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Making Employees’ Lives Better

Mirroring our corporate purpose to make people’s lives better by changing the way the world moves, we are making employees’ lives better by changing the way we work. To help achieve this and meet our 2030 aspirations, we have begun to roll out a new human resources (HR) transformation program.

Changing the Way We Work

The automotive industry is rapidly evolving and the magnitude of change is unprecedented, due to factors such as rapid technological innovation, changing customer expectations, and an increasingly crowded and urbanized world.

Our response is to transform into an automotive and mobility company, a fundamental change that means transforming our people strategy too. So in 2016, our global HR organization embarked on a multi-year journey to transform how we work.

This program, called HRRev, seeks to use next-generation technology to streamline our people processes, making them simpler, more efficient and more meaningful to all who work at Ford.

Scope of Transformation Program

40 countries

201,000+ employees

Approx. 1,700 HR employees

Approx. 300 major vendor relationships

Approx. 35 products and service areas

Approx. 15 technology systems

A fundamental aspect of the program, driven from the top by our former President and CEO Mark Fields and our Group Vice President of Human Resources and Corporate Services Felicia Fields, is a shift in emphasis to improve the experience of our employees at work. It’s a streamlined, employee-centric approach that aims to empower our people through collaboration and integration.

HRRev People Shifts

This more innovative mind-set is demonstrated in a range of “people shifts” as outlined below. We have identified four key areas where we believe we have a significant impact on our employees’ experience, and are starting to develop processes and guidelines that are designed to increase emphasis on areas that need more attention.

Shifting the Emphasis of Our People Principles

Empowerment

FromCompliance-Driven   toExpectation-Driven

FromHighly Controlled   ToSharing

Empowering our people to act appropriately without lengthy policies or complex rules, and promoting more sharing across the organization

Collaboration

FromIndividual   to Team

FromPaternalistic   to Partnership

A greater focus on high-performing teams and partnerships, with joint responsibility and accountability for our success

Employee Focus

From“One Size Fits All”   to “Fit for Purpose”

FromProcess-Centric   to Employee-Centric

Seeking employees’ opinions more frequently, to better understand their priorities and concerns, and create more solutions that are fit for purpose and employee-focused

Integrated and Streamlined

FromLengthy Design   to Agile and Iterative

FromComplex Process   to Simplified

Have more agile, iterative and uncomplicated people processes that focus on adding value

In support of this change in mind-set, we are transforming how we work across the company to drive business results. This includes how we:

  • Attract, retain and develop talent through a more personalized employee experience
  • Use the latest technology to improve processes, increase usability and accessibility, and provide analytics and insights to inform decision making
  • Free up capacity and expertise to support high-value strategic business needs
  • Leverage centralized Shared Service Centers to provide greater consistency and quality, achieve economies of scale and make us more responsive to the ever-changing business environment

The People Lab

To fully understand and address the challenge of transforming our processes, a group of HR leaders joined forces to benchmark and gather data from inside and outside the company. Based on their findings, we created a People Lab: seven HR employees from all regions and levels of the organization. The team’s task was to deeply understand employee feedback, explore best-in-industry practices and find ways to simplify and streamline our processes.

Rather than using pilot studies, their work involved devising experiments to address issues such as pay for performance and supervisor feedback. These were designed to follow a scientific method, involving hypothesis setting, testing and measuring results against expected outcomes, enabling us to get deeper insight into the user experience, observe behavior and scientifically test interventions to guide process design.

The Lab was one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences of my career. Everything about it was unique: our approach, the data we leveraged, even our dialogue. Yet, what made it special was the shared passion that grew quickly out of our desire to make working at Ford better for everyone. The opportunities we identified will not only enable us to deliver on our business strategy, but also create meaningful and lasting impact for our employees for years to come.”

Kyle Worthing,HR Business Partner – The Americas; People Lab participant

Recognition for HRRev

In recognition of our efforts to make employees’ lives better through innovations in people practices, Ford was one of five leading organizations honored with the Next Practices Award by human capital research firm i4cp.

HRRev was also featured in the 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, published by Deloitte (see “Lessons from the front lines”).

Employee Engagement and Satisfaction

Communicating With Our People

We use a range of channels to communicate with employees with different experience and interests in timely and efficient ways. These include: our intranet site and website; annual reports and corporate publications; social media channels; webcasts and executive Q&A sessions with senior management; labor-management committee meetings; “Town Hall” meetings; Employee Resource Group (ERG) initiatives; and employee surveys.

Assessing Employee Satisfaction

Each year, we conduct our Global Pulse Survey, through which our people are encouraged to provide honest feedback about their satisfaction with the company, their jobs and their workplace.

Managers and supervisors are given a report highlighting how their teams and/or plants responded to the Pulse Survey. These are intended to inform discussions and improvement plans, contributing to a steady increase in Pulse scores, an annual performance objective for many senior managers. The results are also benchmarked externally.

2016 Global Pulse Survey Results

This year marked a refresh of the Pulse Survey. We made changes to the content, manager reports and the cadence of the survey. Overall, employees are satisfied with the company and their workgroups. Results have improved year over year and we continue to exceed external benchmarks.

The Pulse is an important source of global feedback

74% Global Survey Response Rate

  • 2016 survey administered...
    • From November 7–28
    • In 17 languages
    • To salaried employees globally
  • 2016 responses represent...
    • 44 countries
    • 14 skill teams
    • 6 business units
    • 7,000+ work groups

What are employees saying?

Overall, Ford employees are satisfied. Scores continue to improve year over year, indicating a positive working environment in general.

 2010201120122013201420152016
Employee Satisfaction Index68%69%71%75%76%76%77%
  • 85% of respondents are satisfied with their job
  • 86% of respondents are satisfied with their supervisor
  • 79% of respondents are satisfied with the company

How do we compare?

Ford continues to exceed external scores on the Employee Satisfaction Index (ESI) and all questions that are benchmarked.

  • Opportunity to improve skills in the company: 13 percentage points above benchmark
  • Satisfaction with information received about what’s going on in the company: 13 percentage points above benchmark
  • Satisfaction with recognition for doing a good job: 12 percentage points above benchmark
  • Feel valued as a company employee andand

    Involved in decisions that affect work:
    11 percentage points above benchmark

2016 Employee Satisfaction Index

 FordBenchmark
% favourable7770
% neutral1218
% unavailable1011

  See more detail about our employee engagement