HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT
ON
IMPLEMENTING GLOBAL HR MANAGEMENT
 MAKING GLOBAL HR SYSTEM
MORE ACCEPTABLE
Aspirational policies: include a code of conduct or ethics policy, an equal opportunities/diversity policy, bullying,
victimization and harassment policies, and a corporate social responsibility policy. Such policies promote a certain
standard of behavior and practice to be followed by all employees in all jurisdictions. While employers need to be
mindful of the challenges described above, policies that encourage a better and safer workplace environment for
employees are less likely to transgress local laws or cultures.
Extra-territorial policies: are those required by laws that have international reach. These include bribery and
corruption policies, regulatory policies and data privacy/protection policies. These policies are particularly
important as failure to comply with the relevant legislation can often result in significant fines, loss of current and
future business, reputational damage and even criminal sanctions. Although not all jurisdictions will have
legislation in these areas, it may still be necessary for global organizations to introduce clear policies. For
example, both UK and US anti-bribery and anti-corruption laws reach beyond the UK and US respectively, and
capture all jurisdictions in which a UK or US company (or its employees) operate.
In addition, many organizations need to transfer employee and/or customer personal data across different
jurisdictions, and, therefore, need to ensure that their data privacy/protection policies apply in all relevant
jurisdictions so as to permit the transfer of data between countries without infringing the data privacy laws that
exist in the country from which that data emanates.
International policies: include social media, IT and email and internet usage policies, as, in practice, it is not
possible to confine activities in this sphere to a particular country. Employers need to think carefully about how
they manage their employees’ use of social media, email and the internet, all of which are tools that do not
recognize jurisdictional boundaries and, therefore, require a genuinely global approach.
 IMPLEMENTING GLOBAL HR
SYSTEM

• The successful implementation of a global HR system means overcoming significant

planning and technical challenges, as well as meeting regulatory compliance
demands that change based on region or country.
• The central role of HR in business processes and employee relations also
complicates the process and calls for increased caution during implementation, so as
not to create unnecessary disruption to business activities.
 EXECUTIVE BUY-IN

All projects that entail a widespread change in departmental or organizational behavior

meet resistance.
Overcoming this resistance means that the business owner, executive or senior
management must buy-in to the change and demonstrate support.
Top-level support gives the team tasked with HR system implementation the necessary
clout to secure buy-in from mid-level and regional management.
Executive buy-in also simplifies securing the necessary resources to bring the project to
a successful completion.
 PROJECT TEAMS

The business needs to create a project team tasked with developing, coordinating and
managing the system implementation at a global level.
The business also needs to create teams to handle the implementation at the local or
regional level.
Both the global and regional teams should include IT and HR experts to ensure that the
technical and HR-specific requirements are accommodated.
 COMMUNICATION
Communication plays a pivotal role in the success of a global implementation of an HR
system.
Keep the organization as a whole in the loop about the proposed change and its impact by
means of emails, newsletters and announcements.
HR departments should receive detailed information about the timing of the changes,
required training and the method of the system change.
Software installations performed on individual computers represent a very different
situation than a new program that gets installed on servers and appears on workstation
desktops from one day to the next.
Knowing what to expect helps employees and managers prepare.
 PHASED ROLL-OUT

The roll-out plan for the new HR system should happen in phases, both regionally and
within the individual offices.
Rolling out the system in one region at a time offers a number of benefits.
It allows the company to receive feedback and correct any functionality problems before
moving on to the next region.
The phased approach also gives the company a chance to adapt the system to any
regional quirks that defy a standardized approach.
The system should become available to employees in a phased manner as well, starting
with department heads and moving down in stages.
This allows senior staff to master the system before they must field questions about it.
 ENLISTING SUPPORT

The business may find it necessary to enlist the support of the system provider or
consultants during the implementation process.
HR programs often cannot communicate with one another, which means the vendor for
the new system may need to develop a fix that allows the new system to import and
interpret data from the old system.
If the business has little experience in a global-level change projects, a consultant with
experience in global change management and HR may help the company avoid costly
or time consuming mistakes.
 INTRODUCTION

As an objective of Mid-term Management Plan, Hitachi sought to position itself as an

innovation partner for the Internet of Things (IoT) era by promoting its Social
Innovation Business worldwide.
To achieve this management strategy, Hitachi had to identify the requirements
demanded of its organization and its workforce.
Human resource (HR) management strategies needed to be created in accordance
with management and business strategies.
Hitachi worked on creating a global HR strategy designed to harness the individual
strengths of a diverse workforce and to grow the organization. Initiatives such as
creating a global common platform for HR management that will be needed to
enable Hitachi Group employees to provide solutions spanning multiple countries
and business departments in line with the One Hitachi concept.
 GLOBAL HR MANAGEMENT
INITIATIVES

3.1 Creating a Global Common Platform for HR Management

Since 2012, Hitachi has been adopting a variety of initiatives to create a global common
platform for HR management.
Hitachi business units have traditionally each used their own optimally tailored HR
initiatives and programs when expanding overseas.
These initiatives and programs have now been organized into worldwide, regionwide,
and company-specific categories.
Worldwide initiatives are implemented by the Group headquarters, and regionwide
initiatives by the applicable regional headquarters within Hitachi’s five-region structure.
3.2 Global HR Initiatives
Hitachi created a global HR database to identify HR information worldwide. The database is a global resource for the entire
Hitachi Group. It holds data for about 250,000 people, and is used for a number of applications related to HR initiatives.
One of these initiatives is Hitachi Insights, a worldwide employee survey started in 2013. Hitachi Insights is available in 14
languages on a public cloud platform. The 2017 edition received responses from about 164,000 employees worldwide.
These responses helped identify strengths and weaknesses in each division, and was used to provide feedback to
managers and to improve employee engagement.
Implementing business strategies with a diverse workforce requires role/job-based HR management. Hitachi Global Grade
and Global Performance Management are two means being used to achieve this aim. Role/job-based HR management is
an approach that forms the organization around the business strategies required for competing effectively, instead of
forming the business strategies around the organization and human resources on hand. The roles and responsibilities of
the required job positions are designed, and then the positions are filled with human resources suited to them.
Since defining the roles and responsibilities of individual positions requires a global standard, Hitachi adopted the Hitachi
Global Grade system for job positions in 2013. This grading system uses methodology created by US consulting firm
Mercer LLC to evaluate the size of each position’s roles and responsibilities on a 9-step scale. It has now been used to
evaluate 50,000 managerial-level positions worldwide.
The Global Performance Management program was started in 2014 to define reporting lines, and to keep personal and
organizational targets in alignment. It is designed to enable managers to improve the performance of subordinates through
coaching and feedback, helping each member make steady progress on achieving organizational targets.
Hitachi has also created a Global Compensation Philosophy that recognizes the principle of pay-for-performance. It
ensures compensation transparency and market competitiveness, bringing performance and rewards into closer step with
one another.
Employee training programs are vital for global business growth. Since 2015, Hitachi has been providing a learning
management system called Hitachi University that runs on the public cloud platform created by US solutions provider
Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc. Used by 300,000 employees worldwide, Hitachi University can be used to apply for
leadership training and other programs provided around the world, and to take eLearning courses for training in areas such
as business skills and compliance.
3.3 Creating a Thriving and Diverse Workforce
Along with global HR programs and initiatives, Hitachi has been working on reform efforts designed to
create a corporate culture with a thriving and diverse workforce.
Hitachi has made a public commitment to ensuring that diversity thrives among its workforce,
announcing a goal of raising the proportion of female and foreign officers at the Hitachi Group’s parent
company in November 2017. The Company is working to ensure that each of these demographics
represents at least 10% of the officers by 2020, with at least 800 managerial-level female employees.
People born outside Japan serve in leadership roles at a number of Hitachi business units, helping
shape its global business activities. Examples include Alistair Dormer of Hitachi’s Railway Systems
Business Unit, Brice Koch of Hitachi Automotive Systems, Ltd., and Hicham Abdessamad of Hitachi
Global Digital Holdings Corporation.
Hitachi Work Life Innovation is a campaign to promote work styles that eliminate time and location
constraints. It is described in the article “Hitachi Work Life Innovation”.
The Make a Difference! project was started in 2015 to raise employee proactivity and promote an “I
will” mindset.
THANK YOU