经典案例十（英语学习）.doc

经典案例十：Johnson & Johnson
来源：新天地英语 浏览：2979次

Human Resources Management

Facing Business Challenges at Johnson & Johnson

Does a healthier work force translate into healthier profits? This was one of the key issues facing Johnson & Johnson CEO Ralph S. Larsen and his predecessor, James E. Burke, as they considered the challenge of managing the company's human resources and keeping employees satisfied and productive. Johnson & Johnson operates throughout the world, employing more than 70,000 people to research, manufacture, and market health-care products in dozens of countries.

Employee health was a major concern for several reasons. Company studies showed that over 30 percent of Johnson & Johnson's employees were smokers, and one internal report revealed that smokers had a 45 percent greater rate of absenteeism than nonsmokers. Smokers also contributed disproportionately to the company's medical expenses (30 percent higher than nonsmokers), an ominous statistic at a time when health-care costs were rising at nearly twice the rate of inflation.

Another problem confronting J&J was how changing demographics were affecting employees. Employees increasingly fell into one of three groups: They were part of two-career couples with children; they were responsible for an aging parent; or they were single mothers or fathers. A survey of 10,000 J&J employees revealed that they were frustrated by their inability to meet all their obligations, both to their families and to their employer.

Many stated that they had difficulty finding day care, es­pecially sick-child care and infant care, and almost 20 per­cent responded that they could not afford day care even if they could locate a suitable provider.

Although these employees felt torn between family pressures and employment roles, they found little help at work. Most stated that their managers were unsym­pathetic about the dilemma. Balancing their work and family obligations took its toll on employees, who reported higher levels of stress, greater absenteeism, and lower job satisfaction.

For guidance on these issues, the CEOs turned to Johnson & Johnson's operating document, the corporate credo written by Robert Wood Johnson, son of a found­ing Johnson brother and chairman of the company for 25 years. Johnson ranked the company's obligation to its em­ployees ahead of its responsibility to its shareholders and second only to its commitment to its customers. This credo would serve as a blueprint for successful human re­sources management.

So how could J&J top managers promote health in the workplace? How could they help J&J employees bal­ance family and career obligations? What programs could be established to meet the personal and professional needs of their employees more effectively? What effect would such programs have on the company's bottom line?

Meeting Business Challenges at Johnson & Johnson

Ralph Larsen and James Burke understood that effective human resources management was the key to the satisfied and highly productive work force so necessary to Johnson & Johnson's fu­ture success. The first step toward improving productivity was to help employees meet their dual responsibilities to family and job. To start, the company opened child-care centers at its cor­porate headquarters in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and its nearby Somerset office. Child-care costs at these centers are lim­ited to 10 percent of an employee's disposable income. Then J&J expanded its child-care program to include home care. The company contracts with child-care providers to offer employ­ees reduced rates on home-based child care. It also gives the providers advanced training and access to the resources in its on-site child-care facilities, such as books and toys.

Under its Balancing Work and Family Program, J&J helps employees locate resources and referrals for child care and el­der care. It also goes beyond the bare legal minimum, allowing employees to take family-care leave of up to one year after the arrival of a newborn or adopted child and letting employees arrange a flexible work schedule to attend to an ailing family member. Moreover, employees in some locations can set flexi­ble schedules that allow them to better meet their family obli­gations and still do excellent work.

In addition, Johnson & Johnson managers participated in training to sensitize them to work and family issues. To un­derscore the company's commitment to family care, human resources managers added a new sentence to the company credo: "We must be mindful of ways to help our employees with their family responsibilities." This commitment to help­ing employees better manage family pressures boosted pro­ductivity by reducing absenteeism, tardiness, and stress. In ad­dition, the company's commitment to work/family policies helped attract and keep qualified employees in a tightening la­bor market.

Productivity was also enhanced by a wellness program. Live for Life was designed to emphasize steps employees can take to maintain and improve their health. The program sets four goals for employees: They should quit smoking, eat more fruit and fewer fatty foods, exercise regularly, and buckle their seat belts. At J&J headquarters, employees can work out in a gym, select "healthy heart" foods in the cafeteria, and check their weight in rest rooms. To encourage participation, employees are eligible to win prizes for meeting their goals. Over 35 J&J loca­tions now have fitness centers and wellness programs, and 75 percent of the work force participates.

The results have been impressive. Smoking among em­ployees has been reduced to less than 20 percent, a decline of more than one-third. Live for Life costs J&J $225 a year for each employee, but lower absenteeism and reduced health costs have saved $378 per employee.

Live for Life was so successful that J&J formed a new com­pany, Johnson & Johnson Health Management, to market the Live for Life program. The new company assists with fitness center design and management, and it orchestrates health­ promotion campaigns in such areas as smoking cessation, nutrition, and stress management. Live for Life is available at 60 leading corporations and medical centers that together employ more than 850,000 people.

Johnson and Johnson maintains other progressive bene­fits policies as well, including medical, dental, and life insurance and a generous 401(k) retirement plan. By making such gener­ous attempts to help employees balance their work and family lives, Ralph Larsen is demonstrating that Johnson & Johnson employees truly are the company's most valuable asset.

经典案例九：Hallmark Cards
来源：新天地白领商务英语 浏览：2113次

Facing Business Challenges at Hallmark Cards

Sending the Right Message to Employees

One of Hallmark's sympathy cards reads "Please remem­ber that winter's darkness emerges into spring." Given the ­troubles at Hallmark Cards, it's just the kind of message that Human Resources vice president Ralph Christenson wants to send to employees.

From the early- to mid-1990s the privately held greeting card firm saw its market share slip from well over 50 percent to about 45 percent, as new players in the market made cards that were more attractive and up to date. Even though Hallmark sales remained strong at about $4 billion annually, many profit measures slipped dramatically. It's hard to say just how bad things were because Hallmark profits are kept secret, even from the 20,000 employees who own part of the company. But it wasn't good news when-Hallmark's profit-sharing contributions slipped from 10 percent of salaries to about 5 per­cent. Newly arrived in the Human Relations department, Christenson needed to find ways of keeping company employees happy. After all, the company's core mission is to communicate affection, love, and friendship through the warm messages that employees dream up.

Hallmark started out in 1910 as a family-run business, and the Hall family's leadership continues today. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, the company has always attracted talented and creative people through its friendly and family-oriented atmosphere. Because Hallmark products are based on enhancing relationships, it stands to reason that the company would focus on keeping employees happy. For example, back in the 1950s, the Hall family set up one of the first profit-sharing arrangements for employees. Today, employees own about one-third of the company. In addition, the tuition-reimbursement program pays 100 percent of education expenses for full­time staff. Other initiatives focus on child care and alter­native work arrangements such as work sharing and job sharing. And the company's policies are flexible to meet employees' special needs, such as allowing time off to care for aging parents. Overall, the company has always done such a good job helping its employees that Hallmark con­sistently ranks among the best companies to work for in the United States.

But in the mid-1990s Hallmark faced declining mar­ket share and shrinking profit. Consultants suggested ma­jor cost-cutting efforts, including a merger of the admin­istrative, marketing, and product-development functions for the various card brands. To save money, Hallmark threw out its old organization and the ways that employees had beep doing their jobs. With the new focus on finances, em­ployees were concerned that their family-oriented benefits would disappear. Moreover, many employees feared that their jobs would be changed dramatically or eliminated al­together. The organization was in turmoil.

Christenson had come to Hallmark because he be­lieved the company cared deeply about its employees as people. Because of management's recent sharp focus on corporate profits, Christenson worried that Hallmark wouldn't be able to keep up its long tradition of caring for employees and their families. For the company to see its way through the current crisis, he had to inspire the employees who create and produce Hallmark products. Christenson needed new ways to strengthen the family-oriented programs and shore up morale.

If you were Ralph Christenson, what motivational techniques would you employ to keep Hallmark operating at peak levels? During times of massive organizational change, what would you recommend to reassure employees and help them deal with stress? How could you improve the company's communication with employees. What steps would you recommend for maintaining Hallmark's traditional focus on employee needs?

Meeting Business Challenges at Hallmark Cards

As the new vice president of Human Relations, Ralph Christenson was facing restructuring and disruption at Hallmark. Ru­mors of layoffs or massive job change and loss of benefits echoed along the corridors of Hallmark's Kansas City headquarters. Employees worried that profit sharing might be cut and that other important benefits such as child-care help, tuition reim­bursement, and work sharing would be lost. Always known for its family-oriented atmosphere, the company had consistently ranked among the best places to work in America. But now em­ployees' faith in Hallmark wavered, and Christenson needed to reassure company employees that things would work out.

Although Hallmark Cards was a healthy company, man­agement knew the underlying cost structure was too high. More­over, the time it took to deliver new products to market was as much as three years, far too long when customer tastes can change rapidly and the competition can react more quickly. So with the help of outside consultants, Hallmark's management developed several strategies to reduce costs and introduce prod­ucts with greater speed.

During this time of change, preserving employee jobs and improving morale were Christenson's primary concerns. So he developed a creative solution for containing costs by looking be­yond what people were originally hired to do. To retain em­ployees displaced by the merger of three divisions, Christenson developed a program for retraining factory workers to l1andle office jobs. Yet another group of factory employees helped paint an operating plant while receiving their standard wages. When factory work is slow, employees can even choose to volunteer for community work while drawing their usual paychecks. And no employee with more than two years with the company can be let go without a case review by company executives. So with Christenson's help, Hallmark was able to perpetuate its special caring for employees and its history of no layoffs.

Then to speed up the time it takes to develop and intro­duce new card products, Christenson helped Hallmark create cross-functional teams. Before these changes, Hallmark artists, designers, printers, and financial staff were working as much as a city block apart even though some of them were working on the same card design. With the new team concept, these em­ployees have been brought together into one room to create, de­velop, cost-justify, and produce new cards. This approach cut the overall time to market from three years to about one year and helped Hallmark compete more effectively in the rapidly chang­ing greeting card business. Employees quickly adapted to the idea of working together in teams, and they embraced the opportu­nity to learn more about the company's overall operations.

Next, Christenson addressed employee benefits. Al­though workers were generally happy with the existing benefits package, Christenson wanted to offer even more solutions to keep Hallmark employees satisfied. He needed to build a two-­way communication channel that allowed him to hear employee concerns firsthand; he set up a series of feedback sessions in which employees could tell him what was on their mind. As a result, Christenson reorganized the human relations depart­ment to focus on a number of themes important to employees.

经典案例十三：Starbucks
来源：新天地英语 浏览：4201次

13 Product and pricing decisions

ON THE JOB: FACING A BUSINESS CHALLENGE AT STARBUCKS

Brewing Up Success Nationwide

Have you had your coffee yet today? If so, did you open a can of Folgers and brew it yourself, or did you hand $2 to a barista and ask for a "single tall skinny mocha no whip with extra cocoa"? More and more coffee drinkers are getting their daily dose of java from Starbucks Coffee Company. Founded in 1971, Starbucks originally sold its trademark dark-roasted coffee beans in a few Seattle stores. But everything changed when current chairman and CEO Howard Schultz took over in 1987. Schultz en­visioned selling gourmet coffee beverages in hip neigh­borhood coffee bars like the ones he saw on every corner while vacationing in Italy. He wanted Starbucks to be a meeting place where people could exchange ideas and es­cape from everyday hassles. And from day one he wanted to go national.

Schultz focused on bui