INTRODUCTION
Mattel Inc, is the world’s largest toy company, founded in 1945 by Harold “Matt” Matson and Handler, and is credited with establishing the Barbie product line for the company in 1959 it products include Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, and, in the early 1980s, video game consoles. They also produce action figures and toys based on Walt Disney films and Harry porter series. Today the Barbie line is responsible for more than 80% of Mattel’s profits. Mattel generated 60% of its revenue were through international sales in Europe.
The key elements of Mattel Human Resource Management are:
- 1: LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
- 2: SUCCESSION PLANNING
- 3: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Mattel’s Human resources strategy in Relations to Relevant Theories and Models and the current external environment
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT:
Leadership Development is an expansion of a person’s capacity to be effective in leadership’s roles and processes. Leadership roles and processes are those that facilitate setting direction, creating alignment, and maintaining commitments in groups of people who share common work (McCauley et al, 2003).
Mattel’s vision through Eckert ‘proposed ambitious initiatives that will motive the workforce and give it more discipline. The idea was to create tangible development programmes that would generate a more skilled and competitive workforce, establish metrics to understand how the workforce was performing and set up a systematic succession strategy that would enable the company to retain its home-grown talent’. According to social psychologist “People develop confidence in their capabilities to accomplish task through mystery experience where they are able to practice and demonstrate all skills, various experiences which involves seeing others like themselves, including peer roles”.(Komives, 1995)
SUCCESSION PLANNING
Effective succession planning helps ensure the stability of the tenure of personnel. It is perhaps best understood as any effort designed to ensure the continued effective performance of an organisation. Division, department, or work group by making provision for the development, replacement, and strategic application of key people overtime (Roth well, 2005)
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
A Performance management tracking tools helps manage employees, supervisors, and departments based on actual objective performance standards instead of subjective guesswork. Performance tracking defines performance standards for employees, supervisors, and managers and measures actual performance against standards. It identifies employees, supervisors, and departments who are meeting, exceeding, or lagging behind performance standards.
The performance management model offered many practical suggestions and solutions that helped human resource managers in drifting a model suiting to their organisations and objectives and cultural ethos. There must be a clear objective, direction and implementation plan for execution of performance management system, and it is not a stand alone activity (Kandula, 2004)
Eckert picked up by lunching with employees in the cafeteria, led to the creation of a sophisticated workforce training system, which is not a standalone strategy.
What are the benefits of a Performance Tracking System?
Objective not subjective assessment
Easy and timely access to actual performance levels
Facilitates proactive management of “employee” resources
Prior to Eckert, Mattel did not have a defined structure in place. A few days at the company had revealed, that employees groups were disjointed and motivated. Eckert distinct culture, language and ways of doing business, instead of close knit commitment and strong group dynamics. These were disconnected subcultures, brewing discord and inefficiencies. Eckert proposed ambitious limitations that would motivate the workforce and give it more discipline. The idea was to create the 3 key elements (leadership development, succession planning, and performance tracking). This leadership development according to Eckert was to create tangible development programme that would generate a more skilled and a competitive workforce established metrics to understand how the workforce was performing and set up a systematic succession strategy that would enable the company to retain its home grown talent
Mattel human resources strategy faces lots of external environmental issues, using the (PEST ANALYSIS)
1: Market
2: Competition
3: Industries
4: Economic
MARKET: Mattel as a company faces lots of problems, the market for toys was unstable in some countries e.g the USA, CEO Gill barrad in 1999, decided against a cost cutting strategy to shore up profits, instead he focussed on workforce management to turn the ailing company around. The Mattel company was beyond its region all round the world not considering (PEST)Political,Economical,Social,and Technological, in regions where the company expanded to in the acquisition of other toy makers companies, so as to remain the leading toys makers in market despite their lacklustre.