Please answer the following, Thanks. The HR practice of Nimble cannot be called
ID: 427658 • Letter: P
Question
Please answer the following, Thanks.
The HR practice of Nimble cannot be called as a best global practice because, It lacked in various scale on the HR operation and management. In global HR practice, employees concern and issues are solved on the earliest date. Most of the companies have pro-active HR policy due to which new people wants to be associated with the company. The policy consists of standard leave policy, motivating employees and changing the organization culture according to the need of the time. All these are lacks in the company.
From the case we cannot inferred the facilities provided to the global employees by the company. In geocentric perspective the gaps are in HR operation of the company which believes in status quo. In rapidly changing world order it won't work, and organization should be dynamic to deal with the challenges. The company also changed the leave policy and make favorable for employees because it had more attrition rate and wanted to retain the employees.
Global companies are using HRIS (Human Resources Information System) and this company should also use this. From the text of the case nowhere it is mentioned about the technological tools for HR so we can assume that it is not present in that scale in the company. HRIS promote transparency and openness in the system and employee will have access to the relevant data they should know.
Nimble is a leader in predictive flash storage solutions; they take advantage of flash, cloud and big data analytics to deliver data velocity to their customers. Their employees are committed to their vision and are passionate about the work they do (Bahrami, 2015). The annual goal is to become a billion dollar company in three years by selling hybrid storage platform to efficiently store and use data, hire and retain right manpower without disturbing the culture of the organization.
The three major problems are:
Health of customers network
Employee retention
Employee motivation
Employee Retention and motivation are taken care of by multiple measures by launching a LEAD leadership program to achieve a sustainable future growth of the company and encourages people to move forward in the future. They have also made PTO flexible and have allowed unlimited sick leaves and holidays for employee retention and motivation.
Customer network and storage issues are resolved by predictive flash hybrid platform. The hybrid storage system makes organizations more competitive by using flash memory which gives rapid access to random data and hard disk to increase the performance of the company by giving efficient and flash storage.
The company is trying present itself as a global organization by introducing openness and transparency but is still limited by its conservative culture in hiring and fear of their information being exposed.
“Geocentric focus is when the company focuses on global advantages, global communication, and global hiring off manpower based on their skill sets rather than country of origin. management looks at opportunities on a global scale. Instead of focusing on the way that business gets done in a given country, it looks at how to conduct business anywhere in the world, based on common ways of communicating (Lander, n.d)”. Nimble wants to transfer the world storage to the hybrid storage system and wanted to achieve the goal to become a billion-dollar company within 3 years. The hybrid storage system makes organizations more competitive by using flash memory which gives rapid access to random data and hard disk to increase the performance of the company by giving efficient and flash storage platforms. The target is to focus on a broad range of enterprise applications with the goal to optimize in many areas as follows:
Performance efficiency
Capacity efficiency
Data protection
Dramatic simplicity
The geocentric approach to business will give the following advantages:
Putting the best people with best skills suited for the profile irrespective if they are based out of Taiwan or California
Improve the global image of the organization
Give access to more qualified and suitable manpower
Flexibility to manage customers across different time zones as if we have clients in Asia we can have customer service employees based out of remote locations in Asia.
The geocentric approach means a global approach and a global advantage to the business. The company can have the following advantages:
Best skilled and suitable resources across the globe
The benefit of cross cultural thinking and exposure and can target customers across the globe
Address customer requirement in their time zone
Customers might feel more comfortable with customer service executives from the same region
The ideas generated will be global and can address many regional problems.
To summarize everything, a global or geocentric approach will be useful to get a flexible, multicultural and multi dimension vision to your business. We can see examples of giants like Google and Facebook who have used geocentric approach to make success of their business.
In order tackle the global business proposition, there are two important staffing approaches i.e. ethnocentric and geocentric approach. Since Nimble storage is aspiring to provide solutions to organizations all across the world, the company has to move from ethnocentric staffing to geocentric staffing. But there are challenges in the transition.
Ethnocentric staffing is a practice of appointing staff from the company’s home country with a belief that native employees would be more aligned to the interests of the company headquarters. “Ethnocentric staffing means you hire management that is the same nationality as the parent company (Johnston, n.d)”. The advantages of this practice are that there will be alignment in the interests and viewpoints of the head office. Communication with a same culture employee is easier than with an employee from different culture. There are disadvantages to the practice, that the company may not be able to understand the local market and culture. Second disadvantage is that employee from the parent company can be costlier than an employee from the host country. Finally, high ration of expatriates from the parent company can give wrong messages to the local employees and customers.
Geocentric staffing is more suitable to companies aiming to serve global customers. The Nimble storage must move to geocentric staffing. In geocentric staffing practice, the performance of the job candidate is considered rather than the cultural orientation. For multinational operation, geocentric staffing is preferred. There are many benefits to Nimble Storage by adopting geocentric staffing, i.e. the company can integrate global operations at lesser cost, can derive benefits from the diversity of employees, improved management of the local issues, better market penetration in each region of operations, etc.
There are risks in managing geocentric staff. For example, from a political angle when one nation dominates the other in economic and political dimension, the staffing pattern can have tremendous influence on the organization. Some staff may feel they are treated in discriminate manner and compensation is disproportionate to others in international locations. The perception of disparity of employee treatment can lead to distrust and negative consequences of employee hostility.
The Nimble Storage is a hybrid growing data storage System Company situated in Silicon Valley. Following are gaps in the organization’s current practices within the global market that are relevant to the human resources team of the organization are as below
Lack of motivation process and practices in the organization: The organization do not have proper motivation environment in the organization. The employees are not motivated and influenced for better contribution for the company. Thus, the company needs to have better processes and practices for employee motivation.
Lack of Employee Retention: The organization does not have proper good employee satisfaction and is not able to retain their employees. The organization is facing a employee retention problem, which is affecting their ability to achieve their target goals. The organization should have better employee benefits plan, employee welfare so that they can improve the employee retention in the company.
Hiring issues and leave issues: The company was facing the hiring issue as they wanted to maintain its culture and status quo, the company needed to change the paid time off/personal time off PTO policy in fifteen days, the company wanted to increase the length of services, and they tested the idea but not preferred by the company. Therefore, the employees wanted a favor, and the company made the PTO flexible and unlimited sick leaves and holidays for employee retention.
The company does not support the openness: in the company and use of social media tools like Facebook, Whats-App etc. The company estimates that the openness will be challenging to measure as the hidden information would be exposed publicly
The organization lack in changing the culture according to the need of the time. Thus, this is resulting in low employee satisfaction and high employee iterations.
The company does not have any database system which can support the company in managing the human resources information systematically.
The potential gains for the organization, regarding their business practices if they adopt a more geocentric focus is that the organization will be able to achieve the business targets more easily and will be able to reduce their current gaps and issues in the organization. “Geocentric focus is when the company focuses on global advantages, global communication, and global hiring off manpower based on their skill sets rather than country of origin (Lander, n.d)”. They will have better employee motivation, employee retention and suitable leave system for the employees. Examples – Many MNC and global companies are resolving their such gaps and issues with the help of geocentric focuses in the organization.
Benefit for the business of the organization if they adopt a more global approach will be as follow:
Higher employee satisfaction, motivation and retention due to global influences in the organization on the employees.
Better employee contribution towards the organization and will achieve higher outputs.
Improves the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization by global processes.
Nimble wants to transfer the world storage to the hybrid storage system and wanted to achieve the goal to become a billion-dollar company within 3 years. The hybrid storage system makes organizations more competitive by using flash memory which gives rapid access to random data and hard disk to increase the performance of the company by giving efficient and flash storage platforms. The target is to focus on a broad range of enterprise applications with the goal to optimize in many areas as follows: Performance efficiency, Capacity efficiency, Data protection, and Dramatic simplicity.
Nimble Storage could improve interpersonal relationships between employees and across global boundaries by doing the following:
Create channels of communication like chat groups, social media groups and encourage knowledge sharing.
Fixed and regular video conferencing with a clear agenda at a predefined time to share ideas, discuss problems and resolve differences in opinions.
Clearly defined job roles with a perfect reporting structure
Training and annual meets where all employees from diverse backgrounds can interact in an exotic location as a team-building exercise.
Ensure all team is on the same page by sharing emails with the relevant group with the same information.
Cost
Benefit
Managing global travel
The parent company executive is not required to travel frequently and hence saves time effort and money for frequent travel to customers.
Managing cost of global offices
Has a global and local presence, generates more local business and creates an affinity with the locals. The customers relate to the organization and could be the first step to setting up larger operations in the region if the business needs demand.
The increased cost of communication
Most communication is inexpensive and involves the only cost of internet
Cost of cultural integration and managing employees of diverse background
The benefit of having localized team and can be integrated by training programs and constant interactions. It will have long-term benefits of having a local base which is comfortable for the customers.
Moreover, Employees can work from home and according to company’s policies, the compensation in many third world countries are lower than the parent company “International assignment compensation has many moving parts and is difficult to standardize. Many factors affect the compensation of a particular expatriate, including assignment type and length, location, family needs (if any), and benefits (Designing Global Compensation Systems, 2017)”, The need for frequent travel by international manager is reduced, The organization is seen as a local company with a global approach, and The multicultural approach gives it a more diverse background and increases skills, knowledge base of the globe.
Nimble Storage mission and vision is geocentric because he wants the culture to be the same but with a global viewpoint. Nimble storage was founded by Varun Mehta in 2008; the organization is a rapidly growing hybrid data storage system company, incorporated in San Jose California. The company’s mission was to give its “customers the industry’s most efficient flash storage platform (Bahrami, 2015). This company has a geocentric culture. A geocentric organizational culture is a corporate culture of global corporations.
A global corporation is the fourth and the last phase known today in a for-profit company’s global status evolution, which is preceded by domestic, international, and multinational phases. Global companies strive is to be both profitable and socially accepted. In the early years when Nimble had an organization of 100 employees, their focus as an organization was building the organization while articulating its core values as well as managing the day-to-day human resource issues. The core values of Nimble includes innovation, accountability, integrity, initiative, listening, collaboration and teamwork (Bahrami, 2015).
The transformation of human resources today is a direct call of the rapid changes within businesses due to factors such as globalization. In the global competition within the flat and connected new world, decision making in organizations has become increasingly intricate and convoluted. The new global world has widened the talent pool for excellent and marginal workers, and for permanent and fluid workers. An organization ‘s talent can be a source for a sustained competitive advantage and can affect important organizational outcomes such as survival, profitability, customer satisfaction level, and employee performance (Varma, 2017).
Most emerging nations with large populations, including Brazil, Russia, India, and China, may not be able to sustain a net surplus workforce with the right skills for much longer. Now, more than ever, organizations need to place greater emphasis on attracting human capital rather than financial capital. Because capital is broadly available from investors and lenders, and innovations can be duplicated relatively easily and quickly, effective human resource management is the best way to differentiate one company from another. Global staffing and global leadership development are the two components of global human resources with the greatest potential for powerful leverage for global firms.
Political and legal environment is one of the most significant problems faced by organizations, especially which are working across the globe. Dynamic political environment might create additional problems for Nimble apart from its dwindling HR policies, poor health of customers’ network, demotivated employees and high attrition rates. “HR professionals in organizations that operate both in the U.S. and abroad are increasingly facing compliance challenges from global sources and in some cases are dealing with regulatory issues that have not traditionally been a core component of HR's portfolio. One case in point: global data privacy laws (The Regulatory Environment, 2016)”.
Nimble can use the following strategies to accommodate the current and future global political changes:
The company should develop and implement global HR policy and practices to address the challenges faced by their HR department.
They should develop a fair, transparent and bias-free work environment to avoid any legal and political issues in future.
The company should also focus on developing a balanced corporate culture for managing diverse workforce.
They should conduct proper research on market entry barriers, legal and political issues, compliance policies, trade barriers, etc. before entering a nation.
The company should also ensure proper data security measures to maintain the privacy and protection of customer data.
Questions; questions are based on the information listed above. Recommendations suggested is included in the above findings. Use the information above to answer questions. Thanks!
F.Explain how these recommendations should be implemented as to avoid risk events, and justify your response. For instance, you could consider how you would go about implementing these recommendations to avoid any potential issues.
G. Make recommendations as to how you would advise the organization regarding how to make the organization more global while maintaining its unique identity. Be sure to justify your response.
Cost
Benefit
Managing global travel
The parent company executive is not required to travel frequently and hence saves time effort and money for frequent travel to customers.
Managing cost of global offices
Has a global and local presence, generates more local business and creates an affinity with the locals. The customers relate to the organization and could be the first step to setting up larger operations in the region if the business needs demand.
The increased cost of communication
Most communication is inexpensive and involves the only cost of internet
Cost of cultural integration and managing employees of diverse background
The benefit of having localized team and can be integrated by training programs and constant interactions. It will have long-term benefits of having a local base which is comfortable for the customers.
Explanation / Answer
F.The company should develop and implement global HR policy and practices to address the challenges faced by their HR department. This can be done only when a corporate will is shown at this point. All stakeholders must be involved and a mechanism must be drawn whereby HR system uses the integrated technology and information approach to have global best HR practice.
They should develop a fair, transparent and bias-free work environment to avoid any legal and political issues in future. This is needed as every big and prospective company is trying to have diverse work culture and workforce into their company. Nimble can use fair policy to treat every employee equal and brand them as equal opportunity Company where every individual is respected based on their performance.
The company therefore also needs to focus on developing a balanced corporate culture for managing diverse workforce. The culture of the company would have an impact on the type of workforce and if a more optimistic and corporate and future is kept in perspective than diverse workforce must be maintained and equal treatment to all employees must be ensured
The company needs to understand the political, legal, social framework that it is working into. The company has to abide by all regulations where it does business and have to take political class in confidence along with other research that will reduce any risk events.
The company also needs to ensure that all such measures whether legal or technologically feasible must be taken to ensure that customer’s information and data are protected and that trust has to be built in around or it will cost to the company in long terms.
F.The main thing the company can do is to recruit diverse workforce. Diverse workforce would include people from different ethnicity, culture, academic, social background etc. which will create the future of the company and future leaders. The company needs to respect the local laws, tradition, people choice and culture across the globe and brand themselves as someone which is for service to wide range of people across globe without any discrimination towards any people or entity. This can the best the company can do to be more global while maintaining its unique identity.