HR Issues In Hewlett Packard's Migration Failure

In order to understand the HR issues involved in HPs migration failure, I started by looking at the company’s corporate culture from origins to date. I needed to determine what had changed as Hewlett Packard already had numerous successful implementations previously given their vast experience in the computer industry and there long established relationship with software provider SAP.

The current study identified that the founders of HP, Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard created an effective management style which contained a set of values that defined how they wanted the company and its workforce to perform. This was known as “the HP way”. The main emphasis was on innovation through creating new quality products that added value to their

It can be seen that she failed to maintain the original character of the company in the points that follow. It must also be stated that Carly was the first CEO in the company’s history to be sourced from outside the company. She also had no background in engineering in which her previous successors; Lewis Platt, John A Young and co-founders Bill and Dave notably all had degrees and experience in the field of engineering. Lewis Platt was known to follow the philosophy of “the HP way” in which he focussed on progressive values and results. Later in his term as CEO he was criticized for this methodology by executives & shareholders there was a consensus from them that Lewis’s way of doing things was an impediment on growth. Lewis himself Felt a cultural shift was needed in relation to changing some practices and speeding up decision making but stated the main objective was to hold on to the core values that made HP what it is today. In July 1999 he resigned from his role as CEO in which Carly Florina took his place. She was hired to bring a fresh perspective to the company & create a sense of urgency that was felt required in bringing about any needed

The main human resource issues regarding the ERP migration failure are addressed are as follows;

• “Analysts expressed a variety of perspectives one of them being that the recent change in the company’s culture may not have allowed for active involvement of all employees and when problems surfaced they became substantially more difficult to overcome”. (Chaturvedi 2005)

• When employees made suggestions they were ignored by upper management. One idea they had was to implement a backup system to overcome ERP system failure risks but management didn’t listen.

• There was a high attrition rate. For example many vice presidents including those in the enterprise service and storage division left the company to work for rival firms. Turnover in any company can have a negative impact and here it was seen to effect the project implementation.

• There was a common view amongst employees that they could be here today gone tomorrow. A human resource issue is the perceived lack of job security could have been impacting on the employees work related