Introduction
The very word
‘Boeing’ brings back a jovial conversation that was heard a long time ago in an
airport. People who came to send off
their relatives were in the view tower and one of them excitedly spoke to the
neighbor ‘That’s a Boeing, that’s a Boeing’.
One of the gentlemen said to that person ‘Hush…be silent’. To this that person understanding it as “B”
silent’ responded excitedly ‘that’s an Oeing, that’s an Oeing’
Humor apart, Boeing
has made a great name for itself and for a long time to come, Boeing and Airplane
were interchangeable.
Brief on Boeing - Performance and Growth
Boeing is
the leader in aerospace the world over.
It is the biggest maker of commercial jetliners and they also supply military
aircraft. They also help NASA in operating
their space shuttles and international space stations.
Boeing is
known to have customers in over 90 countries and in terms of turnover it is one
of the top U.S. exporters. Traditionally Boeing has been into aerospace business,
a leaders through innovation (Done and Hollinger, 2005).
By sheer efficient
Human Resource practices, Boeing has constantly expanded its product and
service lines to satisfy their customers and also their investors’ needs.
Boeing has operations in over 70 countries employing over 158,000 staffs,
majority across US and balance globally. Boeing relies on over 90,000staffs
college degree holders that includes over 29,000 holding advanced degrees
virtually in every facet of business and technical fields leading to the most
talented and innovative workforce globally (Done and Hollinger, 2005).
Source
– (Boeing Official Website)
Human Resource Management
The functions of HR Management
extend throughout an organization. HRM functions are
+
Hiring
+
Evaluating
+
disciplining,
and
+
Scheduling
employees
The top execution
management spends over fifty percent of their time on the above mentioned
activities. HRM department is ably
managed by human resource management specialists contribute to an organization in
appropriate staffing and in maintenance of an effective workforce.
Work design, job
analysis, training and development, recruitment, compensation, team-building,
performance management and appraisal, worker health and safety issues, as well
as identifying or developing valid methods for selecting staff pertain to the
domain of the HR management.
Human Resource
Management per se refers to how the staff and workers are managed by the
management through the HR department of any organizations. Traditionally this
was an administrative function, expansions and specialization has demanded
special attention that focused on recognizing talent and engaged the right people
on the right job contributing to an organization’s success.
The terms
"human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have
largely replaced earlier popular term "personnel management" as a
description of all the processes involved in managing people in organizations.
Human resource
management in its enlarged avatar works on maximizing ROI [Return on investment]
considering the employees as a resource invested on rather than a mere work
force. Human Resource Management is now a
part and parcel of the management, with their functions cut out in maintenance
of cordial human relations among the employees in the organization. They are expected to development, apply and
evaluate corporate policies on continuous basis, lay down procedures and plans
of actions relating to employees optimizing their contribution towards
organizational vision and goals and also come out favorable in terms of
ROI.
HRM contributes in achieving
optimum individual and group development, professional working relationship
between the management and the staff and intra-relationship among the peers in
employees and employers. Overall HRM
must ensure efficient group dynamics of the human resources and merging their
activities with the available physical resources. It is therefore crucial that
the recruitment process, selection and development, utilization and compensation
the mainstay of HRM in directing the human resources in the right direction in
an organization. Human resource management, more than anything else, refers to managing
and controlling the total workforce of an organization including many levels of
the management leading them towards being reliable, honest and professional. Human
resource managers are expected to conduct their activities in an effective,
legal, fair, and consistent manner, with the mentality of a third party having
no bias towards anyone. Human resource management has matured of age in playing
a critical role in all the industries furthering the growth of the economy.
Knowledge & understanding of core theories
& concepts in relation to strategic HRM
Having understood the role
of HRM, we now understand the applicability of the theories in the Boeing
Company.
Therefore the purpose is to determine the factors of HRM that influences the performance in
the company and what kind of influences have contributed to the overall success
of the company.
It was
found that there are several factors of HRM practices that has influenced the
performance of the Boeing Company based on globalization philosophy and
approach. Their performance has remained
positive while based on contingency approach due to the nature of business
being highly capital intensive and risk of cancellation of orders due various
economic upheavals in the global market.
The risk factor being very high Boeing has adopted to the technique of
PMS.
A performance management system, quite often
dubbed as PMS, is a process that is used in continuous appraisals and
recognition of latent talent in its personnel. A company that executes
performance management system correctly can go a long way in keeping the employee
morale high, attain optimum productivity and keep the attrition level at the
lowest by retaining its top workers that counts most. There are several
components of an effective PMS process and the
positive achievement of Boeing and its influence depended on the efficient
implementation of the factors of PMS.
PMS is primarily the task of an effective HRM. These factors influencing Boeing Company are:
Planning
The first step is Performance management system is
planning. The human resources management defines critical elements with
reference to employee responsibilities and performance indicators. The bench mark for these are in place on the
lines of Boeing’s long-term goals. These bench marks are made clear on
induction of its employees and also on constant appraisals. They follow the United States
Department of Commerce Office of Human Resources Management’s recommendation of
completing and signing by the employee at least 60 days prior to the beginning
of the appraisal period of performance appraisal plan.
Monitoring and Evaluating Employee Performance
Following the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of HRM,
the appraisal period should not be less than 120 days. Monitoring and
evaluating performance goes beyond mere measurement of performance in providing
crucial feedback to the employees. Each employee gets one formal review halfway
into the appraisal period. The review also included a discussion of the
employee's progress and suggestions for improving and overcoming any deficiencies
found in their performance. Every employee is formally evaluated at the end of
the appraisal period.
A system of recognition and reward providing incentive
for employees is in place that plays a role in better workforce performance.
Employee Development
Employee development is independent of the appraisal
and recognition process. This is considered
to be of vital importance. Employee
development being an ongoing process training of workers is in place.
The efficient
HRM practices at Boeing have contributed towards expansion of its product and
service lines. Boeing’s operational spread spawns across 70 countries that
manage about 158,000 staffs worldwide. The constitution of the staff at Boeing is
interesting in the sense that it has over 90,000 young college degree holders,
comprising of over 29,000 of them with specialized degrees covering every sphere
of business and technical fields. This
makes their workforce the most talented and innovative.
Source
– (Boeing Official Website)
Keywords – The Boeing Company, HRM, Performance, Universalistic,
Contingency, SPSS, Conventional business practices.
Facts and Figures
One can keep
on discussing the processes, plans and other activities in place. ‘The proof of the pudding is in its eating’
they say.
So let us
now look at what the employees have to say as per an article titled ‘High tech’
with ‘High touch’ by deBBy
arkell …
deBBy arkell say ‘Ask
10 employees to name a Human Resources–provided service and you’re likely to
get 10 different responses. That’s a
good thing.’
HRM of Boeing provides several services and tools designed for
its employees that affect their personal life.
The current scene at Boeing means pressure and stress in attracting and
retaining new workers when you consider the following:
+
18
percent of the company’s employees are eligible to retire
+
19
percent will be eligible in five years
+
60
percent of the current Boeing population will be eligible to retire in 10 years.
Therefore this calls for the availability of the right technical
and other talent to meet future employee requirements to keep the workforce
intact. Boeing’s, HRM has to provide innovative schemes to retain benefit its
employees and also to keep the attrition rate at the lowest and services that
will differentiate Boeing from their competitors
“We want to make sure
that we have the best employees in Boeing, that we develop them, and that we
provide the right environment so they can be successful at all levels,” said
Rick Stephens, senior vice president, Human Resources and Administration.
“Boeing is looking to us to help create that environment—one that develops
leaders, where open dialog and diversity are valued, and that provides
competitive benefits.”
“This is a work in
progress,” Stephens said. “We’ve made some significant improvements in the way
we do business from a technical standpoint.
The HRM worked very hard in re-establish relationships with
employees especially in terms of balancing technology with personal hands-on
assistance.
Features in December
2007/January 2008
Employees from Boeing
explain services that helped their lives, both personally and professionally. This clearly reflects an environment created
by HRM that supports a healthy, diverse and engaged work force, who truly are
the heart and soul of Boeing.
Few examples of the
many services and benefits provided to Boeing employees.
Health Risk
Assessment
The Health Risk Assessment is a joint venture with Mayo
Clinic, online survey offered to employees and their spouses to receive
personalized health report highlighting potential health risks and how to
improve. In addition, it offered free coaching through Mayo Clinic overcome stress
and poor nutrition. Health conscious people today look for such benefits as it
is very expensive and it affords latest technology. Over 107,000 individuals were covered under
this the Boeing HRA. A quote from one of
the employees is impressive.
Quote - Here is Arends’ story.
“I’ve been with Boeing for two years, and I took the online
Health Risk Assessment last year for the first time. I learned as a result of
the assessment that my cholesterol was considered to be really high—a risk
factor—and that surprised me because of my age. I’d had my cholesterol checked
previously and knew it was borderline, but the assessment results opened my
eyes.
After taking the HRA, I started receiving good tips on
improving areas where I may not have scored so well—including my cholesterol.
After I took the assessment results to my doctor, we had a
good conversation, and I’ve since been able to get those numbers down.
It’s encouraging to know that I have good, healthy behaviors
too, and that I’m doing some things right!
I think it’s remarkable that Boeing cares so much about its
employees that it would make assessments like this available. I worked at
another company for six years, and they didn’t have anything that came even
close to this in terms of wellness. The company provided gym equipment for us
to use, but no counseling or other health-related information was available to us.”
In another case, Teresa Arends of Commercial Airplanes,
participated in the online Health Risk Assessment that motivated her to change
her eating habits—and to improve her fitness, in part by walking during her
lunch hour.
Boeing Human Resources hosted 113 events conducting about
20,000 screenings, dentify key risk factors and help prevent serious conditions
from developing.
Risk Assessment
Gary Toyama, IDS vice president, Southern California Region,
participated in on-site wellness screenings.
The online tools have come in handy as the focus of retirement-planning
strategy, proved very useful.
Clinic Web site that Boeing offers; the exercise monitor, a
great tool at $50 incentive. It was felt
by many that such tools such like the HRA made them feel that Boeing really
valued their health.
Pay
& Benefits Profile
The online Pay & Benefits Profile provides information
on employees’ share of the nearly $20 billion invested annually by Boeing
benefits employees and their families. The profile recently adopted an
electronic format, increasing functionality for employees.
Louman used her Pay & Benefits Profile to plan actively
for her future.
I’ve been with Boeing for almost 30 years and I use the Pay
& Benefits Profile quite a bit. The areas of focus have changed over the
years, it is useful in the retirement aspect and using the new modeling tools
[available online]. Boeing is providing the total picture, rather than just
part of it. Knowing the full value of
your pay and benefits package at Boeing helps you make informed decisions. The fact that Boeing provides this
information is indicative of the company wanting staff to know the value of
working for Boeing.
Leadership
Development Programs
Boeing provides leadership development programs and uses a
Leaders Teaching Leaders methodology to develop leaders, open the culture and
create a one-company mindset through all levels of the organization.
Rick Stephens,
senior vice president, Human Resources and Administration
Excerpts on
discussion on future action in HRM
“People feel they’re valued when they’re included, when
there’s an open environment, when diverse perspectives are respected, and when
the company appreciates what they’re doing. A computer can’t do that.
“To that end, Human Resources in 2008 will focus on ‘service
delivery’ and help us find the right balance between our HR professionals,
existing technology and tools, and new ones. We’ll use Internal Services
Productivity as the tool—or metric—to measure service delivery from a cost
standpoint.”
“Ultimately, Human Resources’ role is all about people and
creating a competitive advantage for Boeing. I’d like Boeing to be recognized
and valued as the best place to start a career and as the best place to work.”
“…employees fully understand the Leadership Attributes. We
modeled a “Leaders Teaching Leaders” structure to better engage the managers
and prepare them to help their employees understand how the attributes apply to
daily work.”
Training
Improvements
Training can be considered to be the backbone of HRM at
Boeing managed by Human Resources. Almost all of Boeing employee has undergone an on- or
off-hours course in an effort to enhance and update skills or maintain
certification. The Annual compliance scheme also includes training as a part
and parcel requirement for all Boeing employees in their respective fields /areas
in terms of computing security and acceptance of business gratuities.
Boeing made an effort in totally overhauling its training
courses. A massive effort saw streamlining
of the various courses offered and also fixed benchmarks for frequency of
training that was necessary. This overhaul led to a fine tuning for an efficient
schedule and frequency of completing the requisite training. It also provided for a new option to “test
out” on some of the courses. For example it allowed some of the employees to proceed
to the final test without first going through the entire course, provided they received
credit with an 80 percent passing score. The final result of all these exercised
was achieving more efficient and effective training that ultimately led to increased
employee satisfaction. This training scheme extended to the entire companywide
Internal Services Productivity growth and productivity initiative, along with
HRM’s plans for strategic service delivery since the training program delivered
were more efficient and to top it all proved cost-effective.
“The test-out option makes the training really efficient,”
said Michael Massie, Safety and Mission Assurance manager for Space Exploration
in Houston, earlier this year. “It takes into account what you already know and
saves having to take training you don’t need.
What
popular research claims…?
Influence
of HRM in Organization’s Performance
Several researchers
have propounded that HRM certainly has two positive effects on performance. One
set argues favoring universality and the other set favors contingency.
Universality researchers argue that most HR practices are consistently proving better
and efficient than the conventional practices. They also claim that
organizations, not withstanding size, industry, or business strategy, should
and must adopt the universalistic strategy (Arthur, 1994; Delery and Dotty,
1996).
The Contingency
scholars on the other hand argued that the assumption of its possibility, only
in high external fit condition, underlies the strategy-performance link which
is also known as the best fit (Bamberger and Meshoulam, 2000; Boxall and
Purcell, 2000).
Therefore
these two hypotheses were developed based on these understandings.
Need for flexibility in
HRM practices to influence performance positively (Martell and Carroll, 1995)
(Dyer,
1983) He propounds that Strategic HRM would help in improving the following..
+
Organization’s human
resources cost benefits
+
Enhance operational
efficiency
+
Increase innovation and
revolution strengths and
+
Increase organizational
performance benefits.
The
Boeing HRM enhanced employment security afforded selective hiring, created
self-managed team, provided for high pay company contingency performance, implemented
extensive training programs and lastly reduced status differences and
information availability among workers (Pfeffer, 1994).
Cook and
Ferris (1986) strongly suggested that Human Resource Management of Boeing functioned
most effectively and efficiently helping it face several challenges from environment
changes. Boeing Company has benefited both directly and indirectly from Human Resource
Management. Their functioning allowed for positivity
transformations into practical initiative, achieving organizational goals
efficiently and also encouraging line-managers to participate and involve in
day to day decision making process (Gomez-Mejia et al., 1995).
Welbourne
and Andrews (1996) argued from the view point of population ecology by stating that
their Human Resource Management policies positively influenced the company’s
performance since it could create structural cohesion resulting in their employees
generating a structure that powered Boeing forward. It also helped Boeing to successfully respond
to its environmental changes at the same time continued to still moving
forward.
Several researchers
around firmly believe that strategic implementation of Human Resource Management
in companies that has high productive proved different from the companies that
had low productive (Misa and Stein, 1983).
Cook and
Ferris (1986) researched on Human Resource Management practices in industries
that were on the decline. They also
confirm that most companies that performing high had actually adopted Human Resource
Management measures, while companies with low productivity had deployed conventional
business practices.
Huselid
(1993), in a more recent research, has found that a positive relationship
between Human Resource Management practices and firm financial performance.
(Orlando
and Jonson, 2004).They have concluded that companies that adopted two or more Human
research Management practices might benefit more from its implementation than companies
that adopt traditional models
Adverse Comments
There are researches who do not subscribe to this line of
thinking…
MacDuffie
(1995), could not find any evidence to prove that there is any correlation between
appropriate Human Resource Management practices that could influence an
organization’s performance positively. This
is similar to the argument offered by Bird and Beechler (1995) that there is no
guarantee to positive performance on account of the number of Human Resource Management
models implemented by any organization.
It is but the positive performance from Human Resource Management
practices that resulted from strategic management within the organization and depends
on the market it operates in.
Conclusion
and Recommendation
It is
concluded here that the factor of Human Resource Management and product
management strategy contributes to better performance of a company. Also as per
most previous studies on Boeing, on examination of data from around 100 firms
out of a possible 150 worldwide (Bae and Lawler, 2000), the result confirmed
the validity of the contingency model in Boeing companies worldwide.
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(1994), The New American Workplace, ILR Press, New York, NY.
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For more information on some of the many services discussed
in this package of articles, visit the sites—on the Boeing intranet as well as
the World Wide Web—listed below.
+
HR
Five Strategies site: http://humanresources.web.boeing.com
+
Dependent
Eligibility Verification: http://hr.web.boeing.com/published/9/docs/dv_qa.pdf
+
and
http://humanresources.web.boeing.com/index.aspx?com=9&id=151
+
Alternative
Dispute Resolution: http://globaldiversity.whq.boeing.com/adr.html
+
Training:
http://ltd.web.boeing.com
