Creating a world with “ a computer on every desk and in every home running on Microsoft software”
Version-2: “ to empower people to do anything they want, any place they want, and on any device”
CHALLENGES
Scarcity of talent
Retention of talent/attrition of talent
Protection of company human resource policies and practices.
STRATEGIES
To change or adept some of the human resource practices that would be useful to retain so called the best team of software professionals the world has ever seen.
Stringent recruitment process. Preference for hiring extremely intelligent, not necessarily experienced. Involvement of “as appropriate” interviewer. Selections of candidates need to be ensured for “going to be Microsoft people, not just good people for specific jobs”.
“n minus 1” concept during recruitment i.e. hiring fewer employees than actually required.
No status symbols.
Continuous restructuring the organization into small units of 30 to 200 people and further dividing into work groups with responsibilities for a product, project, or program.
Conserved cash for growth i.e. equities were given to employees in lieu of high salaries.
Semi-annual performance reviews tied to pay increase, stock options grant and bonus.
“Disease model of management” for learning from mistakes .
Importance on meeting superior candidates (even at entry level, college kids) with topmost managers even Gates itself to convince them to sign on.
Segmentation of high potential list of employees into three “waves”.
STRATEGIC ACTIONS
Announcement of a package of changes that offered lucrative/sweetened salaries, allowed more frequent promotions, and softened some of the pressures.
Principle of identifying a clear reason for recruiting a person.
Initiatives for development through personal mentoring.
Allocating scarce talent by moving key people from one project to another.
Providing more comfortable & familiar work environment for morale and mental health.
Review of objectives every month to avoid big deviations from the agreed goals.
Develop leaders of clearing the obstacles, making decisions quickly and defining clear goals.
Developed employee- survey questions to correlate directly to a person’s intent to stay at Microsoft.
Introduction of “Organizational Health Index (OHI)” as a part of annual employee survey.
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Develop an approach of “key people review” for career planning, early identification and job
slotting program.
PROBLEMS
Heavy work load.
Lot of managers ‘lack in necessary skills to manage people. Lack of sufficient capable managers and leaders. Most of them were brilliant technical people but not necessarily great managers.
Increasing level of employees (crossed 20,000) was the grave concern for diluting the value and sprit.
Big retention problem in 1997 with a record of 7 .6% attrition rate.
Higher attrition rate (closer to average industry rate) among the employees having experience of seven or more.
Stress as a part of Microsoft culture.
OBSERVATIONS/SUGGESTIONS
Company has introduced different-different schemes/policies and approaches to increase retention of employees, attracting best talent across the world, developing of leadership ability among the employees. Company has tried to find out the causes of attrition/ discontent among the employees and intensions of employees. Company has developed approaches for being aware of employees understanding about the company’ s goal, their own goals and how much it is aligning with the company’s goal, moreover company also worked to minimise deviation of employees’ goal from the targeted goal. Company has
identified the potential employees within the company to allocate the right jobs for them. Company has developed a process to show the competencies and thrown the questions at employees to ponder on for its implementation and best outcome of solutions by employees itself. It will enable employees to detect best solutions.
Company has tried all possible best efforts to resort their problems but it is also important that company should be adhered with it. Again emphasis should be given for development and training programs so that employees can understand the company’s actual need in
better way and act accordingly.
Company should focus on entertainment/fun/encouraging and motivational programs for its employees to alleviate tension.
