Essay: HRM at Lafarge

As a part of my second year in international Bachelor Program in management at the Rabat Business School, and therefore I had to conduct an 18 weeks internship within the business logic in the choice of specialization for my futur professional project.
I conducted my internship at Lafarge’s company in Morocco as a multinational company so as to experience the international business world, to learn, improve and developp new sets of skills and interact with other people.
Lafarge is a French industrial company which was founded in France in 1833. It has established itself as the world leader in construction of material business with top-ranking positions in all of its businesses :Cement, Aggregates &Concrete and Gypsum.
The company is committed to sustainable development and for this reason Lafarge combines industrial know-how with performance, value creation, respect for employees and local cultures and the conservation of natural resources and energy.
As the worldwide economic trends appeared negative, and so as to stay among the top- ranking world groups and be the preminent player in their sector, Lafarge strengthened its position, as world leader in building materials, thanks to a various policies of acquisition an development in every continent.
The company has invested heavily in newly industrializing countries that offer considerable long-term growth potential, such as Turkey, Morocco, Venezuela, China, and India. It has used a globalization strategy in every country by acquiring one or more cement producers so as to gain a significant market share.
Yet, becoming a global company make it face many issues concerning its development, managing its human resources, which have doubled in the last years, integration of its companies and how they create synergy and,hence, value and finally development of managers willing to be mobile and able to operate successfully in a wide variety of markets and with people of diverse cultural backgrounds .
In this report, we will discuss the activities of human resources (HR) department at Lafarge Morocco, and how does it perform.
Finally, we will analyse the main issues that the HR departement faced and give some recommandations to improve its tools.
From a costumer perspective, Lafarge Morocco is the more successful company in its sector than others simply because it produces better products and provide superior services compared to others competitors ,which is true. However, from the employee’s perspective, the success of Lafarge
Morocco is measured by a combination of the process of managing human resources and services offered to costumers.
Let us take the example of Apple, that has been part of a huge technological revolution, a company whose employees believed that they were part of a revolution that permitted people to take advantage of intelligent tools. This employees confession is a result of a good human resource management by Apple’s HR department, a team spirit, individual rewards, individual achievement and performance.
The HR community at Lafarge has been widely identified as the single most important department in leading change efforts internally and externally, most of which have come about largely as a result of successful integration of acquired companies. They have realized that the employees enable the organization to achieve its goals and realize important profits, as a result they have increased the attention to how could they improve the management of the organization’s employees .
Improve the management of human resources means manage all the decisions and practices that directly or indirectly affect or influence the human resource who work for the organization. These practices are organized into five general areas :
1. Acquiring Human Resources: Recruiting and Job Search, Measurement and decison making Issues in Selection, Assessing Job Candidates (tools for selection).
2. Building Individual and Organizational Performance :Human Resource Development ( Trainig methods ).
3. Rewarding employees : Performance Appraisal,Compensation System Development
4. Employee Relations
5. Multinational Human Resource Management : Managing Human resources in
Multinational Organizations (International Assignment ).
In the section below, we will describe each activity practiced by the HR department in
Lafarge’s Company.
Lafarge competes for the best people in the labor market with a long-term view. It recruits diversified and international profiles, which have a potential to evolve. The HR director of the region (Morocco) takes the initiatives, as he understands the local and regional markets better. The establishment of the Group in Morocco is a source for a rich knowledge pool of international expertise and experiences.
After receiving the candidates aplications, HR department analyse the CVs and candidates background to measure if they match the role profile and then candidates are being contacted by one of the recruitment members .
The next phase is a series of individual interviews with Human Resources team ‘ either by phone, on-line or face-to-face interview. Hr department look for the candidates potential fit with the organization’s culture as well as exploring their achievements and motivations. To do so, the HR department uses competency based interviewing techniques that will draw on real experiences and real examples from the professional life.
Finally, the HR department uses induction programmes which includes a welcome to the convenient department, an overview of the organization’s business and an introduction to your function and role objectives. Also they organize seminars on a regular basis in the context of integration in the company. Similarly, the home company organizes the “Meet the Group” seminar for the hired managers with the aim of presenting the group, its values, its strategy, and its ways of functioning.
For Junior profiles ,throughout their career path, they are provided with individual support and coaching to develop their skills and management competencies. They are also offered the opportunity to pursue their training by, totally or partially, financing professional degrees and certificates.
For Mid-Career Managers: An individual and tailored development and training plan is built for Talented and High Potential Managers (Professional degrees and certificates, International Training Programmes, External Coaching)
The company is also in an indirect contact with the student. There is a scope in Lfarge for internship and apprenticeship, where the company offers paid internships for students who desire an internship and it also offers limited-duration contracts to new graduates to provide them with professional experience, which also gives the Group a chance to talent-spot future managers.
2. Talent Development and Training
Learning is a part of the company’s culture. Employees at all levels are systematically encouraged to consider how they upgrade their knowledge and how are they responding to the company’s objectives.
The company determines training and development as priorities. The responsibility for turning these into actions is shared between employees, line managers and the Human Resource department .
Many seminars are organized annualy by managers,in the company, to guide and coach employees to succeed in their current positions and develop their skills so as to respond properly to the company’s goals. ?? The employees seem understand the importance of the training programs and they’re showing an improvement in their work ?? says Mostapha RHIFI, human resource manager at Lafarge Morocco .
Lafarge, also offers a comprehensive range of training activities and methodologies to support everyone’s learning and growth, the company invested in a total of 36,000 hours of training over a two-year period at a cost of 11 million dirhams. Moreover, the programmes help the HR department develop and retain the best qualified management.
Training was carried out in Morocco and abroad. Preparation work was divided into several sections.
Workers could also learn to use equipment through internships with suppliers, simulators, or total immersion in the new working environment via internships at other Lafarge sites equipped with similar machinery
Lafarge has judged performance apppraisal an essential process for the development of its organization. Its main objective is to increase staff self-esteem and motivation to perform effictively and make sure that the employee realizes the organization’s objectives.
HR management provides the support for implementing the necessary tools, and partners with line managers to prepare the resources necessary for the continued development of the employee within the company. HR department uses three performance appraisal tools :
1. Management By Objectives MBO
2. Behaviorally anchored rating scales 3. Self evaluation
The performance appraisal’s process is made once a year by the manager who analyses the employee’s performance. It enables managers to acknowledge high performance and reward employees accordingly, while ensuring low performance is properly managed with integrity.
After analyzing the employee’s performance, the appraiser discusses with the employee the results and provide him/her with the process’s feedback whether in a face to face meeting or in an indirect way (mailing…). In the meeting, the appraiser and the appraisee work together to ensure that chalenging objectives are set and effectively evaluated throughout the year.
In addition, the company uses the Behaviorally anchored rating scales to assess their appraisees on the basis of behavior statements rather than generic performance of the employee ,which is a critical method in a multinational company.
Finally, each employee, supported by the line manager, is in charge of her or his own professional development and can have a self-evaluation of his/her performance and share with their bosses the work they have done since their last review, how they have performed on those tasks, areas they feel they can improve on and what their supervisors can do to help them do their job better.
4. Compensation
In its compensation policy, Lafarge Morocco follows the Hay Scale policy to compensate
its employees. However as it is a multintional company, Lafarge’s compensation policies are consistent with the local moroccan wage market, legislation and regultaion( ex. minimum wage) and cultural preferences. Appendix.1
The company believes that a strong compensation performance relationship is an important element of a strategy that relies on people as a source of competitive advantage. Lafarge wants to attract, motivate, and retain talented people by providing competitive total remuneration (base pay, variable pay, and benefits).
To support the strategy of continual performance improvement and value creation, the company has implemented a new bonus plan for managers where it introduced a set of new elements, such as the use of the economic value added EVA as a financial performance indicator and a greater focus on long-term value creation through the introduction of a long- term bonus.
This bonus plan is divided into two main components :
Since its implementation in Morocco, the company has built a culture based on values of trust, mutual respect and dialogue between employees. As a multinational company, its management is composed by employees from different nationalities, cultures and different state of minds.
To deal with the cultural differences, the company encourages two-way dialogue with its employees that goes beyond the traditional aspects of collective bargaining in order to share knowledge and to jointly find opportunities related to important matters such as Creating Shared Value, the mutual respect and the health and safety in the workplace
Lafarge’s management and employees work daily to create and maintain positive
individual and collective relationships, and the representatives are expected to make all necessary efforts to develop fair and constructive dialogues, overcome the difficulties that they might encounter and reach sustainable agreements.
6. International assignment
Lafarge is a multinational company with employees from all over the world . The company seeks to earn consumer’s confidence and preference and to not only follow, but also anticipate consumer trends, creating and responding to demand for its products. So the company have searched for ambitious, talented and determined individuals who are eager to tackle new challenges hands-on.
As part of Lafarge’s commitment to continuous career development, the employees receive not only frequent on-the-job training programmes but also they have the possibility to go on assignment to its subsidiaries in India, Venezuela, Brazil….These assignments respond to complex problems on a multi-market, multi-discipline basis provide our employees with opportunities to develop their skills in challenging projects.
III. ANALYSING HUMAN RESOURCE ACTIVITIES
In the recent years, Lafarge has shown a considerable development with an essential increase of its profits. On the human side, employees have shown an enormous progress in terms of their performance at work.
According to a recent survey that was conducted in the company by the HR department, employees have shown a satisfactory result in trems of their motivation and satisfaction in their jobs. The HR department is bcoming more closer to the employee, it assists him/her from the recruitment phase till their integration into the company.
Lafarge competes for the best people in the labor market. It recruits national and international profiles and select from the pool the ones who respond to the profile requirments.. In this phase, the HR uses competency based interviewing thechniques where the interviewers ask questions targetting specific skills or competencies. However, this technique can be seen as a too rigid tool which presents many difficulties to the employee. The employee can have difficulties expressing themselves and in most of the time, candidates have less chance to ask questions about the job. To avoir that, I think that the best technique to be used for the selection phase is to combine the competency based technique with the
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HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
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ESC RENNES
”traditional tehnique where a fluid conversation can be established with a great deal of interchange between the interviewer and the candidate.
HR careful and structured selection initially provide an organization with the qualified employees, but additional training and development are usually required to convey the job specific knowledge to employees and build encreasing skills over the carreer. In this context, the HR department organizes annual seminars providing the employees with the information related to their jobs but also organizes training activities to quide and coach employees to succed in their job. However, the Off-The-Job training is also important. HR department should use the Off-The-Job method which is conducted in locations specifically designated for training. Conducting the training away from the workplace minimizes distractions and pressure and allows trainees devote their full attention to the material thaught. Also, they should try the vestibule training which is the same method as the On-The-Job training , used by the company, except that this training takes place outside the workplace where the trainer is present all the time and the trainees are protected from the job pressure. This method provides a high rate of transfer of training.
After the training process, trainers want to know if the trainees have applied what they have learnt from the training proramms and how do they perform in the workplace. To do that, lafarge has implemented a system called Performance Appraisal System PAS which can be used by the appriser once a year to assess the performance of the employees. In this context, the company uses the behaviorally-anchored rating scales wich measures the performance of the employee depending on their behaviors. This method can be useful for feedback purposes, but it might point out particular things that an employee could do differently. In this case, a problem of deficiency arises. Behaviorally-anchored scales are a time consuming because in this technique,managers need detailed information regarding the actions of their employees, but gathering such data can be quite time-consuming . In this case, it would be better if the Lafarge Hr department uses some objective measures as the performance tests which are useful when it is difficult to gather data,which is the case in a multinational company.
From a general point of view, the HR department in this company is really well organized in terms of its decision-making and conducting its activities. It is unique in its potential to grow and develop to meet new challenges which made the company the leader in the sector.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
CONCLUSION
The human resources department of a company is its backbone and serves as the functional center of an organization. It operates in both the forefront and behind the scenes as it is involved with every aspect of the business.
At the end of the 21th century, we do realize that investment in human capital will yield higher returns than any other capital. Researchs have shown that the human part in an organization makes up for approximately 80 percent of the organization’s value, so good Human Resource Management is very important.
However as we move forward in time, there can be little doubt that human resource management faces some greatest challenges and limitations.
In the last two decades, many organizations have internationalised their operations which has lead to the international labor movement resulting in meaningful issues associated with the management of human resources.
One of the main challenges that face an organization is the change management. As with any change in the workplace, changes in technology maybe seen as a threat and may result in anxiety and even resistance among employees. In this case the HR department should find solutions and ways to assure the employees of their worth and meaningfu place within the organization .
As a second challenge for human resource management, leadership development needs to be a critical strategic initiative. HR professionals are faced with being expected to provide the essential structures, processes, tools, and points of view to make the best selection and develop the future leaders of the organization. The HR department should insure that the right employees are retained, that the culture of the organization supports performance from within to gain market position, and that managers are equipped to take on leadership roles, because ,more often, employees indicate poor manager leadership as a reason for leaving jobs.
Finally, talent retention can be the greatest human resource challenge in the futur. Employees at work respond through Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Once they are safe, well paid, they look for more meaningful value at work, so they job hop their positions.