Communications

Key Points:

•Flextronics research shows that China is facing labor shortages, making the attraction and retention of key talent ever more important.

•The Talk2Me program was devised to reinforce the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and therefore help retain talented employees, by encouraging interaction and connection.

•A pilot program was launched at the Suzhou branch and successfully completed 10 sessions with 100 employees within a month.

•The results of the pilot led the leadership team to support the implementation of the program across the company.

Mention “small group communications” and images of water cooler conversations, focus group discussions, skip levels or roundtable dialogues are conjured up. Such an open communication culture provides an important source of information, builds relationships and, to a certain extent, sets the context for team dynamics.

But while small group communication is probably easier to manage in small or mid-size organizations, where the general manager or managing director and HR helm the facilitation of structured dialogues between management and employees, how would large organizations or sites with 7,000 employees conduct such communications?

The case for Flextronics

Spanning four continents, Flextronics has over 200,000 employees operating in 30 countries. Flextronics used to operate as a decentralized organization with regional control and local management structure. The need for change came about with the changing business environment and markets, which required the organization to operate in a more global structure, catering to the needs of global customers.

A new senior leadership team was formed with the appointment of Mike McNamara as CEO and Paul Humphries as executive VP, Global HR. The senior leadership team then established the Flextronics blueprint which details the vision, purpose and goal. A set of key values and leadership traits were also developed. Humphries went on a global...