Sonoco HR Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Sonoco HR - Essay Example The industry’s shift towards a more involved supplier that offers end to end packaging solutions made it hard for SONOCO to compete directly with its competitors until serious change are implemented in the company. In response SONOCOs leadership implemented strategies designed to control cost that is juxtaposed to its new business model of generating top line growth. The strategy involves retooling its consumer packaging divisions to meet the large demands of clients that is sensitive to consumer taste or preferences. The new business model practically granted more autonomy to the General Managers of each division in terms of managing his or her own talent pool despite the new business model’s demand for more cross functional cooperation to respond to the dynamic customer needs. SONOCOs corporate culture is family-oriented, paternalistic, collaborative, and team oriented. Due to its long profitable history the company in its entirety tolerates underperformance so long a s the company can afford it. But the employees are also extremely loyal to the company with majority of them enjoying tenures of more than 20 years. The company’s employees pride themselves of being able to set the phase in the packaging industry. The Issues Cindy Hartley was hired to assist SONOCO to support the strategies of DeLoach the company’s CEO that is aimed at: (1) increasing GMs accountability for talent management; (2) distribute HR talent and support more evenly across the company’s divisions and make HR systems and process consistent; and (3) to optimize HR’s ability to provide customize strategic support to the GMs businesses. These priority areas are designed to align the organization with the dynamic demands of the packaging industry. After conducting a comprehensive assessment of SONOCO’s HR needs, Hartley identified three priorities that she needs to resolve at once to respond to the challenge posed by DeLoach. First, the mechanic al and arbitrary compensation and performance-management systems needed to be linked and made consistent and more accurately reflective of employee contributions to company performance. Second, the company needed to create an employee-development process to refine employees’ skill and to identify and develop deficient skills. Third, develop succession planning to identify and prepare the next generation of leaders was urgent. It would be prudent to ensure that whatever changes and initiatives that will be implemented by the organization it will also change the corporate culture and psyche of SONOCO to sustain its continuous implementation (Devero, 2007). The onus should be geared towards continuous improvement through iterative compliance to dynamic policies and procedure of a learning organization (Senge, 2006). The transformation should also be complete that it will positively influence or impact the correct core values of the organization (Whiteley & Whiteley, 2006). Analy sis of the issues SONOCOs steady growth through acquisition of other companies over the years has contributed to the redundancy of several departments across divisions when the acquired companies were eventually consolidated to their respective divisions (DePamphilis, 2009). One of these departments is the HR department. Operational imperatives or requirements that call for expedient filling of positions to meet orders from customers also contributed to