Organizational Transformation

Organizational Transformation Paper
Julie Malone
University of Phoenix
OI 461 Innovation, Design, and Creativity for a Competitive Advantage
Brandon S. Smith
March 22, 2008

Organizational Transformation Paper

Siemens Corporation is a world leader in industry, energy, IT, and healthcare. Each division offers a variety of benefits and opportunities to the employees. Some of these benefits include the following: Incentives, training, and education in promoting innovation and leadership roles in creating, managing, and sustaining innovation. Siemens Corporation considers the ethical implications of an individual reward system which involves all employees. We will also look at whether Siemens could be considered an innovative or non-innovative company.

Incentives, Training, and Education in Promoting Innovation

Siemens Corporation wants to create an atmosphere where employees can feel secure while occupying their minds creating new idea for the company using incentives, training, and education to promote innovation with the company.

Incentive

An incentive for upper management can be a yearly bonus, while an hourly wage worker may receive extra paid time off. There are equal incentives such as offering employees medical/dental/vision insurance, life insurance, long term disability, PTO coverage, retirement, Employee Assistance Program, flexible work schedules, tuition assistance, service anniversary program, and matching gift program for higher education. Siemens offers a Development Promotion Reward (EFA) program that believes that performance and success must be rewarded for every employee. The EFA system puts an employee in charge of their own professional development by letting the employee suggest what training courses that will enhance their skills and negotiate individual targets for the coming year with the line manager and the HR manager. Siemens promotes open communication by offering regular development and mentoring sessions, in addition to the annual employee survey. This management dialog is an employee’s opportunity to give feedback to the line manager (Siemens, 2008).

Training

Siemens offer over 1800 types of online training programs such as NetG Learning (online specific training) if an employee wants to learn Oracle, Remedy, Microsoft Office, Accounting, Project Management, Lotus Notes, Six Sigma, just to name a selected few courses. By learning the above software programs or managing a project, an employee can learn innovative skills to assist the company in a more productive manner. Other types of training are geared towards managers. Management training programs teach managers how to effectively leverage and develop the talents of employees across the entire spectrum of similarities and differences. The Fast-Track Management Training program is a rotation program which develops key leadership talent through cross-operating company rotational assignments in designated functional areas (Finance, HR, IT, Project Management, Procurement). The objective of the program is to strategically place program graduates into future functional leadership positions as needed by Siemens USA.

Siemens offers an intern program called “The Siemens Intern Experience”, which targets the top Siemens US Interns (as identified by each operating company) and is composed of an annual meeting and dedicated website, newsletter, and web chats. The objective of the annual meeting is to initiate and maintain relationships with the interns on a corporate level and assess the intern talent pool to identify high potentials. The overall objective of the program is to increase the conversion rate of top talent interns into employees and facilitate placement across the operating companies.

Leadership Excellence, an integral part of Siemens’ strive for People Excellence as part of our ongoing business strategy, was established to support Siemens top executives in their current and future challenges. The courses are designed to align leadership and value standards, impart corporation-wide business management tools, give an impetus for new approaches, strategies, and tools, and facilitate a global, cross-business network of management leaders.

The Emerging Leaders Forum provides a unique learning and networking experience for the future leaders of Siemens USA. Meeting content is designed to help participants learn from the senior-most ranks of Siemens leadership, address major culture change issues like post-acquisition integration, prepare to inherit leadership positions, network and share best practices with other program participants, understand and apply the Siemens value proposition, and navigate their career path within Siemens.

Siemens Professionals Engaged in Active Communications (S.P.E.A.C.) was established to help identify high potential communication managers, and provide professional development opportunities. During the 18-month program, members learn about the various Siemens business units through plant tours and presentations as well as networking with their peers from Siemens companies in the US and Europe (Siemens, 2008).

Education

Siemens offers education assistance to help employees better themselves in obtaining a degree in order to move upward in Siemens by using new ideas, thoughts, and creativity. The company allows employees to study any course and reimburses up to $5,500/year.

Role of Leadership at Siemens

The various Siemens Divisions provide different roles of leadership in creating, managing, and sustaining innovation with the organization. Below are some examples of how Siemens transforms the world with its global network of innovation that spans 190 countries.
• Siemens Building Technologies won the 2006 Ohio Governor's Award for Excellence in Energy for its work with the St. Elizabeth Health Center and the Humility of Mary Health Partners
• The 2007 Fortune AMERICA'S Most Admired Companies list ranked Siemens number three in the country's electronics industry
• The 2007 Fortune WORLD'S Most Admired Companies list ranked Siemens AG number two in the global electronics industry
• Siemens manufactures one out of three traffic signals used in the United States
• Siemens Water Technologies serves more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 manufacturing companies as well as approximately 100,000 industrial clients
• Siemens was granted 1,622 U.S. patents in 2006. We're the top-ranked German company on that list and ranked higher than General Electric.
• Every business day in the U.S., radiation therapy systems from Siemens treat more than 30,000 cancer patients and Siemens' systems process more than 164 million U.S. healthcare information transactions
• Power generation systems from Siemens Power Generation supply more than one-third of the nation's electricity
• Seventy-five percent of cars on U.S. roads rely on Siemens-Sylvania lighting technologies
• Siemens PLM Software creates and manages more then 40 percent of the world's 3D data (Siemens, 2008).

Ethical implications of an individual reward system

The company that rewards all employees as a group promotes team work, great growth, high moral, creativity, and motivation. Individual recognition and rewards have both positive and negative aspects; on the one hand, they may spur friendly competition within a company to achieve greater levels of creativity and innovation. On the other hand, in many companies, executives and upper management are still treated differently than middle managers and wage earners by receiving often undeserved yearly bonuses, awards, trips or promotions, while employees in the lower rungs may only receive a $.35 raise once a year and free donuts in the break room on occasion.

Siemens: innovative or non-innovative?

Siemens can be both innovative and non-innovative, depending on the division. My division, IT Solutions and Services, is generally non-innovative. It is tightly structured (following established policy versus seeking creative ways to meet new problems), very management-heavy (relying on managers and executives to make all the decisions based on endless reports, meetings and minutiae, without involving the “people on the ground” in the process), and focused on squeezing the bottom line (nitpicking contractual details ad infinitum rather than doing everything possible to ensure the overall satisfaction of the customer). Other divisions, however, exemplify innovative thinking and more horizontal structuring. Examples of innovation are shown in the above section of Role of Leadership at Siemens. The company overall views innovation as the key to entrepreneurial success by providing a rigorous innovation management and invests more than $6 billion in research and development. Siemens generates more than 30 inventions a day and works in cooperation with customers to transform ideas into new products, systems and solutions. Each day Siemens, located in the U.S., dedicates nearly 8,000 employees to research and development.