Hiring and Retaining Engineers - The Supplier Approach
The message is clear: engineers are in short supply. Suppliers' response: put balance in the supply/demand equation by tackling the challenge in creative ways.
Hire offers that bend
Job openings are so plentiful that engineers can leave one company and find another company almost as fast as they can exit one building and enter anoth-er building.
"We see engineers and all associates with experience moving from company to company within our competitive set - those companies that we compete with directly - as well as the non-competing Tier 1 suppliers," said Colleen Haley, Vice President of Human Resources and General Affairs for Yazaki North America.
 Yazaki's summer 2000 picnic offered up moonwalks for the young at heart. |
Yazaki, with North American headquarters in Canton, MI, provides vehicle power and data solutions that require the expertise of electrical, mechanical, electronics, and software engineers. "We are always recruiting engineers in all four of those categories," said Haley. With telematics being the latest automotive industry trend, the demand for electronics engineers and software engineers is red-hot.
As a means of recruiting high-demand engineers, the company customizes hire offers relative to aspects such as base salary and amount of vacation time. "We were fairly inflexible about those things," said Haley. In mid-2000, Yazaki North America began to negotiate vacation time and signing bonuses (or a bonus paid after a certain amount of time with the company) on an individual basis. "We're more flexible now about customizing packages than we were in the past, and we have to be willing to do things differently. For instance, we're now recruiting experienced software engineers who may be used to much more individualized benefit packages," she said.
As a privately held company, Yazaki does not offer stock options - generally considered a given commodity by software engineers who have worked for California's Silicon Valley companies. "We don't want to be dramatically out-of-sync with expectations, but you can only use the financial aspects of a package to a certain point as a means of attracting an engineer. The rest of the appeal relates to opportunities within a company, such as working in Yazaki's advanced engineering department," said Haley.
 Yazaki associates and their families enter and exit the activities tent during the summer 2000 picnic. |
To offset the supply/demand equation, engineers from outside the U.S. are brought on board. "We have a number of engineers and technical people on staff (via work visas) from a number of different countries and regions including India, the Middle East, and China. As a result, Yazaki's workforce is increasingly culturally diverse," said Haley. (Engineers from Japan, where Yazaki has its worldwide headquarters, also do work assignments in North America as intercompany transfers.)
Employee exit interviews, informal worker polls, and reviews of employee career goals have provided Yazaki staff with a road map for what people want from their careers. "Yazaki wants to know what gets associates excited. We are piloting development processes that address short- and long-term career goals by outlining what action items it takes to meet an individual's goals," Haley said.
On the retention side, Yazaki appreciation days range from family-orientated events like Saturday movies and picnics to work-time snack breaks with the Good Humor ice cream cart. "We want to do things that really show we value our employees," said Haley.
