back with them to the workplace and use immediately with their teams (Smith 2005).” The purpose of this programme is to increase the work performance of the employees and provide personal development to the managers.
In addition, in order to be successful, it is vital for the management team to support the training team on the job training basis. The involvement of the managers is compulsory. “Panasonic has a learning culture and a recognised system of training in place which helps support any new initiatives (Smith 2005).” Hence, the managers from Panasonic also play a role as a trainer to guide and correct the employees during the daily operations in order to reduce errors made which may affect the organisation’s performance and create wastage of times and resources.
To sum up, Panasonic provide a wide range of training and development options to the staffs such as e-learning, coaching and management involvement which benefits both the organisation and the individual. “Changes do not happen instantly however, general consensus is that the benefits for staff development, motivation, staff retention and cost saving can all be seen from increased by these training and development options.
However, Toyota challenges the view that high performance human resource practices lead to high performance and successful results in organisations and view it as an indirect benefits. “In Toyota’s point of view, according to Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle (2008), human resource practice is the development of abilities and behaviours which enhance innovation.” Toyota Production System accounts for the company’s reputation for quality and innovation, there are other vital factors to consider. Many of these are plainly inconsistent (Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle 2008).” Hence, Toyota would rather focus on these factors to make the success story continue to move on.
Nevertheless, “there are ‘soft’ innovations that complement Toyota Production System’s ‘hard’ innovations. Toyota really does invest heavily in people, and the ideas that flow from everyone as a result, shop floor workers and managers alike, enable the company to keep getting better (Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle 2008).” But, “based on the findings from Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle (2008), Toyota actually doesn’t do many of the things associated with successful enterprises as it offers low dividends to the executives.” Perhaps, this is the culture and the forces that getting the people to work for the company. “For instance, as Jimenez-Jimenez and Sanz-Valle (2008) mentioned, employees always do things that couldn’t be seen in other successful organisations, such as high attendance of company meetings by simply listening rather than participate.”
In this case, Toyota needs not to do much on human resource practice as there are forces that get employees to understand and find out the company’s current situation, in the other words, it is the desirable of employee itself to learn.
Furthermore, high performance human resource practice may not necessary lead to successful results in organisations. It depends on the employees themselves. For example, the employees may fail to manage their mental health problem such as stress, anxiety and depression especially during economic downturn. This problem has widely been discovered especially in the cities due to the complex living environment. According to the findings from survey, CIPD (2009) found that 78% of the respondents with poor mental health could not concentrate on work and 57 % of the respondents said it takes longer time to complete the work.
Hence, if the individuals fail to manage their mental health problem, no matter how well the company train and develop them, the performance would still not be able to increase.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, human resource practices benefit organisations in many ways and it lead to high performance and successful results. As the world leading organisations, McDonalds, Southwest Airlines and Panasonic from different industries, emphasise and put effort in human resource practices as it is believed and have been proved to enhance the performance. Toyota takes it as an indirect benefit, but also invests on the people although the effort is lesser compare with the other successful organisations in order to create innovative environment. Hence, the investment to increase human resource capabilities should not be viewed as cost as it is considerate factor in developing the organisations capability. Such investment should be encouraged as it creates win-win situation to both the employees and the organisations where the skills and ability of employees will increase, as a result, the organisation performance will uplift.
Reference
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