Ikea Case

1. How have IKEA's efforts to provide an environment of continued learning positioned them to remain viable, given the trends of cost containment and speed in market change described in our textbook?

Having a continued learning environment allows IKEA to reduce costs through reduced turnover, and therefore less time with vacant positions and fewer recruitment/hiring costs. Having higher educated employees also allows IKEA to be better prepared for the future. Many of IKEAs programs also have the benefit of engaging employees and creating loyalty within employees. Loyal and motivated employees will work harder and be more innovative and proactive.

2. How might IKEA's "Partners for Growth" mentoring program provide them with an effective knowledge management tool.

The Partners for Growth program allows to company to shape it's future leaders. This is an effective tool because IKEA can look at were junior managers are and do a gap analysis to determine what skills those employees need to learn to be effective in the future. By preparing for the future in this way, IKEA will have better qualified managers in the future.

3. What are your feelings about IKEA's "I Want Your Job" program? Is this something that you would endorse as an HR practitioner? Why or why not?

IKEA's "I Want You Job" program seems to be quite interesting program. It allows employees to train themselves with people whose job they would like to hold in future. However, I would not like to endorse it as an HR practitioner. This is because programs such as this might create a kind of negative competition among the employees. Chances may be that many employees want to be trained under same person. Since there are limitations on number of employees that can be trained, some employees might feel rejected. This program can create in-equality regarding who will be promoted.

4. Given what you know about the retail industry, what other ideas do you have regarding strategic employee development at IKEA?

I would like to suggest performance based appraisal for employees at IKEA. This will motivate employees to perform their task better. Mentoring employees as well as allowing employees to discuss issues in a common forum where they get a choice to bring up important issues in front of the management team. Retail industry involves lot of work and hectic schedules, employees satisfaction plays a very important role towards employee retention.