Article review_ What makes an organization rank among the best employers
Transcript of Article review_ What makes an organization rank among the best employers
International Business School
What makes an organization rank among the best employers: A case study on Hilti Employer Training and development program
Prepared by:
NEDA MOTTAGHI GOLSHAN MR091241
DR MUHAMMAD MADI ABDULLAH HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
MRC 2033 SEM I 2010/11
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS SCHOOL UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA
Neda Mottaghi Golshan IBS- UTM
Sem 1- 2010/2011 1
What makes an organization rank among the best employers:
A case study on Hilti Employer Training and development program
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 2
2. Hilti at a Glance ............................................................................................................. 3
3. What makes a company a Best Employer? ..................................................................... 5
4. How Hilti have managed to become Best employer? ...................................................... 8
4-1. Successful company ................................................................................................ 8
4-2. Passion for people development .............................................................................. 9
4-3. Living the cooperate culture .................................................................................. 10
4-4. Independent and solid ........................................................................................... 13
4-5. Employer of choice ............................................................................................... 13
5. Hilti build product knowledge with passion and without pain ....................................... 14
6. Recommendations ........................................................................................................ 16
7. Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 17
8. References ................................................................................................................... 19
9. Appendices .................................................................................................................. 20
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1. Introduction
The Hilti Corporation has achieved the third place in the 2010 best employer in
Switzerland (Hilti ranks among the best employers, 2010). Among over 100 companies
which were assessed in the study less than 30 companies were short listed in the final
evaluation. In the study over 400 Hilti employees were randomly interviewed on the
topics of respect, fairness, and company pride and team orientation.
It have been observed while many companies offer monetary rewards and innovative
benefits, such as Yoga classes, Stock options and cappuccino bars to attract top talents to
their organizations it is still not enough to keep these great people. Being Best employer
needs an approach to a working environment in which the employees are engaged and
committed to business success.
Hilti started as wholly owned company in 1941, and since then have grown dramatically.
With the growth in its marketing and direct selling department, Hilti learned through all
these years to have satisfied customer it first needs to have satisfied employees.
Regarding that since 90’s it have worked intensively to make a corporate culture and
focused on training its employees to turnaround the organization. The implementation of
“Champion 3 C” strategy standing for Customers, Unique competency and Concentration
on market in 1997 was the first step for approaching the corporate culture (The 3 Cs
continue, 2006). But that only was not enough for Hilti to ensure employee satisfaction.
By 2001, Hilti started with a new people strategy and new foundations have been laid for
global training and development. They form part of the people strategy, based on the Hilti
vision and thus on the Champion 3C strategy. In 2006 Hilti signed the UN Global
Compact. The ten principles of this agreement applied to human rights, labor, the
environment and anti-corruption. These all shows the approach of Hilti to become a
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successful organization by focusing on its employee trainings and bringing a corporate
culture.
In following report is presented in three fold. First the Author will be giving some brief
information about Hilti Corporations, its Success history and the organizational structure.
Next a discussion on the key characteristics of Best employers is presented, where the
authors will emphasize on the training and development of employees in organization as
an important factor for becoming the Best employer. On the last part the Author will
elaborate more on how Hilti Corporation has incorporated all these characteristics with a
focus on training and development program for its employees to become the Employer of
Choice in 2010.
2. Hilti at a Glance
Hilti is a global company which provides leading-edge technology to construction
industry. Hilti does that through its innovative and value added solutions. Hilti’s
headquarters are located in Schaan in the principality of Liechtenstein.
Hilti has over 30,000 employees in over 120 countries worldwide, who inspire their
customers and build a better future. Hilti’s corporate culture is based on integrity,
courage, team work and commitment.
Hilti stands out by its innovation, high quality, direct customer relations and effective
marketing. Over two thirds of Hiltis’ employees are connected directly to the customers
in sales organizations and engineering which leads to more than 200,000 customer
contacts each day. Hilti has its own production plants as well as research and
development centres in Europe and Asia.
Hilti was founded in 1941 as a small family company and since then it developed to
become a global company. Hilti have remained a family company as since 2000 Martin
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Hilti Family holds all shares. This fact has been a positive point for Hilti to sustain
continues long term development (Hilti in brief , 2009).
Moreover, Hilti makes long-term success of the company by integrating the interest of all
company’s partners as customers, suppliers and employees into its strategy actively
honouring its social and ecological responsibility.
Hilti long term mission is to passionately create enthusiastic customers and build a better
future by:
� Fostering company climate in which every team member is valued and able to grow.
� Developing win-win relationships with its partners and suppliers.
� Embracing responsibility towards society and environment.
� Aiming to achieve significant and sustainable, profitable growth, thus securing its
freedom of action.
In addition Hilti is aiming to reach to this point by building a culture based on commitment,
responsibility, trust, tolerance and respect for others. The common values shared within Hilti
Corporation include:
� Integrity: Applying truth and honesty in the attitude and behaviour, which mean the
consistency in what you say and what you and meanwhile being accountable for your
action.
� Commitment: Strive for excellence and demonstrate the courage to accept risk,
celebrate success and reward achievement.
� Teamwork: Working together for building a better organization and foster an
atmosphere for open communication, sharing ideas and cooperation.
� Courage: Being open for breaking normality by innovation and taking risk. Exercise
the freedom of choice: love it, leave it, or change it.
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Hilti organizational structure is briefly illustrated in Figure 1.1 (Corporate Organization,
2009).
Figure 1.1- Hilti organizational Structure
3. What makes a company a Best Employer?
It has been observed that so many companies come up with the theory that we are not
too big or our work is not glamorous so we can not be a Best employer. The studies
(Ted Marusarz, 2009) have shown that there exist no relationship between company
size or industry and being Best employer, while on the other hand it have been proved
that high employee engagement is fundamental for being Best employer.
Best Employers create an environment in which employee’s needs are met, so they
are inspired to do their best work, motivated to stay with the company and promote
the company to their friends, family and customers. Five common characteristics of
Best employer are discussed below (Pi Wen Looi, 2005).
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Figure 2.1 – A schematic drawing of Best Employer
� Inspired Leadership: All Best employers have leadership teams that are an
illustration for commitment to their companies and their people. They do this
by maintaining visibility within their employees, providing clear direction of
the company and what the employees’ role is and also encouraging openness
and involvement of employees.
� Unique company culture: Best employers are known for their unique culture
and they hire people based on “culture fit”. They create a different and unique
employment experience for their employers and emphasize on the promotion
from within, which will attract people who see their success in the business
success. By making this unique culture Best employer benefit from superior
performance of their employees.
� Focus on Growing Talent: Best employers provide opportunity for their
employees to develop and grow personally and professionally. Best employers
have a focus on their talent pipeline and make sure that high potentials will
receive training needed for their development.
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Best employers make an investment on their talent management and spend
more time and money on training and development programs in contrast with
other organizations. This focus is realized through:
- Commitment to training: Best employers provide access to training
programs and channels, put more employees in job rotation programs for
developmental purposes, and provide the employees with individual
mentoring programs. The trainings are based on leadership and technical
aspects are delivered through classroom training, e-platform, mentoring
coaching and company libraries.
- Robust Talent Pipeline: Best employers mostly have programs that help
employees to plan their own career path through mentoring and
coaching. They mostly find the high potentials in the organization and
provide them with learning opportunities. Moreover best employers
provide managers information on how to manage their talent pipeline
and develop their employees.
� Strong sense of Accountability: Best employers mostly drill a strong sense of
accountability in their employees. They respect their employees by holding
them accountable for the results and recognize their achievements and success
with enthusiasm and celebration.
� Aligned HR practices and excellent execution: Best employers do not
necessarily have more HR practices than others, but their HR practices are
aligned with their business strategies and are executed effectively.
Based on the discussion above it is quite obvious that Best employers hire right
people, give them opportunities for training and development, get feedback from them
for farther improvement, involve employees in business decisions and keep
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employees updated about company direction and communicate clearly and effectively
with them to make sure they are aligned with business goals. The benefits of these
practices can be summarized as:
� Financial Performance: Best Employers have the advantage of revenue
growth, profits and total shareholder returns.
� Talent Attraction: Best employers usually receive more applications and
have higher employee retention rate, which leads to significant savings, higher
productivity and knowledge retention for the company.
� Employee Engagement: Best employers have more passionate and engaged
employees which will cause the company success.
4. How Hilti have managed to become Best employer?
As it have been discussed in previous section the main characteristics of Best
employers can be summarized as inspired leadership, unique company culture, focus
on employee training and talent development, sense of accountability and through
aligned HR practices which are executed magnificently. In this part of report we will
observe how Hilti have brought all these characteristics to its organization, with a
main focus on training and talent development. The Author has also demonstrated
some examples on how Hilti build product knowledge with passion and without pain
and stories shared by Hilti employee about their developments at Hilti.
4-1. Successful company
Close to customer: Hilti‘s innovative, unique worldwide direct selling model
results in more than 200,000 customer contacts per day. Being this much close to
the customers has helped Hilti to learn and react to customer needs. On the other
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hand this closeness requires high quality and competence and Hilti does that with
trained sale team and CRM software.
Groundbreaking products, systems and services: Hilti has been the first
company to introduce the unique DX direct fastening technology and the electro
pneumatic hammering principle deployed in rotary hammers. It also continues to
set standards in construction industry through introduction of innovative products,
systems and services. Some of the latest examples can be mentioned as fleet
management and the broad range of solutions that enhance health and safety on the
construction site.
Extraordinary design: Hilti have an outstanding level of customer orientation and
also clear added value of its products. Awards of international renown, such as iF
product design award or the red dot design award are some proof to it (What sets
us apart, 2009).
4-2. Passion for people development
Hilti invest in it employee development by providing them opportunities for
functional training, cross-cultural training and career promotion. This is proven by
the fact than 80% of the management positions are filled by internal candidates.
Moreover Hilti wants its new employees to be successful and therefore invest in
their integration into the organization. One of Hilti’s program named “Let’s Start
Together” is an illustration of how Hilti help new employees to gain an in depth
understanding of the company culture and values, while integration them in their
job and tasks (What sets us apart, 2009).
Hilti leverage its employee’s strengths and match them with the right career
opportunities. Each employee together with his/her team leader will define his/her
personal and professional goals and receives regular feedbacks on his/her progress.
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As it have been stated by Hannelie Strydom, Human resource manager (Strydom,
2009) the personal development in an organization is defined by giving the
freedom to employees to grow at each level of the organization. “To me, personal
development means allowing all the people in our company to grow – at any level
within the hierarchy. And I mean not only in terms of expertise, but also as a
person. Growth, after all, is the key to progress, as an individual or as an
organization in its entirety.
At Hilti we are convinced that diversity in the structure of our staff is a basic
prerequisite for corporate success. To achieve good results, we need a balance of
team members of both genders, from various cultural backgrounds and with
different kinds of experience. We actively promote the creation and maintenance of
this kind of variety in all countries – not only in places where this is required by
law as it is in South Africa.
The personal development process at Hilti is supported by various tools. These
include the company’s internal Assessment Centre, comprehensive feedback
sessions and personal coaching. The goal is to show each team member the way to
personal growth and development and how to reach their potential.
We put our own performance to the test at regular intervals by taking part
throughout the world in competitions to find the best employer in the country – and
we regularly gain top spots in the ranking lists.”
In Section 5 of this report illustrates an example on how Hilti builds product
knowledge with passion and no pain.
4-3. Living the cooperate culture
Hilt’s corporate values which were mentioned in previous section as integrity,
courage, team work and commitment are the guidelines for the way employees
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treat each other. Hiltis’s unique corporate culture is a fundamental of its long-term
success (What sets us apart, 2009).
Growing as a team: Hilti invests more than 35,000 working days per year to
prepare its employees for future challenges. At Hilti, corporate growth of
individual growth goes hand in hand.
Hilti continues to maintain its reputation as a “great place to work.” Hilti’s
corporate culture gives its employees the basis for success both personally and
professionally.
In Hilti people with courage to look at themselves and their work will grow day
after day and they also will help other people to grow, and in this way they will
come up with new ideas. In other words, courage leads to innovation and this is a
solid pillar of Hilti corporate culture.
Nearly all Hilti team members globally have taken part in at least on Corporate
Culture workshop since 2004, when the workshops were launched. By attending
the workshops, the employees think of the evolution of Hilti corporate culture as
their own evolution. These workshops also give the chance to employees to take a
pause to take stock, before continuing to work as part of a team with fresh
awareness and new goals. They also have the chance to think about their personal
development and think of their next developmental stages. Every employee has the
chance to meet with their own supervisor at least once a year to discuss and
evaluate their performance and make plans for next move (Courage and loyalty,
2007).
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Figure 2.2 – Hilti coporate culture improvement
Proud to work at Hilti: The employees’ voice is an important factor for Hilti.
Regarding that Hilti runs several employee opinion survey to gather all the
feedbacks to improve the company growth.
Being an attractive employer for 30,000employees is not only one of the four goals
of 2015 for Hilti but also the key objective of its personnel strategy.
Based on vision 2015, Hilti is looking to growth in its human resources. Regarding
this fact the Hiltis’ personnel managers globally have faced the challenge of
finding right people to recruit whom can accept the corporate culture easily and
will stay with Hilti for long term. The new employers are given six months to
adopt themselves to Hilti’s unique culture; meanwhile Hilti will also take an
appropriate position. As one example is Hilti’s motto in 2008 of “Let’s start
together”.
One other challenge for Hilti in growing its human resource is to increase the level
of employees’ commitment. Hilti is successful in long term only if it have satisfied
and committed employees. In a survey conducted by Hilti within its employees to
find they enjoy working at Hilti the following reasons have been highly valued:
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teamwork culture, international perspective, open door policy, flat hierarchies and
direct, open and feed-backed oriented communication.
In short words, what set Hilti apart from other employers are its diverse activities
and success in the area of people development. It is Hilti’s employees and its
unique culture which leads to success of the organization (Matthiesen, 2008).
4-4. Independent and solid
Martin Hilti founded the company in 1941 with only 5 employees in a garage in
the principality of Liechtenstein. While today Hilti has more than 20,000
employees in 120 countries on 5 continents and is a global leader in the
construction industry.
A family-owned company: All shares of Hilti are owned by Martin Hilti family,
which is a guarantee for the company independence and stability.
Hilti long-term vision: Hilti long-term vision can be summarised as high customer
satisfaction, being “a great place to work” for all team members and sustainable
profitable growth (What sets us apart, 2009).
4-5. Employer of choice
Employees’ voice is a fundamental for Hilti to improve its company. Hilti does that
with the use of annual surveys which is a channel for the company to take action
based on the feedback given.
Awards: Hilti team members are quite familiar with this aspect moreover this is
confirmed by the external studies as well. No matter of which country, Hilti is
popular and this shows the ambition of Hilti to be an employer of choice (What
sets us apart, 2009).
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5. Hilti build product knowledge with passion and without pain
At Hilti (GB) Ltd training center in Stockport, Cheshire, the training consisted of
classroom teaching and practical demonstrations. It focused on introduction of
company’s leading-edge technology for global construction industry.
‘‘The learning experience had to be enjoyable, of value and worthwhile,’’ said Nigel
Biscombe, develop and coach manager (David,2010). ‘‘A pro-active approach was
required to engage our new starters, to involve them in our business plans and to share
our values and business goals, as well as developing their product knowledge and
equipping them with the skills and ability to go out and passionately create
enthusiastic customers.’’
‘‘Trainers for the program come from within the company, bringing experience from
various areas of the business,’’ he continued. ‘‘They are committed to personal
development and attend the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development Train
the Trainer external accreditation to ensure that they have a good understanding of
developing various learning approaches to engage learners and address individual
learner needs.”
One participant commented: ‘‘the way in which the course was structured made me
take product information in without even realizing it. Because it was so interactive,
with presentations and practicals, it made you learn in an interesting and energetic
way.’’
The induction training starts with ‘‘Our Culture Journey’’, which explores three
principles:
1. We do worthwhile work;
2. We take self-response ability to achieve our goals; and
3. We encourage one another and recognize results.
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During a ‘‘Welcome to Hilti’’ day, various areas of the business including material
control, HR and sustainability share their practices. There are presentations from
directors, product managers, regional managers, engineers and technical specialists.
Methods of delivery include classroom-based role-plays, quizzes and discussion.
Plenty of opportunity is offered to gain practical experience.
‘‘Field accompaniments take place, with new account managers and customer-service
representatives spending a day with an experienced member of the team and
observing their behaviour,’’ said Nigel Biscombe. ‘‘Also, experienced members of
the training team or a regional mentor will spend time with the new starters in their
role, coaching them as they develop their newly acquired skills. This is an ongoing
process.’’
The program’s effectiveness is measured by integration questionnaires at three and six
months. ‘‘The success of our new starters can be measured by our retention and
development figures and the success rates of our account managers reaching or
exceeding predetermined sales targets at six months into the business,’’ Nigel
Biscombe explained. ‘‘We are producing quality people who identify with our culture
and are able to develop successful careers within the organization.’’
Hilti works closely with all areas of business to make sure that its understanding of
business needs and product knowledge remains up to date (Pollitt, 2010).
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6. Recommendations
Nowadays becoming a best employer is a competitive advantage, not only because the
organization will be highly branded, but also the reputation it gained within the
potential employees and the easier process to find the needed talent. The following
recommendations can be made based on the presented case and lessons learned from
the progress of Hilti.
In first step it is recommended for the organization to conduct an assessment around
the five characteristic of best employer as stated in the First part of the report:
� Inspired leadership: where leaders are visible throughout the company, and
are easy approachable and are involved in talent development programs.
� Unique company culture: Where the organizations build a unique culture and
select employees that fit this culture.
� Focus on growing talent: Where the organization needs to invest in resources
for talent development, develop a talent pipeline and engaging managers in all
of these.
� Strong sense of accountability: Where the expectations of organization from
employees and vice versa is cleared.
� Aligned HR practices and excellent execution: Where employee practices are
relevant to the business strategies and executed effectively.
One important aspect in implementing all these evaluations is the communication
strategy which needs to communicate the value of your program within your people
and give them the chance to freely give their feedbacks.
The next step after evaluation is the review and action part:
� The assessment results shall be reviewed and improvements to become Best
employer shall be put into action.
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� Team members to implement shall be identified.
� Communication strategy shall be changed in the way that follows all these
improvements.
� Key outcome measures and milestone for measuring progress shall be
identified.
� Potential pitfall and barriers that may distract the organization to become the
Best employer shall be identified.
� A feedback loop to review the progress and follow up is also needed.
Moreover the organizations should consider, being best Employer is not an end state
but a continuous journey, and the path to become and stay Best employer is anything
but not an easy task. Although the result of being Best Employer, as the one Hilti is
already enjoying such as better consistent financial performance, attracting quality
employees and having engaged workforce, worth the effort.
7. Conclusion
Based on the discussion presented in this report it is quite obvious that best employers
succeed not cause of their size or industry, but by valuing their employees and
developing them. With a sustained commitment they capture the heart and mind of
their people and make sure that their employees’ aspirations and their company goals
are aligned.
For Best employers the recent economic difficulties have not altered their efforts to
maintain the relationship with their employees. In case of any challenges, they have
used it as an opportunity to renew their focus on employment relationship and build a
sense of loyalty which will overcome the current recession.
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For Hilti it also has been no exception. Ranking for the third time among best
employers, Hilti has put its efforts on building a corporate culture, where its people
are given the opportunity to develop themselves both professionally and personally.
As it have been illustrated in the report, Hilti runs different surveys, campaigns and
workshops not to only integrate its new members into its unique culture and facilitate
them with the knowledge and trainings that they need to boost their profession, but
also its designed in a way that all team members have the freedom to speak and be
given the feedback regarding their performance and their farther steps in their career
path.
At last but not least, it is important to mention that the road to become best employer
cannot be traveled over the night. It takes time and effort to build trustful relationship
with employees and change the culture to where people like to work and see their
success in organization success. However, the benefits of making the journey are
great for the organization, employees, customers and shareholders.
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8. References
Corporate Culture. (2009). Annual Report , p. 64.
Corporate Organization. (2009). Retrieved 08 20, 2010, from Hilti Online: http://www.hilti.com/holcom/page/module/home/browse_main.jsf?lang=en&nodeId=-8579
Courage and loyalty. (2007). Annual Report , pp. 18-19.
Hilti in brief . (2009). Retrieved 08 20, 2010, from Hilti Online: http://www.hilti.com/holcom/page/module/home/browse_main.jsf?lang=en&nodeId=-8555
Hilti ranks among the best employers. (2010, 4 28). Schaan, Liechtenstein: Hilti Corporate Communications.
Matthiesen, S. (2008). Proud to work at Hilti. Annual Report , pp. 30-35.
Pi Wen Looi, T. Z. (2005). What makes a best employer? Hewitt Associates.
Pollitt, D. (2010). Hilti (GB) Ltd builds product knowledge with passion and without pain. Human Resource Management International Digest , 24-26.
Strydom, H. (2009). Growth is the key to progress. Annual Report , p. 27.
Ted Marusarz, T. K. (2009). What makes a company a best employer? Hewitt Associates.
The 3 Cs continue. (2006). Annual Report , p. 16.
What sets us apart. (2009). Retrieved 08 20, 2010, from Hilti Online: http://www.hilti.com/holcom/page/module/home/browse_main.jsf?lang=en&nodeId=-8414
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9. Appendices
� Appendix A: The employee growth in Hilti during last 5 years (Corporate
Culture, 2009).
� The result of annual survey conducted in 2009, which received 91% replies
from employees on their willingness to work in Hilti (Corporate Culture,
2009).