Intel-igence at Ford

Innovative HR practices have changed the fate of organisations across the world

IN TODAY'S wham-bam economy, organisations need computer-savvy employees, net-enabled and chameleon charged to adapt to the changing environment. Scouring for talent and retaining them is the challenge that HR departments face.

Fat salaries, lush perks, good work environment and innovative employee benefits are the carrots that are used to best meet this challenge.

Fording ahead!

To build their own talent pool and have tech-savvy employees, Ford gave all 350,000 employees a computer to take home! The scheme of giving a high-speed computer, with a colour printer and unlimited Internet access at just $5 a month cost the company $100 million.

The idea was to promote computer literacy. For their Polish employees and those in India, the price was proportionately lower.

The idea was that even if an employee did not know what to do with the computer, perhaps his children would and teach him and others at home.

Strategic kindness

The scheme was a cost-effective way to bring cyber-savvy-ness to their employees. A corporate strategy to invent its future. Any traditional training programme for computer literacy would have cost the company employees' time, instructors' fee, classroom accommodation, disrupted workflow, and above all the effort of making employees to attend the programme.

By giving them a personal computer they enabled the employees to learn at home and in their time and had the additional advantage of being seen as a generous gift from the company thereby improving retention.

Out of sight but not out of site!

Promoting computer literacy is just one aspect of the intervention.

The icing was that every employee was connected, so any information, whether a memo, the company newsletter or a benefits manual, was just a click away for everybody. Also, with computers at home the employees would do some work on holidays too, something that was so rare before total connectivity. Ergo, productivity per employee went up significantly.

The company created a Web resource site with useful company information. This was a platform for employees to express their ideas. Cost-saving ideas and new manufacturing concepts and suggestions are rewarded well. The virtual network of employees saved the company millions in travel time and fares.

Serendipitous knowledge management

The communication network has also empowered the employees.

Any employee grievance in any part of the world could be quickly communicated to all other factories.

Exemplary acts

Replicability is the test of the most best practices, so when Intel, California distributed free Pentium III computers with free Internet access to its 70,000 employees, and found that it paid dividends they had never imagined, the intervention proved its point. This success was confirmed when Delta Airlines did the same to 72,000 of their employees.

The computer giveaway programme is not just another benefit programme for the employees; it was a brilliant reinvention of corporate enterprise in this era of technology.

ABHIMANYU ACHARYA

abhi.hyd@cnkonline.com