Introduction
Thurman John Rodgers, was the founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor firm. Cypress was established in 1982 with headquarters at Silicon Valley. It is among the top ten of the United States and proved to be an international firm, which has around 2000 employees. Cypress has production units and facilities all over the US, Philippines, Belgium, India and Ireland. They proved to be one of the competitors to gain in the semiconductor industry and have extended their commitments to their customers. The employees are very smart, tough, logically proved, loyal and they work hard to attain the objectives of the organisation. Cypress core values and morals have great impact to set the rules and duties of the particulars in the organisation. T. J. Rodgers, the President and the CEO of the Cypress semiconductor has his own way of thinking perspective that are likely to be more motivated and innovative in nature. He has developed a unique human resource system, which aims at innovation and cost effectiveness. He also identified the role of formal and social control in bringing innovation and change. HR system was designed in such a manner that both department and individual performances are evaluated regularly without any loophole. This unique HR system is helpful to the managers to monitor at all levels and can anticipate any problems and solve them without creating much problems in management and organisation. Some of the key inputs that marked the firm to be outstanding are people management, performance management and killer software. He has applied best of best strategies and no matter how difficult it is to be used. He is prompt in his way of strategies to apply in marketing and management.
Human resource system
Employees look for their jobs to provide friendships, family support, community and sense of identity that many have given up outside the work. With the dawn of human relations, management in the Cypress began to focus on intrinsic motivation in the belief that a fulfilled worker, not just a well-paid one, is most productive. It was at that point that employers started to focus on working conditions, workplace relationships and the value of a person’s work as a way of boosting job satisfaction and in turn productivity. Aim of the human resource planning is to manage the business effectively and efficiently. A manager needs to plan his human resource requirements to prepare for fresh demands in terms of numbers, skills and occupation groups in order to meet the increasing demands due to either business growth or expansion. Besides, even if none of the above happens within an ongoing organisation then there would be wastage, turnover, separations and promotions, leaving gaps that have to be filled in. Then the changing job requirements due to technological changes or the growing complexity of the business operations make differing demands on the number and the type of human resource required. Human resource planning helps to avoid the sudden disruption in production. It may indicate in advance shortages of particular types of personnel, if any, enabling the management to adopt suitable strategies to cope up with the situation. A human resource plan is necessary for management to get information about the manner in which existing personnel are deployed and the skills required for the various categories of jobs and human resource requirements over a specified period in relation to the organizational goals. This would enable more optimum usage of human resources and thus savings on human resources costs. A human resource plan would also give indications of the lead-time that is available to select and train the required additional human resources. Changes occur in every core of the business. Under conditions of rapid change, human resource strategy is intended to guide today’s actions of the business. The relation between the culture and climate and its functions and how it eventually leads to increased productivity in the long run is clearly distinguished in the business. Strategic management is the process of formulating, implementing and evaluating business strategies to achieve organisational objectives and the process begins with proper scanning of the environment both externally and internally. Once the strategies are formulated, the next step is implementation. It requires actions like altering sales territories with adding new departments, closing facilities, hiring new employees, changing pricing strategies, developing financial budgets, formulating new employee benefits, establishing cost control procedures, changing advertising strategies, building new facilities, training new facilities, transferring managers among the divisions and building a better computer information system. Then the strategy evaluation is worked out which helps in determining the extent to which the firm’s strategies are successful in attaining its objectives. Human resource is in a unique position to locate opportunities and threats and to supply competitive intelligence that may be useful in strategy formulation. HR is heavily involved in the execution of the firm’s downsizing and restructuring strategies through out placing employees, instituting performance linked pay plans, reducing health care costs and retraining employees.
”In global competitiveness by focusing on the ability of transnational firms to create a sustainable competitive advantage through the strategic management of their work force.” (Wright). In an increasingly competitive global market arena, the instituting human resource practices that build employee commitment can help improve an organisation’s responsiveness. Thus, a well-planned and designed strategy can also fail if sufficient attention is not given to the human resource dimensions. “Beyond HR shows how organizations can uncover distinctive talent contributions, strategically differentiate their HR practices and metrics, and more optimally allocate talent to create value.” (Boudreau). Managing people is no longer a function performed by an executive based on his impressions or intuitions. Human resource department in Cypress is now backed by large quantities of information inputs regarding human needs, motivation and morale, organisational commitment, human capabilities, career expectations, leadership requirements, human relations, job context and these provides the structures due to tremendous changes. In a complex industrial and business environment, executive counselling has a long way to go in effectively utilizing the strengths and weaknesses of their employees towards common goals. It helps an employee to fully utilise the opportunities available to them to maximize their productivity. Thus, human resource managers are concerned with managing the human element of an organisation effectively and they are more concerned with the redemption and renewal of their people even if they are problem employees. The human relations approach is bound to fail in an organisation where there is no cordial industrial relation. Cordial industrial relation must be integrated with the human resource department. Human resource management plays a vital role in every organisation. Therefore, the Rodgers approach must develop a positive attitude, innovative skills, creativity and human relations skill of high order and ethical leadership to become successful in future. A better organisational climate and culture with better organisational design and structure will provide a better change and development in the organisation, which is conducive for promoting humanism in semiconductor industry and thus to get competitive advantage in the market. This, on the other hand tends to encourage innovation and creativity, which ultimately leads the improved quality of work life and empowerment of employees, which is the ultimate objective of human resource department in any organisation.
Three important aspects of Rodger management
People management
According to T. J. Rodgers “Great people don’t guarantee corporate success but no company can succeed without great people”.
They are very conscious of recruitment and he stated that hiring is a process and not an event. Strict military practices are followed in various stages. Managers will do hiring and maintaining database. Collecting of resumes is the duty of the HR, and they have no role in evaluation. They will see the candidates only after hired by the managers. Hiring managers have a crucial role in recruitment process. Hiring book is an important part of the process in which all hiring managers must submit a hiring book. This hiring book shows detailed results of interviews, reference checks and career prospects. This book is maintained for future reference. Usually a team which includes top executives along with Rodgers used to land in the city and conduct interview for about hundred top engineers and managers and finally takes top ten candidates. Similar to military raiding practice are followed during the recruitment process. The key to scouting is to keep loose and informal aimed at rigorous and thorough interviewing. Raiding party, scout out few hundred engineers, managers, and leaves with ten top people. Hiring manager needs to pass advance notice of cypress arrival. They search for fatal flaws in resumes and filter these resumes to select about sixty real prospects.
According to T.J. Rodgers, “If someone was not ‘in the loop’ enough to know we were coming to town, he or she was, by definition, not our kind of person.” (Rodgers).
Raiding Parties
First interview message to the candidate is that “we’ are Cypress, we work hard, and you’re not going to get a raise to join up. Should we continue?” Cypress has developed seven principles for interviewing.
They are:
- Use big guns: Interview team usually includes Rodgers, VP’s, a couple of technical people and a secretary.
- Make interviews demanding: Pack of wolves interviewing strategy is adopted and no backslap interviews.
- Probe for technical skills and work ethnic: Several technical and knowledge based questions will be set to know their depth knowledge. In addition, questions are set for assessing the candidate’s dedication and dependence.
- Require detailed written assessments from all interviewers: The Cal Tech Effect, Strength, weakness etc are needed to be submitted by all interviewers. This will be shared among them irrespective of selection result.
- Probe carefully for cultural misfit: The career path questionnaire will be set to know motivation level, character etc.
- Take references very seriously: Results will be reported to the candidate and deep checking will done. and finally,
- Speed: Speed is expected by candidates and hiring decision will be informed within a week or two.
Performance Management
Performance management is designed to attract best people, it motivates and evaluates employees. Employees in the Cypress well understand and do accordingly when and all changes occur in the industry with their powerful motivated strategies of performance management. And their responses to the changes in customers’ behaviors mark a best performance as they understand their problems and have given them the ability to come up with the right solutions. Compensation for a group of peers will be same irrespective of the organisation level and same average raise in percentage. Only outstanding performers will deserve outstanding raises. That is merit and equity must remain as distinct. Here precision matters a lot.
There are three phases in performance management. First phase is Performance ranking, second phase is Merit Raises and final phase is Equity.
- Performance ranking: Performance ranking is an important measure towards performance management. In the first phase, selection of focal group, merit rating, performance based salary; mayonnaise effect and solid citizen raise etc are considered.
- Merit Raises: Monotonic distribution, minimum range, forbidden gap and reasonable raise relative to recommendations, are considered. In addition, borders will be set not to cross 7% rise, average raise is set not to exceed the limit.
- Equity: Six weeks will be provided for adjustments. Guides will be available for average, required and solid raises are made in late January. Highest paid employees will not ever be 25 times higher than the entry level employee.
The “Killer Software”
Killer software is designed to monitor goal attainment, MBO, basis of goal attainment and so on. In addition, it focuses on weak areas where it does not guarantee great performance. The system is designed to monitor the progress of all employees in their respective achievement of their agreed goals. The goals include a description of the task, who has agreed to complete the task, whom to report, when the goal was set and its completion time and so on. Killer software runs on the network with basic database and spreadsheet. Killer software is a system of computer applications that helps to track and improve performance without further problems. It is designed in such a way that below performance or wrong operation will be blocked. It is also maintained to ensure quality and speed in the operations. Rodger commented about Killer software- “the Goal system as an instrument panel that not only indicates how fast the organisation is traveling, and in what direction, but also helps explain what hold us back.” It is essential for blocking any operation on the part of employees which are likely to harm company in any way. Few employees will try their own way of solving problems even without consulting with their bosses. In such cases Killer software saves company from the losses likely to occur due to such kind of operations.
Cypress Issues and solutions
Although the Cypress hiring an employee strategies are very crucial and rigid. But Cypress fails in retaining their employees. So in order to retain their employee the maintenance of a perfect decisions and policy formations should be implied in the employee retention strategies of the organization in a most efficient and effective manner. Cypress functioning up of systems in every department is good but they fail to reach the ultimate objectives of the systems. As they are putting as much pressures in gaining an employee but once they are hired they are not in a position to reach with them. Understanding the ideas and principles among them are missing. Actually cypress has most talented employees but they are not utilizing them properly. Cultural diversity is also a serious issue to the Cypress as they are concentrating on best recruitment but they are not focusing much on providing diverse cultural training and other essential development programmes for the employees of Cypress and this is ultimately resulting in employee turnover. Strict adherence to the rule will always results in lack of productivity and innovation. Employees are always on pressure for attaining results and this will reduce natural talent for innovation and development. When employees are relaxed then only creativity and innovation will comes from them. Cypress is really hard for employees and no employees will with stand so much managers pressure for long period. Ultimately it will results in employ turnover.
Cypress is taking best measures to recruit the best talents but they are failure in providing adequate support, training and reward for the employees In order to solve these issues Cypress must first concentrate on providing best to their employees as they are the best. Cypress is not taking as much interest in providing their career aspirations. Cypress is very much conscious about their recruitment but they are least bothered about providing comfortable working atmosphere. Human value is completely neglected and it is proved that Harvard model of management is always successful. By adopting a friendly working atmosphere cypress problems can be solved. Cypress must consider human beings are not machines to work continuously. Their problems will be solved when they consider their employees by remembering how much they put effort for getting those employees.
Conclusion
Cypress is very innovative in its operations. By understanding the competitive forces upon the Cypress market strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats can be identified and successful strategies have been developed to come up and to achieve their desired objectives. Authorized marketing methods applied in the industry have highlighted to guide the successful strategies of the Cypress to develop wider and wider peak of growth. Cypress is more capable to approach their potential customers. Its Killer software has got global recognition. They mainly focus on the three aspects in management system. That is People management, Performance management and Killer Software. Three of these phases cover a wide variety of company’s activities. Majority of the problem will be solved at these levels itself. Finally, controlling is done to correct any deviations from the actual route.
Works Cited
Boudreau, John W. Books For: Talent Management and Strategy & Execution: Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital. Human Capital Institute. 2006. Web.
Patrick M, Wright. Strategic Management of Human Resources for Global Competitive Advantage. AllBusiness A D&B Company. 2001. Web.
Rodgers. T.J. The Raiding Parties: Reconnaissance-Recon. Cypress. 2008. Web.