1.1. Early on, Dr. Vasella was able to identify that the company’s turnover rate is more than acceptable. It was becoming a problem for them to make people stay. He noted that it is not enough for the company to pay good money to their employees. They also must be able to solicit their commitment and drive for excellence at the same time.
1.2. One of the factors affecting this high turnover rate was the inability of the company to recognize talent for promotions within. By the time they do so, these potential senior executives were already on their way out the door onto the next big conglomerate willing to pay for the talents they bring. Novartis had a low turnout when it comes to developing talent from the roots up to top management. They did not have systems in place to develop raw talent but in just 10 years, they were able to produce three times more top executives from within than what they had when they started.
1.3. Dr. Vasella, being the CEO was tasked with this daunting problem and had to set into motion several performance management systems in his effort to drive turnover rate to the bare minimum. He directed the team towards achieving a common goal. He was able to recognize that manpower resource is equally important as any other resources business turn to in order to improve their standing in the industry. Further, he developed his employees to develop a company culture that promotes integrity and honesty in the workplace. His performance evaluation system also was able to provide for proper motivation which solicited top performance from his employees. He compensated them for this as well.
1.4. There was no additional information needed for Dr. Vasella to make a decision at that time. The case study was very well written. It started by giving the viewers a glimpse of the beginnings of Novartis, how it evolved and how it became big in the pharmaceutical industry. In the introduction itself, you can actually gain insight already of what the issues the case intended to discuss. The company history further gave the much-needed information for deeper understanding of the situation on hand. The body of the case study was well developed as well and the exhibits in the end provided for a graphical representation of data used for the write-up.
1.5. In 1996, the company put in place a performance management system which measured the employee’s performance against set goals and business objectives plus their adherence to the company’s established core values and behavior guidelines. The company decided on implementing, on a global scale, one uniform system that will be used for evaluation of all Novartis employees around the world. They adopted a two-dimensional scale system focused on the achievement of business objectives and adherence to Novartis’ values and behaviors. This performance evaluation system was further assessed thru anonymous online surveys conducted around the world. They found out that there were high acceptance ratings for the newly implemented system as reinforced by the good overall performance of the company. Of course, with every performance evaluation, is a corresponding pay-for-performance scheme implemented also around the world. Commensurate to their performance, high-performing employees received as much as double their base pay while low-performing employees receive no pay increase or bonus at all.
The implemented performance management system resulted in a company culture of high performance, high gains. The development of this highly-rewarding company culture is one of the advantages of this particular company initiative. Citing a disadvantage would be the difficulty in achieving consistency in implementation across different cultures. One of the difficulties cited were that employees had a hard time absorbing the company’s values since the list was too long to remember and that some values contradicted those of the local norms. In countries with unions, the local division had to overcome their resistance by making them realize that what they are receiving as base salary is higher than international standards and that they have the capacity to earn even more due to the pay-for-performance rating system. The resistance ended upon realizing that their system actually works for the employee’s benefit.
Novartis also recognized the importance of the roles of their managers in cascading the system they want to implement. The company focused also on training their managers to eventually become leaders in talent development and performance enhancement.
1.6. To further address the company’s problem of high turnover rates, aside from the implemented and highly-successful performance management system, the company might want to look into applying a talent referral system wherein each employee will be rewarded if and when a potential talent they recommend gets hired and gains tenure with the company. They may be rewarded financially upon hiring and upon regularization of the new employee. Thru this program, each employee will be on the lookout for fresh talent that can help the company reach its end goals.
1.7. Some of the key takeaway points from this case study revolved around how management recognizes talents, develops and rewards them. The implementation of the performance management system now becomes the shared responsibility of both front-line managers and top management. Compensating performance with commensurate rewards further reinforce employee motivation and drive. Another would be that going thru the different phases of management actually enables you to form a comprehensive view and understanding of top management. Finally, for any program a manager implements, there must be understanding and appreciation of the whole process to ensure a comprehensive grasp of all tasks on hand and measurement guidelines and to ensure consistency in implementation.
1b. From our case in point, Novartis attempted to do this only after giving six years of complete freedom to adopt local practices and integrate these practices into the company’s values systems. With the implementation of the performance management system during the start of the company, Novartis attempted to implement on a global scale, only to experience difficulties along the way. The local divisions had to handle resistance to set values due to the incompatibility of these values to what the local employees were accustomed to. The resistance continued on in areas with very strong union relations. Managers in these regions had to create a different level of understanding of the processes amongst the front line managers and union leaders in these regions. They had to make them realize that the programs work for their improvements and benefits them if they perform accordingly. Thereafter, when the company was ready to actually implement a single, uniform system, they did. There was high acceptance of the current system and found out that the employees were highly motivated with the pay-for-performance scheme. However, this did not come without questions which made the company think of ways on how to improve their current talent development and performance evaluation system. In all aspects of the implementation, issues and concerns arose. Management is still dealing with some of these issues and concerns, some on a local level and some on a global scale. But in general, with the talent development and evaluation system in place, one can note that it is indeed plausible for a huge company such as Novartis to implement such system on a global scale. However, it requires for everyone to have a complete understanding of all underlying process and justifications for these process, for the implementation to be a success. Each member of the company had a role to fulfill and a job to consistently do. Without the cooperation of everybody involved in the implementation, one could not expect implementation on such a large scale. Novartis was able to achieve this in under 10 years under the leadership of a CEO who recognized the need for developing and appreciating the employees.
1c. Novartis ranks third in the pharmaceutical industry. It has survived several mergers. With these mergers came pressing concerns and issues that came with the company they have acquired. And yet, it is Novartis who remains to be the umbrella company. In this light, they must be doing something very effective. The CEO, Dr. Vasella was able to recognize that proper utilization of manpower resources is key to a company’s continuing improvement and evolution. He focused on setting up programs to do just this. Their talent development and performance management system and evaluation hve proven to be successful as indicated in the online survey they hold consistently. Results have shown that the program had been implemented with high consistency and uniformity across the globe. It had also been accepted by a continuously increasing number of employees with high acceptance ratings. The employees approved of the programs implementation, processes and incentive system. The use of the normal distribution or bell curve during assessment is highly recommended as it was seen to ensure fairness in the evaluation process. The normal distribution took into consideration both performance and talent differences of each employee in comparison to another employee at the same job grade level. By using the bell curve, it keeps the evaluation as honest as possible, eliminating biases along the way. With the use of the bell curve plus the evaluation grid, the managers engaged in the evaluation process are guided as to how the employees are to be assessed. They follow certain guidelines and would just be needing to reflect on how the employees have performed over a certain period of time. Thereafter, the employee will now have to be grouped under a particular part of the curve where it speaks most likely of their overall performance. However, Novartis still had reservations on whether they should continue to just encourage the use of the normal distribution or bell curve or if they would strongly require the use of it. Continued implementation and feedback solicitation would be deemed necessary for the company to finally decide on whether this rating system would remain as just an encouragement or will finally be a requirement.
Accenture’s War for Talent In India
2.1. The most prominent problem presented in this case study was that Accenture was faced with the daunting task of hiring 2,000 management consultants in a span of 1 year. This is mass scale hiring for a highly skilled job position. The management consultants will be utilized to bring in well-thought of, highly specialized solutions to challenges arising in different sectors of the business.
2.2. Accenture, being a technology services provider, focused on hiring IT professionals when they first started. With IT professionals being their main manpower source, the need for management consultants posed a very different requirement this time. The position required a very different skill set from that of IT professionals and very diverse at that. Because of this, hiring at a scale seemed impossible.
2.3. In this scenario, since the problem at hand is directly related to the Human Resources Department, Jill Smart, Accenture’s global head of human resources was the decision maker. However, since Accenture is a very dynamic and global company, their Human Resources Department or their recruitment team is made up of different leaders or managers that help each other and team up with each other to come up with well-discussed solutions to issues that they faced at that time. The case also introduced to us Rahul Varma, Accenture’s India’s director of Human Resources and John Campagnino (senior leader in Accenture’s Global Recruiting Organization), as key point persons who were able to bring forth a new recruitment model responsible for Accenture’s success now.
2.4. The case study gave all needed information on what the decision had to do to resolve the current dilemma. The case presented the scenario systematically right from the start. It gave a background on what Accenture is all about and its history, to begin with. The case also gave us how things evolved and how each issue and concern came about and what the team did to try and give plausible solutions to try and resolve these issues. The case also presented various diagrams to further explain and reinforce the creation and implementation of the new recruitment model the company is currently implementing globally. Also, the case study was able to present best practices from this very dynamic and global company.
2.5. Accenture’s hiring team knew what they had to do to come with a solution to this daunting problem. They had to somehow convince and make various industry experts realize that their skills can be utilized for consulting as well. They made use of what they call as their global delivery network or GDN. This process aimed to provide high-cost economies with the technical skills present in low-cost economies and at the same time provide these skilled workers at only emerging market wage rates. With this Global Delivery Network, Accenture was able to provide for the much-needed skills from anywhere in the world to varying locations via their Global Delivery Centers. The advantage of this would be that they are providing a diversified pool of manpower resources composed of both local and regional talents. Another advantage of this strategy is that Accenture was able to go global instead of just providing for domestic clients. These delivery centers were now also just focused on delivering the manpower resource, lifting the responsibilities from country-based offices. These offices now had the extra time to take care of their local clients more, thus strengthening their business relationships.
2.6. Much like any other recruitment firm, several approaches should be readily available for utilization in case a primary option fails. In this case, since scale hiring is needed, all avenues for recruitment must be explored. The company can make use of a talent referral program which they can cascade internally. Their existing pool of high-skilled and technical employees might be the right persons to recommend colleagues who can jump ship and join the company.
2.7. A very striking takeaway from this case study is learning how to think global. Make the world your market for talent. Accenture made use of their global delivery network to source out experts in different fields across the globe. Another would be the relentless struggle to get the best out of what was available to them at the time. They were able to utilize students to help out in one of their major recruitment projects but still came out with quality results. Third would be not to sacrifice quantity for quality. Time and again, the company was able to do mass scale hiring of quality professionals without sacrificing the kind of manpower resource they provided their clients with. The need to be innovative is another managerial lesson that one can take from this case study. When old process and procedures that worked wonders in the past does not give the same results, innovation is needed. Accenture once applied the principles behind supply management to recruitment. They made it possible for the recruitments process to be broken down into several components, much like how a supply chain works – several units working together to achieve a goal. Lastly, managers who go great lengths to overcome a challenge reaches great lengths in one’s career. In Accenture, they reward managers who have implemented innovations. A case in point would be John Campagnino, who at the time of 500/5, was just a senior leader. He was one of the managers who thought of the applying the principles of supply chain management to recruitment. He then became Accenture’s global head of their department.
2.a. Hiring for IT personnel at India then became a problem for the recruitment team. It posed several challenges along the way. With its slow start, partly due to the fact that Accenture then was not known as a company who provided for IT services, the established company behaved as if it was just starting. Another hindrance to their goal of speeding things up was their shortfall of interviewers with the necessary technical background. Since these interviewers were not present locally, they had to utilize their manpower pool from overseas (US) and had no choice but to do their interviews over the phone. With the considerable time difference between the two countries, the interview process took on a lot of time and was further slowing things down. With this, there was now another problem to deal with. They had to hire interviewers with the technical background to be able to push on further with their primary goal of hiring IT professionals. To top it all up, when one would think that it could not anymore get worse, came another challenge of hiring 500 IT professionals in just 5 weeks. The company had to tap their global network and had to fly in high-level recruiters from different parts of the world just to deliver the required manpower. This was also the time that Varma, the one in-charge for that challenge to go back to his roots and seek the assistance of his old school to help provide for the front-line team to do the initial process of hiring. The company trained students to do the job. However, still they found out that all their efforts were not enough. Varma and his team came to realize that they are in need for a new recruitment model just to produce the results. At this time when they needed to produce results, came another challenge of setting up this new recruitment model. All efforts paid off since the team was able to deliver the 500 IT professionals required of them.
2.b. The newly developed recruitment model is indeed innovative. It worked on the principle of breaking down their traditional hiring and recruitment process into several branches of operations, much like that of what a supply chain would do. The company felt that the traditional model that they were following was not fast enough to provide for mass scale recruitment requirements. With the new recruitment model, a workforce specialized with very distinct capabilities were utilized to deliver large amounts of manpower resource at a time. If a supply chain had raw materials, recruitment had CVs. These CVs were processed and went into the screening and evaluation and finally produced into the final product of new hires. In the traditional process, the candidates are sources out from job sites, third party headhunters and other outsourcing channels and would then go into screening, interview, job offer then on-boarding. In the new model, the hiring process went thru four strategic phases. The initial phase would, of course, be sourcing and screening of candidates. The qualified candidates would now be assessed by relationship experts using standardized processes focused on timely delivery and quality selection. The on-boarding process comes after, making use of technology to keep in touch with the new hires. Lastly, the new hires undergo training and process understanding and compliance. However, as compared to a supply chain process, this new model was highly interactive in terms of human relations. From the very beginning, the team made sure to personally talk to the candidates, keep in touch with them via e-mails, phone calls and other forms of human communication outlets. It made sure to deliver a personalized hiring experience to the candidates. It does not end there. Upon hiring, to reinforce their personalized hiring process, the recruitment team made sure that the new hires feel welcome by giving them company gifts and welcome cards. The new model also made sure that different sets of people handled different stages of hiring, increasing the integrity of the whole process. What really sets apart this new model is the inclusion of the capabilities function which evaluated the whole recruitment in process in terms of cost efficiency. This function gave insightful analysis on the whole process.
2.c. At this point in Accenture’s development as a global company, I honestly do not think there would be any significant changes that need to be implemented to alter or improve their recruitment process. The current recruitment process is a very systematic process which involves the use of both technology and human touch and interaction to bring results. It even goes beyond the on-boarding and training phase of a traditional hiring process by providing a functional department to evaluate the different stages and incorporating analysis of end results numerically. This ensures that the Human Resources department does not remain a cost center for the company but becomes a highly cost-efficient resource department instead. This new recruitment model even provides for an automated work tool or a dashboard that provides for the steps the recruitment process have to take to provide for specific manpower needs at any given time. This is the first time that I have heard of such a tool. This tool provided the team with standardized formulas to predict efficiently lead time indicators and possible hindrances along the way. Issues and concerns are identified at once which results to real-time problem-solving solutions. This very innovative recruitment model involves a lot of highly systematic process and employs a human resources department on a large scale if you compare it with companies who implement the traditional hiring process. Due to more team members, one can expect higher recruitment costs. However, the costs are justified if the model can produce highly qualified new hires on a large scale requirement without sacrificing the quality of hires. This then creates a perception in the industry of the kind of company Accenture is. In return, more clients will see its value and results to a striving and efficient business that expect to stand the test of time.
2.d. Yes, I think the new recruitment model can be used to hire management consultants. The new model basically still applies the backbone and principles of recruitment but has implemented innovations in the company’s effort to produce the best possible new hires in any given time frame. However, since the new model was used to hire IT professionals, the model was structured to provide for the manpower pool with specific skills sets. Adaptation is indeed necessary. The new model must now be tailored fit to provide for the requirements of the recruitment team to be able to deliver. All three stages (sourcing, candidate management and on-boarding) must be retrofitted to enable the recruitment team to hire management consultants, this time, leaving the fundamental principle intact. Some of the adaptations implemented included a buddy system for the new hires and welcome parties to reinforce the new hires’ decision why they picked Accenture over another company. Since the new hires are management consultants, highly skilled, more experienced employees, the company had to make sure that they stay with the company. They made sure that their needs were met and their on-boarding process highly personalized. The company cannot afford to lose any of the hires since they were marginal in terms of numbers due to the diverse and specialized skill set the job position required. With this, Accenture further implemented a process to follow up on how the new hires were doing. They did checkpoints on a 60-day and 90-day term basis. They made sure to follow up on how the new hires are doing in terms of them settling in and adapting and if they had issues and concerns that they needed to be answered immediately. The company took the hiring process to a whole new level with their functional recruitment model.
A New Approach to Improving Asia’s Labor Conditions
3. Ideally, the responsibility for ensuring the welfare of workers in a supply chain should fall on the shoulders of the owner of the supply chain company. Since they employ these workers, they should create a healthy, safe and ideal working environment and conditions for these workers to do their job well. However, since there are more pressing concerns to address such as human trafficking and child labor, sub-standard working conditions and other human rights issues, I think the best solution forward would really be a program that champions shared responsibility. Since rectifying these concerns involve various sectors of society, it is just fair for all of these sectors to work together to resolve them. Since the government cannot police these large-scale irregularities on its own, shared responsibility is the way to go. The more forces working together in the resolution of a common problem, the faster all these issues get solved. Hopefully, with the shared responsibility program, working conditions of workers who stay up during the Holidays to give us the services and products that we clamor for, would now be up to par to what they truly deserve. Yes, I would advocate for the shared responsibility program to do this.
