Sessions

Toyota Motor Sales USA, the management and HR leadership for North American Toyota employees, is committed to enhancing flexibility for U.S. operations. After a popular compressed work program was eliminated due to coverage issues, HR leaders turned to a collaborative scheduling approach (involving robust individual negotiations; automated goal setting, monitoring and coaching; and key skill development). Starting with senior managers, it will be implemented at other levels in the organization, so that in the end their approximately 35,000 hourly manufacturing employees are covered. You will learn about:

• The value of embedding flexibility in a universal management function (scheduling), rather than in a program.

• The impact of having senior management involved in the planning and execution, and building of a plan from the top down, which demonstrates to lower levels the support of upper levels and an example of the plan in action.

• The utility of strengthening collaboration skills, rather than seeing flexibility as “arrangements.”

• The insistence on support, monitoring and metrics, as well as a commitment to continuous improvement and investment in the initiative, as it unfolds.