Reference no: EM133136061

Refer to the case study "Looking beyond gas pedals - How Human Resources lead to Toyota's failure".

Toyota today is riddled with quality problems. Quality was once the pride USP of this company. The problem reached to such a critical level that the company had to recall almost 9 million cars worldwide. Obviously, this led to significant lowering of the brand value of the company, and drop in sales. John Sullivan (2010) attributes such failure of Toyota to poor HRM function of the company. Sullivan added that while hull design flaw contributed to this catastrophe, the root cause of the problem was human error. Human error at times causes for factors which could be beyond the control of the employees. It cascades for the actions of the senior management. People at operations level may have inadequate information and poor job training. Toyota's poor HR practices, which Sullivan classified under eight categories, attributed to such mechanical failure, causing recalling of their suppliers. Such HR practices are: rewards and recognition, training, hiring, performance management process, corporate culture, leadership development and succession, retention and risk assessment. In all these HR practices, the company failed to integrate with the business goals, Moreover, HR decisions were not backed with data, rather it were in accordance with the existing systems and standards. Hence, systemic failure of management contributed to quality problems and subsequent recalling of cars, resulting in several billion-dollar loss to the company. With data driven HR decisions, HR managers could have been more analytic and predictive in foreseeing such problems and warned the top management well in advance.

Question: In the context of this case study, do you think Toyota could make a difference with HR Analytics? If yes, elucidate your answer with reference to human resource factors related to Rewards & Recognition, Training, Hiring, Performance Management process, Corporate Culture, Leadership development & succession, Retention and Risk assessment