A Study On Lenovo's HRM Techniques & Risk Management For Worker's Protection Essay.

Lenovo's Current Position in the Market

Risk management for worker’s protection and the employee benefits are the two selected organisation behaviour and human resource topic in this report. Employee benefits can be describing as the additional non-wage compensation provided to the employees, in order to appreciate their contribution in the organisation. It is also important to motivate the employees to provide quality performance and increase the productivity level. On the other hand, risk management helps in preventing any types of accidents from occurring, which also ensures the safety of the workers. In this report, the current and desired position of Lenovo will be compared, along with the HRM techniques the company utilises in order to enhance the company performance and position in the market.

Lenovo is a technology-based company in China, which started its journey from 1984, and is still sustaining strong in the global market. According to the latest reports, Lenovo has been considered as the largest PC vendor in the global market. In 2020, Lenovo managed to acquire a 25.2% market share. Some of the main competitors of the company are Dell, HP, Apple and many more. Despite being the top technological company in China, Lenovo seeks develop their business condition in the international markets. The primary strategy of the company is acquisition of the other companies and beneficial partnerships. Lenovo also managed to acquire Motorola Mobility, which increased profitability enough to invest in further markets. In terms of internal facilities, Lenovo has developed a Code of Conduct, that states few regulations for enhancing the effectiveness of the company overall production. Lenovo conducts a regular investigation audit in terms of responding to the concerns of the employees, which is also an integral part of the risk management. Under the Code of Conduct, it is also mentioned that the company does not tolerate employee retaliation, such as demotions, termination, verbal abuse, threats and many more. This strategy comes under the employee benefits, which is important for motivating the employees to perform effectively.

Lenovo has been recognised as a technical giant company, in the global market, as the company distributes their products over 60 countries. As per the latest reports, Lenovo earned over 60 billion US dollars from the global market in 2021. The PC models developed by the company accounted for the 80% of the entire sales. Due to the innovation update measures taken by the company, in 2020, the overall revenue of Lenovo increased 20%, compared to the previous year. Due to the global online delivery channels, the customers from the international markets can also easily get the access of the products, as a result, the company serves customers in more than 160 countries. As a multinational company, the workload and productivity pressure are also extremely high; therefore, the company has managed to develop a strong workforce of 57,000 employees from all across the countries. However, managing the large number employees without organised structure, with lead to operational crisis on the company.

Figure 1: Lenovo market growth

(Source: )

In addition, the key purpose of Lenovo is to become world’s largest company in terms of providers of personal technologies, such as personal computers. The company has also developed three key objectives, which are to focus on bringing innovation, delivering high quality products and lead in the global technological industries, particularly lead in PCs. The current strategy taken by the company is to enhances the intelligent and technological transformation of the company. According to the company, this strategy is beneficial for increasing the quality of the products and overall performance of the company. In order to reach the desired target, the company needs to focus on the individual performances of the employees, because the workforce is considered to be accountable for quality of the outcome. The COVID 19 pandemic situation, has changed the working dynamics of for the employees. One of the important employee benefit strategies taken by Lenovo is the work from home facilities. In order to spread the coronavirus from spreading, the government has imposed lockdown all across the country, preventing any kind of social gathering. Approximately 63% of the employees granted the opportunity to work from home, which also benefitted the company in terms of maintaining the overall production rate. However, one of the major downsides of this facility is that employees do not get an appropriate working condition in the home; therefore, the productivity rate tends to decline. Due to this global pandemic situation, the internal working productivity of the company was disrupted. As a result, the sales rate decreased by 10%, in 2021, which caused the net income of the company to decline by 64% percent. This incident caused a huge loss for the company, and the market share also declined simultaneously.

HRM Techniques of Lenovo

In addition, the smartphone factory of the company situated in Wuhan, China was also forced shut down, because of the pandemic. The overall sales for the mobile products of Lenovo declined by 47%, resulting in the overall loss of the company. Therefore, these financial declining factors are considered to be a large obstacle for the company to achieve its desired objectives. It can also be observed that, the company can not monitor properly the health and safety issues, while the employees work from home. Therefore, the company are not accountable for maintaining the performance quality and productivity level. The reason behind this particular circumstance is many employees are not accustomed with the situation, and are not aware of the technical advancements. Due to work from home facilities the working hours became more flexible. The workloads increased in order to revamp the condition of the business; however, the individual productivity level started decreasing.

Application of the Human Relations management theory is beneficial in this type of difficult situation. This theory states that, it is one of the major responsibilities of the management department to respond to the employee concerns and demands on a frequent basis. In accordance with the employee demands, the company needs to develop better working conditions for the employees, so that the individual performances improve. Within the last few years, Lenovo has received several complaints from the customers regarding, their smart device products, data centre and mobile devices. It indicates that the employee performances are gradually decreasing due to the management failure of the company. Employee benefits, such as leave policies, additional compensations, additional support to the employees and other factors are beneficial for engaging with the employees. These types of employee benefits are beneficial for attracting the skilled employees, and ensuring that they are committed towards their job. It can also be observed that Lenovo has spent 1.33 billion US dollars on the research and development investments in order to implement the technological benefits for the employees in the company. This has helped the company to increase their profit by 5%, because the advance technologies have helped in reducing the manual effort of the employees. It has aided in increasing the employee motivation regarding the improvement of performance quality and productivity rate.

According to the scientific management theory, it has been mentioned that forcing the employees to work hard, can decline the productivity level. Extreme pressure on the workers, also increases the chance of stress, anxiety and other mental health problems among the workers. Due to the rapid decline in the revenue generation of the company, it has been observed that the organisation started putting additional pressure on the employees, in order to increase the productivity. The company failed to maintain the Code of Conduct, which states that appropriate attention will be provided to the employees and their concerns. The failure of the smartphones in the international market by Lenovo has also been a challenge for the company, and the overall employee production rate can be blamed. Currently, the company stands in the 10^th place of the Chinese technical market, which is averagely lower that the companies’ expectations. One of the major faults of Lenovo is that it failed to capitalise and notice the market differences. The Motorola products were not accepted by the Western customers; however, the company claimed acquisition of the Motorola company. As a result, despite of the initial increase in the production, the smartphones sales declined rapidly from the global market.

Importance of Employee Benefits

In terms of gap analysis, it has been identified that, the COVID 19 pandemic scenario has resulted in the inefficiency in the production rate. The competition in the global market also increased, which has been a great threat for the company to sustain in the international markets for a long time. On the other hand, Lenovo plans to continue with the company acquisition and aggressive marketing strategy in order to attract the customers, as well as increase the brand recognition in various markets. In addition, it has been observed that there is an employee satisfaction gap in the company. Lenovo has also failed to provide appropriate technological tools to the employees, along with the work from home facilities, which has become the main reason behind the low productivity rate of the company. Approximately, 41% of the employees stated that they are not provided with employee benefits like flexible working hour, along with beneficial technologies in order to improve the quality performance. In addition, there are continuous technological issues, which the employees face on a regular basis that disrupts the working flow of the company. Therefore, in order to achieve the desired objectives regarding international growth of the company, Lenovo needs to focus on better human resource strategies, that enhances the employee engagement and overall performance.

Encouraging feedbacks: In order to become the largest technical device provider in the global world, it is important for the company to identify the issues that are disrupting the company operations. Feedbacks helps the employees to share their concerns about the workplace issues. In accordance with the feedback results, Lenovo can develop strategies that mitigates the ongoing employee issues, and motivate them to increase their productivity level. This is also a cost-efficient strategy, as the company can implement some of the software like 360-degree feedback, in order to achieve feedback from every internal associates.

Offering appraisal and incentives: The company should provide additional incentive to the workers, based on their performance efficiency. It is beneficial in terms of making the employee feel appreciated. Due to additional incentives, the investments of the company may increase; however, the increased productivity level due to higher motivation, will allow the company to achieve greater profitability rate from the market. This process is also not time-consuming, which is beneficial for the overall company.

Training and development: It have been observed from the previous discussion that the employees are mainly facing technological issues, which disrupts there working flow. Therefore, Lenovo needs to train and develop their employees, and increase their technical knowledge. It will help the employees to handle the technical difficulties even when they are working from remote conditions. Lenovo can offer on=job training, which costs less and are also time effective.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the overall discussion that Lenovo has several management difficulties that fails to motivate employees, that ultimately lowers the performance of the company. In addition, the company has also been facing issues regarding the performance quality of the employees, as the new range of products failed to attract customers from both the national and international markets. However, the main target of the company was to increase the demand of the international customers regarding their products. Therefore, strategies like encouraging feedback and training programs are cost-efficient as well as effective for the company.

I have learned the importance of appropriate human resources functions within an organisation. The HR plays a crucial role in terms of engaging with the employees, with effective strategies, that helps in increasing the individual performances. Throughout the lesson, I have felt that HR are the main pillars of the company, which helps in keeping the employees and external factors organised. Employees are mainly accountable for the operational outcomes; therefore, providing employee satisfaction through appropriate HR strategies will be important for increasing the performance quality and net profitability.

References

Boiano, E., 2020. Lenovo: a big step toward the future of technology.

Cao, Y., 2021, June. Internal Factors of Dividend Policy at the Firm Level: A Case Study of Lenovo Annual Report. In 2021 International Conference on Enterprise Management and Economic Development (ICEMED 2021) (pp. 363-368). Atlantis Press.

Dahlgaard-Park, S.M., Reyes, L. and Chen, C.K., 2018. The evolution and convergence of total quality management and management theories. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 29(9-10), pp.1108-1128.

Dewi, S., Adawiyah, W.R. and Afif, N.C., 2021. The Effect of Motivation, Price and Perceived Quality on Consumer Purchase Decisions of Lenovo Laptops in The Covid-19 Pandemic Era in Purwokerto. Sustainable Competitive Advantage (SCA), 11(1).

Haranas, M., 2020. Lenovo Profits And Sales ‘Severely Impacted’ By COVID-19. [online] CRN. Available at: <https://www.crn.com/news/data-center/lenovo-profits-and-sales-severely-impacted-by-covid-19?itc=refresh> [Accessed 8 April 2022].

Helfen, M., Schüßler, E. and Sydow, J., 2018. How can employment relations in global value networks be managed towards social responsibility?. Human Relations, 71(12), pp.1640-1665.

Ju, J., 2021. The Application of Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory in Management--Taking Huawei and Lenovo as Examples. Proceedings of Business and Economic Studies, 4(2).

Lenovo.com. 2022. Our Company | Lenovo. [online] Available at: <https://www.lenovo.com/in/en/lenovo/our-company/#:~:text=Today%2C%20Lenovo%20is%20a%20US,in%20countries%20around%20the%20world.> [Accessed 8 April 2022].

Macrotrends.net. 2022. Lenovo Group Research and Development Expenses 2010-2021 | LNVGY. [online] Available at: <https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/LNVGY/lenovo-group/research-development-expenses> [Accessed 8 April 2022].

Mishra, K., Mishra, A.K. and Walker, K., 2019. Using innovative internal communication to enhance employee engagement. In Handbook of Research on Strategic Communication, Leadership, and Conflict Management in Modern Organizations (pp. 445-468). IGI Global.

news.lenovo.com. 2020. New Lenovo Research: People are Working More by Not Going to Work, but Worry about Home Tech, Data Security and Personal Costs. [online] Available at: <https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/new-lenovo-research-people-are-working-more-by-not-going-to-work-but-worry-about-home-tech-data-security-and-personal-costs/> [Accessed 8 April 2022].

Rossanty, Y. and PUTRA NASUTION, M.D.T., 2018. Information Search And Intentions To Purchase: The Role Of Country Of Origin Image, Product Knowledge, And Product Involvement. Journal of Theoretical & Applied Information Technology, 96(10).

Schmid, S. and Polat, C., 2018. Lenovo: From Chinese Origins to a Global Player. In Internationalization of Business (pp. 125-154). Springer, Cham.

Slotta, D., 2022. Lenovo: annual revenue 2018 | Statista. [online] Statista. Available at: <https://www.statista.com/statistics/233035/revenue-of-lenovo/> [Accessed 8 April 2022].

Static.lenovo.com. 2021. Code of Conduct. [online] Available at: <https://static.lenovo.com/ww/docs/sustainability/lenovo-code-of-conduct-english-final-v9.pdf> [Accessed 8 April 2022].

Triggs, R., 2018. How did Lenovo go from high-flyer to failure so fast?. [online] Android Authority. Available at: <https://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-smartphone-fails-873134/> [Accessed 8 April 2022].