A case study on White Rock Company: Quality through

Employee

White Rock is a US -based mining and construction company founded in

1900. After self-assessment, the managers knew that a decline in customer
satisfaction cannot be evaded. The need for improvement is inevitable,
emphasis was laid on customer satisfaction(focus).

To achieve this kind of breakthrough the company needed to learn more

about their customers, teach the require skills and give necessary trainings
to their employees in order to actualize the company new philosophy.

The first step taken was training their employee through focusing on HR
Management because the CEO (Bruce Woolpert) thought you cant have
employees out telling customers yes unless everyone else in the company
knows how to follow up on yes.

A program called IPDP (Individual Personal Development Plan) was created to

help each employee take responsibility for his or her own training program,
the training includes on-the-job training and classroom time for the majority
of the firms employees. The company also initiated a reading program that
has helped a number of White Rocks employees improve their reading skills.

Statistical process control, root-cause analysis, and other quality-minded

competencies were taught to many employees to reduce process variability
and increase product reliability.

All the trainings and procedures cost the company $1600 on each employee
which is more than 10 times the average for the mining and construction
industries.

This quality processes foster effective empowerment and teamwork because

an atmosphere of trust was initiated.
As part of this plan, at least once a year, each employee meets with his or
her supervisor to
discuss job responsibilities, review accomplishments, assess skills, and set
skill and career development goals.

The overall participation in the program was 83% but not made mandatory.

White Rock, having won the Malcolm Baldrige Award and one of Fortune
magazines best 100 companies to work for, is aggressively pursuing its
quality initiatives, with the cooperation of its 700 employees.

1. Rather than focusing on human resource management (HRM) as a

means of supporting its quality initiatives, White Rock could have
chosen another area as its focal point (e.g., marketing, operations,
information systems, and so on). How does a focus on HRM support a
companys quality initiatives?

The Human resources perspective on quality is important because it is

impossible to implement quality without the commitment and actions of
the employee. Their involvement and participations is the key in using a
companys full potential to meet objectives.

The main function of the HR section is employee empowerment, by

empowering employees companies can take care of small and big issues
with little cost.

Another important aspect of the HR is recruitment and hiring of

employees who have the require skills, qualifications and background that
will fit into the training process easily.

2. Discuss the different components of White Rocks HRM initiatives. How

can each of these components support the companys quality efforts?

First initiative was on-the-job training and classroom time for the majority
of the firms employee, this initiative improves both theoretical and
practical knowledge of the employees.
 Second initiative was the IPDP (Individual Personal Development Program)
was created to help each employee take responsibility for his or her own
training program.

Third initiative was a reading program that helped a number of White

Rocks employees improve their reading skills.

The fourth initiative was statistical process control, root-cause analysis,

and other quality-minded competencies to reduce process variability and
increase product reliability.

The last initiative was establishing an atmosphere of trust between

management and the rank and-file employees which help effective
implementation of employee empowerment and teamwork.

The first step taken was training their employee through focusing on HR
Management because the CEO (Bruce Woolpert) thought you cant have
employees out telling customers yes unless everyone else in the company
knows how to follow up on yes.

The CEO emphasis from his statement that employees should be able to
deliver what the customer want (actions followed by intention) and all the
employees should be able to carry out their responsibilities to achieve the
final product.

When other employee cant follow up with what have been promised to
the customer there is a huge gap in knowledge and skills which can limit
trust, hinder empowerment and teamwork. This will lastly reduce and
affect the overall quality.

Since quality can be define in the aspect of customer focus. Quality

Management can help understanding the customer needs through
relationship management and meeting the requirements of the customer
through ensuring proper quality management in the overall processes.