Applied Material Corporation Human Resource Strategy

BUS_251 Strategic Human Recourse Management

Final Paper

Marta Muske (010279321)

Applied Materials Corporation was founded in 1967 and is the leader in nano-manufacturing technology solutions. Applied Materials supplies equipment, services and software to enable the manufacture of semiconductor chips for electronics, flat panel displays for computers, smartphones and televisions, and solar products. The company has a vision of applying nano-manufacturing to improve the way people live and the mission of leading the nano-manufacturing technology revolution. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and has more than 13000 employees to help make the vision and goal a reality.

Based on the interview with a company HR manager and information from the corporate website, the company has six business drivers: customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, process optimization, environmental consciousness, controlled growth and external relations. The following drivers are the foundation of the company’s strategic process.

The organizational structure is divided into functional areas: engineering, CFO, HR, CIO, process control, marketing and services, secretary, sales, PR. All employees are invited to submit proposals for new initiatives, which are evaluated for cost and their potential to contribute to the company’s success. Organizational processes and jobs are designed to allow flexibility so that employees can respond quickly to customer requirements and changing business needs. Customer-contact employees are empowered to resolve customer complaints without consulting management.  Production employees are responsible for tailoring processes to optimize contributions to company goals and to meet team-set standards. To help workers identify opportunities for improvements, each process includes requirements, metrics, and cause-and-effect diagrams. To foster employee continuous learning, the company uses a variety of training methods. To maintain strong customer focus, Applied Materials uses a wide range of listening and learning practices to capture information from customers. In addition, the quick-response survey card accompanies each shipment, and annual survey provides 70 different indicators of customer satisfaction.

The job design approach at Applied Materials gives employees the tools they need and uses their competencies to provide high-quality products and efficient services to its customers. Job design philosophy and practices reflect high impact and high complexity. Technology is key. Local area network provides workers with immediate access to process and business related information. Employees use technology to acquire inputs, provide goods and services to clients and customers. Virtually all employees are engaged in some tasks that involve moderate to high levels of task and workflow uncertainty. This means that experience, intuition and problem-solving abilities usually are required from the employees. The job design approach in the company is sociotechnical systems model made up of people who use tools, machines and techniques to create goods and services valued by customers. A crucial aspect of this approach is the recognition of task independence. The sociotechnical system generally increases workflow uncertainty and task uncertainty and should be considered by HR in job design and whether the technology should be used to empower employees or monitor and control them.

The company has chosen innovation, as their strategic HR choice, which encourages creativity and new ways of doing things. As well as flexibility, which allows room for alterations and improvements.

Because the company’s competitive advantage is innovation and their products are perceived as being unique, the company follows a differentiation business strategy. HR strategies support flexibility, opportunities and reinforcement of creative employees. All these perfectly fit a differentiation strategy. According to Miles and Snow’s business strategy, the company is a clear prospector with their eagerness to be the first in new-product areas with flexible organizational structures and complex products.

Selection

Because Applied Materials is built on the strength of talented people, the company has a tough selection process. The company offers a wide variety of job opportunities for experienced professionals and recent college/graduate students. First of all, applicants for engineering, financial, marketing, sales positions (positions that require certain educational level and skills) must show the minimum GPA score of 3.5. The correlation between GPA and future job performance indicates the predictive validity of this requirement. Secondly, there is a technical and aptitude written test to check the required knowledge of the applicants. Questions have moderate difficulty level. Then, selected applicants have technical interviews where they are checked with fundamentals and details of preferred subject, which is connected with the applied job position. And at last, HR round, where such selection tools as letters of recommendation, situational interview and sometimes background checks are required. So as we can see, selection process is multi-level process that can guarantee more thorough selection for required job positions. Described selection methods seem to be reliable, however, GPA is not a perfect predictor of job performance and in such job position as marketing manager or sales representative, a candidate’s approach to teamwork and priority they place on customer service can be more important to fit into organization. Moreover, even deficit in knowledge or expertise that potential employees might have may be reduced with training. Thus, hiring highly motivated individuals, who are willing to achieve a common goal and able to implement innovations might be more important than raw scores of the tests. My proposal for this organization: be sure that assessment of job-specific skills is based on analysis of what is needed to perform well and evidence that these qualities do influence future performance of the employee.

Training and development

Applied Material business success and ability to improve the way people live depends on attracting, developing and retaining a world-class workforce, one that reflects their core business values. The company offers employee training and leadership development programs. Ongoing personal and career development is essential to the success of the organization. Employee development department provides professional development opportunities for all employees, in content areas, which span across their jobs. Moreover, there is a corporate library -  a knowledge recourse center that provides all employees access to industry related news, electronic journals, databases and other information centers. The company also partnerships with academic universities such as Harvard Business School, Stanford University and Santa Clara University to bring professional recourses to Applied Materials employees. Based on the above factors, it seems that the company spends a large amount of money on employee training, offering 1,100 online courses and 2,700 classroom-based programs. It is important for HR managers to understand economic consequences of the proposed programs in order to avoid excessive investments. Brogden-Cronbach-Glesser model applied to training costs might be a useful tool to evaluate the impact of a training program. However, training effects dissipate with time, utility model can be used to assess the net payoff of the program over time and evaluate the impact of a training program. Since, to be creative and innovative always is connected with the constant learning, my suggestion to managers and supervisors to get report back of the learnt material and sometimes offer rewards and incentives to employees when they apply what they learnt in training. However, according to the research “Can money buy Happiness” (Personnel Psychology journal), deep acting employees are happier regardless of reward or not.