Human Resource Development Plan for Glaxo SmithKline Company - Case Study Example

Human Resource Development Plan ‘Mentoring and Coaching’ Human Resource Development: As the organizations of the world have moved from the strategy of mass production to producing unique solutions in an efficient and effective way as suited to the demands of today’s market, the nature of the strategies themselves has changed. In the forefront there has been a general shift towards recognizing the importance of Human resource Development. The reason is simple, thes idea to constantly improve themselves, innovate and evolve come from the people of an organization not the machines. People assets are one of the vital components which differentiates the productivity and success of any organization. “Along with the changes in manufacturing processes and priorities came the realization that the necessary flexibility could be best achieved through skilled workers with knowledge of the technical aspects of production, as well as the abilities to attain maximum effectiveness within the company” (Byrne, 1999, pg1) According to Rouda and Kusy the definition of HRD is "organized learning activities arranged within an organization in order to improve performance and/or personal growth for the purpose of improving the job, the individual, and/or the organization" (1995, 1). As the trend in industry is again slowly shifting from the ‘industrial age’ to the ‘information age’ it has become evermore important to capture all the benefits that a sound Human resource Development plan brings. Amongst other things it helps you create a satisfied, loyal and committed workforce that is intrinsically motivated to give their best performance. It also helps you in countering the complexities of human nature and helps your employees navigate life situations with would other wise impact your organizations goal seeking endeavors. HRD is also an organizations best chance to acquire, evaluate and retain its best performers. Through careful monitoring of the organization culture and the employees who have the ability to enhance it or improve from it can separate and focus on the ‘best’ employees. By nurturing their skills, an organization will benefit from their combined knowledge, experience and ideas as well as maintain a core workforce which can help in training and recruiting similarly talented people. This concept has become even more crucial with the latest trends in the worker lifecycle; no longer are there ‘jobs for life’- people require more than just job safety and monetary benefits from their employers, they need a sense of involvement, accomplishment, job flexibility, additional perks and to feel committed to an organizations goals. The HR department is the one which can help find the best mix of job attributes for the people with corresponding traits- hence increasing job satisfaction and performance. The knowledge base of an organization also depends on its human resources. Much of the explicit or tacit information, along with best practice examples, informal work strategies among others are mostly centered around people processes (Mann, 2004, p.5). While, there are always attempts to capture and store the knowledge, the fact remains that much of the information that gives the organization an edge is stored in the people not machines. Similarly the employees are also involved in the construction and maintenance of the organizational culture. An often overlooked aspect of HRD, the design of the culture of the organization- the attributes, values and behavior which are a fundamental part of the organization, ascribed by the organization or for the organization, through historical context, restructuring or other go a long way towards describing how well the employees respond to business challenges. A concretely structured environment will produce workers who are consistent and with time value traits while an open, semi structured environment will be of greater benefit to people who are creative and innovative. Challenges involved in developing a Human Resource Plan: Despite the many research papers and real life examples which show the importance of developing an HR plan, there remains uncertainty about how to go about implementing the changes that requires and even ambiguousness about the concept itself. Some of the main problems are: Organization top management still underestimates the strategic role of human resource development Other strategic decisions having an impact on the HR of an organization are often not thought of in that context. For example, a merger between two companies might greatly upset the work culture already in place. HR pruning- ‘down sizing’ and ‘right sizing’ are most organizations’ first steps in respond to cost restructuring, without consideration of effects on long standing HR practices (Mann, 2004, p6) Lack of awareness (specially in smaller firms) about the HR best practices they should adopt, the changing trends etc Where to seek advice from? The average organization would require expert help in managing and structuring an effective HR plan. But often too many service providers would provide you with different point of views and cloud your judgments regarding the needs of your actual HR department. For the large organization with resources for trial and error, this would not have irreversible consequences but smaller firms will suffer Not enough focus on the main strategy you want to adopt. Over View of the Company: Glaxo SmithKline Glaxo SmithKline is the world’s fourth largest pharmaceutical company, measured by prescription drug sales with a turnover of £28.4bn, with a presence in over 100 countries. The British multinational healthcare, pharmaceutical and vaccine company has a wide portfolio including biopharmaceuticals and vaccines, many in the last stages of commercialization. In the 2010 annual report, the Chairman and CEO of GSK sound very optimistic about their research and development endeavors “GSK now has a peer-leading portfolio of around 30 opportunities in phase III and registration. This portfolio is diverse with 5 biopharmaceuticals and 5 vaccines in addition to NCEs. It is also highly innovative with more than 20 assets not currently available for any indication…Importantly, we are delivering sustained progress, with 10 NCEs and new vaccines entering phase III since the start of 2010. By the end of 2012, we expect phase III data on around 15 assets, including potential new treatments for type 1 and 2 diabetes.” (2010, p5) The company employees a wide array of professionals to maintain and improve its position in the pharmaceutical sector. Globally, they employ around 97,000 people with 40,000 in the department of sales and marketing. However, the company headquarters in Kent went from employing 3000+ people in late 90s to a task force of around 1000 people by 2003. As such the area of Human resource development has become one of their chief concerns as the focus is now on utilizing the highly specialized people skills in the most efficient and effective manner in conjunction with the latest technological developments. Recent efforts in Human resource development at GSK: In an interview with Claire Thomas current Vice president of HR and a member of executive team of GSK, she outlined some of the major ventures and challenges of developing their human resources: Enhancing productivity: The nature of the company is such that the employees feel a personal connection to the organizational goals; retaining the high performance employees is not one of the problems they have to face. However, ensuring that they remain productive and innovative is a challenge as they can face occupational burnout and become lethargic. Maintenance of a corporate culture, competitive pay and development opportunities are important (Peacock, 2011). Research and Development: To keep up the demands of customers and patients, who are both value conscious GSK needs to focus on change management and preparing the workers to adopt the ‘more with less’ approach. The HR department has to select the right candidates to keep the R&D activity up. Globalizing: There also has to be specific emphasis on developing a global demeanor. Senior management is expected to have a global mindset and approach which can be transferred to the lower levels of the company through knowledge sharing and mentoring. Health and Safety program: In attempting to keep employee performance and satisfaction high, GSK manufacturing site at Dartford together developed a health and safety program. This was done to provide employees with access to stress management, to decrease Time Accident rate, liability claims and improve the positive attributes of the culture. Transparency and partnership with employees made this project a success and created goodwill in the economy (McGill, 2003) Focusing your HRDP: For an on organization like GSK, one approach to developing a long term, viable Human Resource Development Plan would to focus on the transfer of experience and knowledge from the established employees to the new comers and fresh recruits. “Mentoring is usually a formal or informal relationship between two people—a senior mentor (usually outside the protégé’s chain of supervision) and a junior protégé.” (Best practices, 2008, p.2). Creating formal mentoring and coaching programs is an increasing trend in both private and public sectors. The benefits of having a senior level employee provide guidance to new recruits results in several benefits to both as well as to the organization. In recognizing the merit of the mentor and the needs of the protégé the organization shows its support and appreciation, increasing morale, productivity and career development. These programs also facilitate the protégés growth in the organization up to a point where his skills will be developed to the requirements of the organization. For the mentor the benefits would include a greater awareness of the problems faced at the lower rungs, about changing trends, help in fine tuning their communication and interpersonal skill and adopting a personal leadership style. Other psychological affects could be a sense of accomplishment and increased enthusiasm. For the protégé the basic benefit is having someone to provide guidance in navigating the culture and attitudes of the company, increasing own knowledge base and gaining the confidence to work for their own career development in a way which is useful to the organization (Liu, 2010, 1). Whenever implementing a mentoring plan there has to be equal emphasis on the gains of both the parties, failure to do so would result in lackluster response and might even backfire in form of unsatisfied employees. The problem in mentoring and coaching programs and relationships arise when people do not consider them as a structured process providing specific solutions. Like any other strategy successful mentoring programs have to be carefully understood, planned, implemented and reviewed for continuous up gradation and performance appraisal. It would be a fallacy to consider such relationships as a natural part of the work environment that doesn’t need proper maintenance. Developing a Mentoring program: For an organization any human resource development initiative would follow some basic steps, starting with need assessment and moving on to generating possible solutions and then the implementation step. For a viable mentoring program the factors that have to be kept in mind are not the technological resources or policies and practices, the core of the programming consists of human interaction and relationships and as such would need to have flexible processes which can cater to different personalities and match the right protégé with the right mentor. 1. Assessment of needs There have to clear and rational assessment of the needs of the organization and why mentoring seems the best approach to fulfill those. The important thing to keep in mind is that mentoring cannot provide an instant solution to indepth problems like a weak strategy, an unorganized work force or similar. However, it can improve the quality of performance and boost morale to a large extent. Your expectations from the program have to be based in reality. For GSK mentoring readily solves their two problems of decreasing lethargy and promoting a global mindset. Older, experienced or senior level managers can instill the values in their protégés (Mawhiney, 2007, p2). 2. Prepare a Roadmap This will include the practical and operational plans in implementing the mentor ship. Some of the questions which need to be answered are: What level of mentorship do we want to introduce? What will be the criteria to select a mentor? How will we match Protégé to a mentor? Will the mentors need formal training? What will be the medium of communication? Will there need to be a moderator? All of these questions will help to set the goals and expectations from the program clearly, they can also highlight the weaknesses that the organization has to answer before the plan will be successful (Kessler, 2010). 3. Create a working group/ Program manager Creating a formal team to oversee the project is the next logical step. A project manager would steer the team in the right direction in selecting and supervising the mentoring relationships, as well as the follow-up review and processing of the program. The project manager has to be very clear on the goals and structure of the program. 4. Market the program: In order to be effective, the program will have to be advertised internally and externally. Communication is vital for the program to be implemented successfully; it would play the major role in recruitment of both mentors and protégés who will be attracted by the benefits and opportunities that such a program provides. Also people who volunteer will be naturally motivated to give their best to the relationships formed. The marketing can be done through, company letters, seminars, pamphlets or individual marketing specially to recruit mentors. 5. Create potential relationships and Mutual expectations: After careful assessment of the people recruited for the program, match people with similar personalities or with knowledge demand-supply dynamics in a mentor-protégé relationship. They should be told their responsibilities individually and pushed to communicate their mutual expectations from the program. Often such plans fail at this step as the mismatch of expectations would result in one party feeling disappointed or frustrated and both parties becoming disheartened with lack of progress (Loui & Gunsalus, 2009,p1). It can also create significant problems for the organization if a valuable employee or potentially valuable employees loose their motivation. There should also be guidelines regarding timeframe of the program, scheduled meetings, level of interpersonal connections etc. 6. Assess and evaluate: The final step would to evaluate the program at periodic intervals. Evaluation could be done at a surface level through surveys or observing or in depth probes with the participants. You can identify what works and what doesn’t, if there has been a mismatch between protégé-mentor, what is the overall experience of the people involved so far and what changes need to be made. This program would also be an ongoing process with modifications and updates being made as necessary. If successfully implemented, the policy would create an environment which fosters growth and feelings of belonging. Knowledge transfer from human assets would be a competitive edge for the company and it can continue on with its tradition of having employees who not only believe in what they are doing, but also in themselves and the in the need for innovation and problem solving. Concerns of implementing a Mentoring Program: . The basic flaw in such a plan comes from the human nature where uncertainities about the roles assigned, personal biases or concerns or a lack of understanding about the goals takes the relationship into different direction than expected. The biggest concern associated with mentoring programs is the replication of one culture or handing over of power to employees who may not meet the requirement criteria; mentors have a lot of authority and control in the situation and a mentor without the ethics and values required for the job can prove to be disastrous- specially if the relationship moves from the professional to personal (APA, 2006, p11). The mentor can manipulate the protégé for forced workload under guise of training, assert control on his personal development or undermine his skills and abilities with a lack of interest or negative outlook. On the other spectrum are the mentors who can provide their protégés with unmerited privileges give them a ‘leg-up’ in the organization and generally act in a way that creates disadvantages for employees other than the protégé. Flaws like these have to be kept in mind when the development and implementation is being done. Constant vigilance in reviewing and adhering to a pre defined selection criteria can control the mentoring relationships. Another thing is to make sure the protégés know their rights such as privacy and the right to opt out of the program and the mentors know exactly where there advice will be required and appreciated so they do not cross any personal boundaries. Mentorship relationships are beneficial if structured properly and if based on the volunteering efforts of the participants. Amongst the other strategies which are involved in human recourse development, this is the one where the focus is truly on the human interpersonal relationships and the impact they have on organization productivity. Bibliography Kessler, S., 2010. How to start a mentoring program? [online] Inc-Business Recourses. Available at: [Accessed 24 April 2012].  Byrne, S. M., 1999. The Value of Human Resource Development to an Organization; Providing Technical Assistance to Small Manufacturing Companies [online]. Submitted to Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Available at: < http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-041899-231130/unrestricted/etd.pdf> [Accessed 24 April 2012] Mawhiney, G., 2007. Creating and Implementing a Human Resource Management Plan [online] Human Resources Management Program Lead/OMAFRA. Available at: < http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/busdev/facts/07-005.htm> [Accessed 24 April 2012].  Mann, 2004. 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Case Study; GSK [Online]. Health and Safety Executive, Dartford, kent. Available at: < http://www.hse.gov.uk/business/casestudy/glaxo.htm> [Accessed 24 April 2012] GSK at a glance, 2012. Glaxo SmithKline website [Online] Available at: < http://www.gsk.com/about/ataglance.htm> [Accessed 24 April 2012] Read More