Question

Human Resources Management

ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS
WHICH ARE BASED ON THE CASELET PROVIDED

Staff retention and staying power: Nissan builds on loyalty at Sunderland plan
Some of carmaker’s earliest recruits are now among its most senior executives.
Since the first Bluebird rolled off the production line in July 1986, the Nissan plant in Sunderland has grown from a £50m assembly operation into the UK’s biggest car production site.
Now a £3.7bn investment employing 6,800 people, it is also north-east England’s biggest private sector employer, offering relatively good pay and secure work in an area with the UK’s highest regional unemployment.
For these reasons, employees tend to stick around. Turnover of production staff is 3.66 per cent a year, against the UK average of 13.6 [per cent], according to the CIPD, the professional association for HR and some of the earliest recruits, identifiable by their low employee number, are among the most senior executives.
Keith Watson, a 55-year-old production supervisor on trim and chassis line 2, joined in 1985 as employee number 179. ‘In the early days we were building four cars a day’, he says. News that Nissan wanted more did not go down well. ‘We were panicking, saying we will never get six a day. Now it’s 2,000 a day’
As it has expanded, some of the biggest changes in the plant have focused on ergonomics and technology to reduce strain on workers and accelerate the pace of production.
Each of the plant’s 300 supervisors, responsible for more than 4,000 production staff, is trained in ergonomic assessment.
Innovations include seat shuttles, developed by the in- house kaizen, or continuous improvement team, to allow operators to sit and be transported as they work on cars on the line, rather than having to duck and twist.
On the line where the Qashqai and electric leaf are made, a height-adjustable skillet, resembling the middle section of an accordion, raises and lowers the vehicle to the height at which the operator needs to work. Robotics have played a part too, with the body shop moving from high levels of manual welding to 93 per cent automation. The new welding facility for the Infiniti, the luxury brand that Sunderland has just begun producing, is completely automated with 141 robots. However, work on the production line remains intense and tiring; stamina is vital.
‘It’s still a hard job’, says Mr Watson. ‘Some operators are so fluent it’s unbelievable; it’s like second nature to them. They’re athletes in a way’. Mr Watson’s contemporaries in 1985 included team leader Trevor Mann (number 127), now Nissan’s chief performance officer and most senior European executive, based in Yokohama.
Mr Mann says the early intake was a tight knit team with a desire ‘to be as good as the Japanese’. Colin Lawther (number 120), a chemist who joined in 1985, is senior vice-president responsible for manufacturing, supply chain management and purchasing in Europe.
‘We came from a fairly deprived area. we had this tremendous fighting spirit’, he says. Kevin Fitzpatrick, a paint shop supervisor back in 1985 (number 63), is the site’s most senior employee as Nissan motor manufacturing’s UK Vice-President. He says a culture of encouraging people to learn and try new things has helped keep him there. ‘In my previous company your only chance to progress was if somebody retired’, he says. of 4,305 production staff, more than a third are over 40 and late 50s is the site’s most common
retirement age. But this is not always the end of the story. Barry Loneragan (employee 102) joined as a team leader in 1985 and retired as technical services manager eight years ago. Now, aged 67, he returns regularly, employed by an outside agency, to do plant tours. So do two other pensioners.
Mr Loneragan is proud of what the early intake achieved. ‘We had to go out and prove ourselves. It was that togetherness; the will to succeed. The legacy lives on’, he says.

QUESTION 1
What are the benefits of Nissan’s approach to employee retention? What factors should other
organisations wanting to adopt a similar approach need to consider?

QUESTION 2
In the context of the caselet, do you think Nissan should focus on career development and career
management? Shed light on the changes in the nature and forms of career.

QUESTION 3
Critically analyse what effects the current economic climate has on rewards, and how this
environment is affecting rewards in your organization.

QUESTION 4
“HR management must support the organisation’s strategy, which flows from its vision, mission and
strategic goals”. Critically analyse the statement with special reference to distinctive features of
Strategic Human Resource Management in light of the above caselet.

Answer 1

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What are the benefits of Nissan’s approach to employee retention? What factors should other organisations wanting to adopt a similar approach need to consider?

There are a number of ways in which Nissan's approach to employee retention benefits the company. They include:

• Reduced turnover hassles any employee leaving the department of Human Resource requires a considerable amount of time, not to mention the time they spend on the replacement, i.e. the screening of candidates, interviews and everything else. The employee engagement strategy by Nissan has strengthened the productivity of workers as employers may establish long-lasting working relationships with their colleagues in order to maintain a safe work atmosphere.
• Nissan's HR department is able to minimize time and expenses by concentrating on recruiting workers and seeking young, competent staff who are trained to perform interviews and negotiate and train them as well.
• A new employee may take a lot of time to adapt to the new work environment by increasing total productivity to the level of productivity of their substituted workers. Nissan can sustain high efficiency by maintaining workers who are already accustomed to their duties and executing them well.

Other organisations wanting to adopt this similar approach ought to consider a number of factors:

• Organizations also fail to recognize that every employee has its own talents. Career development The workers are often not happy with their jobs because of the lack of adequate training and the loss of interest in what they do. their skills are limited. It is the duty of the company to teach you how to use these skills and to provide your career with a sense of security.
• The formation of successful interpersonal relationships with workers is important for managers. Good pay and benefits also do not keep workers happy because they can handle their employers.
• The appreciation and recognition of the effort put in by employees is of major significance to the financial and non-financial rewards. The best in them is to strengthen and motivate employees.
• This is important for companies , in order for them to manage their work and personal lives, that work hours set for workers are adequately flexible. This has an impact on the decision of employees to stay in a organization.

In the context of the caselet, do you think Nissan should focus on career development and career management? Shed light on the changes in the nature and forms of career.

Nissan will concentrate on job growth and administration, because these are crucial strategies for increasing profitability, as it gives workers a sense of belonging and is respected, while keeping employees dedicated and satisfied.Career growth can be achieved by group gatherings, which enable workers from different departments to communicate and learn what they are doing. This encourages them to think and discover ways to work together. It will also create lasting working relationships between employees and encourage them to find innovative solutions to some of the problems in the organization.Moreover, hen workers know that beyond their current positions, there are different opportunities for them and that they can support both the company and the workforce by seeking other chances.

Critically analyse what effects the current economic climate has on rewards, and how this environment is affecting rewards in your organization.

This year a major blow was made to the economy by the Corona virus pandemic and its associated confining. Employers have to revise compensation and pay strategies and be flexible, whenever possible, with their compensation programmes. Organizations have some compensation information to look at which the workers and the company as a whole are compensated. Including:

• Benefits – managers must speak to workers in order to ensure that they are healthy at home or at work
• Insurance – workers believe that they will receive compensation during the current pandemic and hope to be compensated by their medical bills if they contract the virus or operate.

A few financially qualified organisations, like our own, have built ways to support their workers in these tough times;

• Re-purpose of the employee emergency funding annual bonus program budget.
• Increasing sales accelerators beyond some degree of achievement.
• Implementing short-term incentive systems to reward high efficiency and success and empower them.

“HR management must support the organisation’s strategy, which flows from its vision, mission and strategic goals”. Critically analyse the statement with special reference to distinctive features of Strategic Human Resource Management in light of the above caselet.

The HR Department contributes immensely to corporate performance as it primarily manages and organizes the workforce. They supervise the people inside the organization and provide human resources services that meet both the needs of the corporation and its workers. The HR department is also obligated to follow the policy of the company. Many of Nissan 's HR department's approaches have been applied to incorporate the strategy of Nissan;

• As staff needs were determined, the organization strengthened its employees to make sure that they did not stress themselves when the productivity increased by four and they felt they could not do so.
• Pay and benefits, as well as benefits provided by HR, encourage workers to perform at work. Employees are likely to find work elsewhere without adequate incentives. Even pensioners will come back to visit Nissan after their retirement.
• The HR department will guarantee that it gives people a culture of motivation employee growth and training

Learn and try new things as it helped an employee at Nissan retain his place within the company. It means that workers are on a course to ensure that they make their best contribution to the company.

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