Saudi Basic Industries Corporation's Success Story - Case Study Example

Writer’s Name: Tutor’s Name: Course: Date: Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) Description of the company The Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) is a petrochemicals company headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The company ranks among the world’s largest producers of advanced thermoplastics, polypropylene, glycols, fertilizers, and polyethylene. It is also a major steel manufacturer in the Middle East Region. Statistics from SABIC’s website indicate that the company has a global workforce of approximately 33,000 employees. The employees work in different locations where the company operates and are drawn from different countries and cultures. The organizational culture at SABIC seems to revolve around the company’s key values, which are identified as: “Inspire, engage, create and deliver” (Sabic Reports and Accounts, SABIC Annual Report 2010. ii). Based on the identified values, the company has a culture that upholds the need to deliver value to its customers, realize new capacities, engage in innovative practices, and attain excellence in its manufacturing and sales processes. Additionally, there is an apparent attempt to establish a social network through enhanced partnership with its main customers who include corporate buyers of its petrochemical and steel products. By its own admission, SABIC upholds the customer partnership culture as part of its future strategy to pool “resources, ideas and expertise to meet common goals more effectively- and swiftly- for mutual benefit” (Sabic Reports and Accounts, SABIC Annual Report 2010 6). The third component of the organizational culture at SABIC is seen in its recognition of employees as a vital resource in its operations. In its website, the organization states that it uses “both traditional and non-traditional means to attract talented individuals from all over the world to ensure its reputation as a truly global company” (Sabic.com, recruitment online). It unique culture in recruitment is further seen in the admission that in an attempt to boost its Saudi employees, it has taken up to training them in disciplines such as manufacturing, finance, marketing, personnel and administration, and research and technology. This is evidence that SABIC is not just an ordinary multinational corporation which seeks to get competent talent just for the sake of filling its skills gap. Rather, it is testament to the fact that the organization is committed to ensuring that the Saudi populace benefits from its operations both at home and abroad. The internal organization at SABIC is made up of a board of directors, which comprises the CEO, the Chairman of the board and five directors. The CEO leads a team of managers who in turn lead various departments which include: Performance Chemicals, Polymers, Chemicals, CFO, Human Resources, Fertilizers, Innovative Plastics, Technology & Innovation, Strategic Planning, Shared Services, Research & development, Metals, and Manufacturing (The Official Board.com). The Human Resources (HR) department (which the writer is interested in pursuing as a career), is subdivided into a number of departments, which include the performance & research department; the workforce planning & development department; the communications department; the organizational effectiveness department; the business partners department and the leadership development department (The Official Board.com). Each of the identified departments is led by a general manager, who reports to the HR manager, who in turn reports to the CEO. Considering the important role that the HR department plays in the recruitment of staff, it is worth noting that it has to interact with all other departments in the company in order to understand their human resource needs and thus recruit people who are best suited to serve those needs. In addition, the department is charged with gauging the performance of the present workforce with a view of identifying gaps or weaknesses that may be remedied through training and development. A career at SABIC’s HR department The careers webpage on the SABIC website identifies four areas that the human resources department concentrates in. The areas include leadership development; organizational effectiveness; performance and rewards; and “workforce planning and development” (Sabic.com, careers). Collectively, the four focus areas are meant to ensure that employees working in the organization are not only satisfied in their jobs, but also participate actively in the smooth running of the organization. Being a company that is pursuing excellence through its human resource, SABIC seeks to build competencies within its workforce for future needs. Such commitment is seen in the organization’s initiative that sought to conduct a talent review in 2010 in readiness for personnel training (Sabic Reports and Accounts, SABIC Annual Report 2010 41). Needless to say, the mandate to conduct the talent review was the responsibility of the HR department. SABICLearning is another program that the organization is pursuing, and whose responsibility lies squarely with the HR department. SABICLearning is a program that seeks to equip employees with critical skills in marketing and sales, leadership, supply chain management, technical fields, and finance. With IT experts in the company, the HR department was able to develop and launch an e-curriculum for all employees in 2009, thus making the learning experience easier and convenient. The e-curriculum has also ensured that employees in distant locations can also access learning in the same quality and pace as those who are trained within the SABIC Learning Centre. Job Description Going by the immense responsibilities that the HR department seems to have at SABIC, one can easily deduce that a job in this department would possibly involve responsibilities that would ensure that training, deployment, and employee development are done efficiently and effectively. As such, a career in the HR department at SABIC would involve identifying job specifications, identifying required qualifications and skills to fit those specifications, identifying training needs in existing employees, and developing training programs in order to address current and future skills gaps. Additionally, such a career would also involve following up and evaluating the effectiveness of training programs. Further, a HR career at SABIC would involve identifying and developing competencies necessary in scaling career ladders and developing plans that would ensure that talented employees are retained in the company using a well detailed career path plan. In order to retain skilled employees however, employees working in the HR department must be able to recognize the contributions that employees make, reward them accordingly and devise retention plans. This means that reviewing employee performance and devising rewards schemes is also part of the job description of a HR career. The most likely daily tasks that a person working in the department would be expected to accomplish include ensuring that communication channels are effective, ensuring that the working conditions are right, ensuring that any issues that employees may have are addressed in a satisfactory and fast manner, and where the HR department is unable to address the same, that the issue is communicated to higher management levels. An employee in the HR department would also need to liaise with managers or supervisors in other departments in order to identify any exemplary efforts by any employee that are worth recognizing. This is especially important if the HR department is to play its roles in enhancing the retention of talented employees. Considering that SABIC has already put an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system in place, it would be expected that employees in the HR department would make it part of their daily responsibilities to ensure that the organizational environment is fit enough to encourage the system to thrive. As Leon (15) notes, for ERP system to thrive, the management needs to give it full support. However, it takes more than management backing for the ERP to be an effective system; the employees must be active participants in the system. To ensure such is the case, the employees need to be trained and appraised regularly especially if there are changes to the system. The HR personnel further need to gauge the level of satisfaction shown by employees who use the system on a daily basis. By doing this, the HR personnel will identify any problem areas that need addressing. Additionally, they can easily pick cases of improper use, thus suggesting that employees need some training or re-orientation with the system. This therefore means that gauging the effective use of the ERP system is a daily task that a HR employee would need to pursue (i.e. assuming that no other person in the department has been assigned the same task). As Leon aptly notes “if employees are not fully appraised, trained, satisfied and are not happy with the system, or are not using it properly, then the ERP system will be a failure” (15). Summary As part of the HR department in SABIC, the writer hopes that he will be skillful enough to create practices that will enhance employee competitiveness in the organization. Additionally, having mastered quite extensive theories in human resource management as taught in college, the writer hopes that the career opportunity at SABIC will enable him to gain a good understanding of the practical side of HR management too. One of the target areas that the writer hopes to actualize is translating HR practices into business results. As (Ulrich, Losey and Lake 11) note, any person who wants to excel in the HR career must learn to “translate their work into financial performance” specifically if they are to take up accountability for their jobs in an organization. The writer also hopes that the experience gained from SABIC will boost his chances of setting up a HRM consultancy firm in the future. Being one who values self-employment, the writer hopes that the skills and knowledge gained during the working stint at the multi-national corporation will provide him with the skills needed to handle employees and managers, in addition to helping him gain practical experience on how effective HRM contributes to the creation of strategic goals in an organization. The writer’s desire to set up a HRM consultancy is further informed by Caudron’s assertion that a significant number of modern corporations are outsourcing their HR tasks as a way of acquiring strategic human resource partnerships outside the internal organizational environment (Caudron 27). If indeed this assertion is anything to go by, HR consultancies will most likely attract more interest from organizations in the future than in-house HR departments. Gauging by the strategic position that the HR department occupies in SABIC, it is probable that working in the organization would grant the writer an opportunity to gain practical lessons about how human resource professional are able to gain the confidence of key senior managers in an attempt to influence strategy in a manner that is not only beneficial to the organization, but is considerate about the well-being of the employees. Additional skills that the writer may gain from working in SABIC include the ability to understand the key priorities, challenges or drivers in the business. As evident from the Sabic Reports and Accounts, SABIC Annual Report 2009 (5), the HR department can have an enhanced strategic impact if it works with key business units in the larger organization. Notably, the management at SABIC clearly understands the important role that effective management of their HR capital plays towards the attainment of set company goals. The evidence of such understanding is seen the budgetary support given to HR initiatives such as ERP. In its part, the HR department lives up to the expectations that the management has placed over it by understanding where its contributions are needed, and how to effectively implement such contributions. Working in SABIC’s HR department would therefore afford the writer a chance to learn how the HR personnel identify areas that need their input, how the personnel prioritize such needs, and how the implementation process takes place. Works Cited Leon, Alexis. Enterprise Resource Planning. Tata McGraw-Hill education: New Delhi, India, (2007). Print. Reports and Accounts. “A Culture of Innovation, A Year of Success.” SABIC Annual Report 2010. 8 Apr. 2011. . 15 Oct. 2011. Reports and Accounts. “A Culture of Innovation.” SABIC Annual Report 2009. 29 Apr. 2010. . 15 Oct. 2011. Sabic.com. “Careers.” Apr. 2011. . 15 Oct. 2011. 15 Oct. 2011. Sabic.com. “Recruitment Online.” 12 Dec. 2010. . 15 Oct. 2011. Shari Caudron. ‘HR is Dead … Long Live HR’, Workforce Management, 12.1 (January 2003): 26-30. The Official Board.com. “Sabic.” Aug. 2009. < http://www.theofficialboard.com/org-chart/sabic>. 15 Oct. 2011. Ulrich Dave, Michael Losey & Gerry Lake. Tomorrow’s HR Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: London, (1997). Print. Appendix 1. Research Plan Time table Means of Contacting the HR manager Sabic Corporation Action Initial contact telephone Request for an interview Follow-up Telephone /Email Confirm that the interview is still as scheduled before Interview day In person Tour and Interview Session After the interview Telephone/ Email Thank the HR and seek clarification for any information that may be unclear. The Introductory Paragraph for use during the initial contact with the HR manager in Sabic Corporation Good morning Mr. Y. My name is XYZ from *** college. I am a management student1, and I hope that once I am done with my studies I will be able to pursue a career in an organization like yours. In the meantime however, I am not seeking work but an understanding of how organizations I admire most work. I believe that the information gained from you will enable me to prepare well for entry into the job market. Hence, I am requesting for an interview, during which I will get to ask questions regarding SABIC. I expect that the interview will last approximately 30 minutes. Before conducting the interview however, I would like to request for a thirty-minute tour of the company so that I can make observations about the processes therein. The information gained will not be used for any other purposes other than learning. Can you please grant me these requests? 2. Interview Questions 1. How does the HR department at SABIC identify areas that need its input; more so, once such areas are identified, how does the department prioritize the needs? 2. Does the HR department at SABIC link itself with the overall organizational strategy? If so, how? 3. Does your department have a form of measurement through which it gauges its performance, especially in relation to the attraction, engagement and retention of talent? If so, what is the measurement tool used? If not, why is performance measurement not considered vital? 4. One aspect of the HR function is to influence and coach senior staff members. However, their hierarchical positions can be quite intimidating to the HR personnel. How does your department handle situations where the positions of people who need your services are intimidating? 5. Theoretically, students are made to understand that HR professionals do sometimes have to confront, challenge as well as support senior managers if only to keep them focused to the goals and objectives envisaged by the company. Does your department ever find itself playing such roles, and if so, what techniques do you use in order to remain within your mandate as employees of the company? 6. How do you balance between championing human resource issues that may end up making employees comfortable in the workplace and those that make them competitive? Read More