Number of employees: 19,000
Turnover: 6.7 billion
HR director: Sean McIlveen
It is exactly 100 years since Henry Fords first car, the Model A, rolled (or, more probably, lurched) off the production line in Detroit, Michigan. Ford practically invented mass production and in turn mass employment. A century later the company continues in its role as a leading-edge employer.
In the UK the company has been through a challenging period of transition in the past 12 months, particularly with the end of large-scale production in Dagenham, Essex. Yet it has managed to make the transition to a leaner, more efficient company without jeopardising its century-old culture. Five thousand jobs have gone, but there hasnt been a compulsory redundancy since 1986.
The challenge of being a learning organisation
Earlier this year Sean McIlveen became HR director at Ford, having spent the previous four years as director of training, education and development. He is very clear about the need for Ford to live up to the challenge of being a genuine learning organisation. The lifetime for the relevant set of skills in this business used to be between 15 and 20 years, he says. Today, thats more like five to seven years. Effective plants need employees with the right skill sets, and HRs job is to ensure we are actually supporting the business by providing continuous professional development.
The culture of learning has gone so deep that a third of all staff have now taken up opportunities offered to them by Fords Employee Development Assistance Programme (EDAP). These are non-work related development activities, which might involve learning practical skills such as brick-laying or learning a foreign language.
A genuine partnership with the unions
Employee relations, even after taking tough decisions on headcount, seem in surprisingly good order. On this point McIlveen is unequivocal. The trade unions [T&G] are part of the solution in this, he says. They have a very broad understanding of the business, they grasp the realities of competition, economics and capacity. Our discussions are extremely instructive. They are based on a relationship of trust, which allows you to move forward as a genuine partnership. There are few complaints from staff about the terms and benefits on offer. Fords groundbreaking work in the area of diversity is well-known: maternity pay, for example, is offered for a full 52-week period at 100% of salary.
At Ford, HR aims to support the business and support employees at the same time. Effective HR managers act as business practitioners, McIlveen says. It is about balancing the business mind-set with being an advocate for the employee. So HR plays three complementary roles: the conventional administrative and support role, but it also intervenes in managing change and offering business education, while supporting the wider business goals of the company. Theres nothing worse than an HR person whos out of touch with what the business is really all about, he says. Spoken like the MBA graduate that he is.
