• INTRODUCTION

This assignment aims to research and analyse the HR practices of the Boeing
Company, holding the rank of 28 in fortune 500.

• OBJECTIVES
The objectives include:
1. Researching Company details
2. Literature review on HRM
3. HR data collection
4. Analysis of obtained data with the best practices

• Company Details
Boeing is the world’s leading aerospace company and the largest manufacturer
of commercial jetliners and military aircraft combined. As a major provider to
NASA, Boeing operates space shuttles and international space stations. Boeing
has customers in more than 90 countries across the world and one of the
largest U.S. exporters in terms of sales. Boeing has long tradition of aerospace
leadership and innovation (Done and Hollinger, 2005). Boeing products and
tailored services include commercial and military aircraft, satellites, weapons,
electronic and defence systems, launch systems, advanced information and
communication systems, and performance-based logistics and training.
Through an efficient Human Resource practices, the company has continued to
expand its product and service lines to meet emerging customer and investors’
needs. Boeing currently employs more than 158,000 staffs across US and in 70
countries across the world. More than 90,000 of Boeing staffs are college
degree holders – including 29,000 advanced degrees – in virtually all business
and technical fields from approximately 2,700 colleges and universities
worldwide, representing a talented and innovative workforce worldwide (Done
and Hollinger, 2005).
 • LITERATURE REVIEW
Despite the increasing researches on HRM, the term still remains unclear.
Some researchers describe HRM as an outcome, others as a process and some
as a combination of outcome and process. As an outcome, Wright and
McMahan (1992) considered HRM as a structure of planned HR strategies and
activities intended to help a firm to achieve its goals. It is an organizational
lacuna designed to achieve sustainable competitive advantages through
humans (Wright and Snell 1991). As a process, it is a way of linking HR practices
with business strategies (Ulrich and Lake, 1991). Considering both process and
outcome combined, Truss and Grattton (1994) defined HRM as combination of
HR functions with strategic goals and organizational objectives to enhance
performance and build culture that facilitates innovation and flexibility in an
organization. However, in the absence of empirical definition, researchers
highly argued that the standard feature of HRM involves designing and using a
set of internally conventional process and practices to ensure that firm’s
human capital, helps in achieving business objectives (Gratton and Hope-
Hailey, 1999; Jackson and Schuler, 1995).
Based on the broad arguments on the centralized features of HRM and the
determinants of HRM as strategic, HRM is defined as the extent of involvement
in core decision-making and partnership played by HRM departments, and
specific strategies that HRM department require in planning and building, all
strategies that ensures achievement by human capital in organizations goals.
Recent theoretical research works on business strategy have proven that HR
practices can help in developing a firm’s competitive advantage. According to a
resource from Barney, (1989) suggested that firms could build stained
competitive edge through creating value in manner that is scarce and difficult
for competitors to imitate. The concept of HR practices as a strategic asset has
implications for the above idea. HR is an invisible asset that generates value
when it is adopted in the operational system in a way that enhances firm
ability to deal with fragile environment.
Numerous researchers have argued that HRM has two positive effects of
universality and contingency. Universalistic researchers argued that many HR
practices are consistently better than conventional practices. It is claimed that
organizations, notwithstanding size, industry, or business strategy, should
always adopt the universalistic strategy (Arthur, 1994; Delery and Dotty, 1996).
However, whether strategic human resources management should always be
positively related to firm’s performance remains unclear. Contingency scholars
argued that the assumption underlying the strategy-performance link are
possible only in high external fit condition, otherwise known as the best fit
(Bamberger and Meshoulam, 2000; Boxall and Purcell, 2000).
To improve organization’s performance and create competitive advantage,
organization HR must focus on a new set of priorities. The new priorities are
better business and strategic orientation and less conventional business
practices orientation such as staffing, training, appraisal and compensation.
Strategic priorities include team-based job design, workforce flexibility, quality
management practices, employee empowerment and inventive compensation.
Performance diagnoses firm’s strategic needs and planned innovation which is
required to implement competitive edge and achieve operational goals
(Huselid et al., 1997).

• HR PRACTICES AT BOEING
Boeing Human Resource balances high tech with high touch. Boeing Human
Resources provides the company’s employees with wide varieties of services
and tools designed to support many life events and experiences (Berner,
1994). That a much advantage, the organization is doing this at a time when
high attention is being paid to implement Learn + and doing more with less.
Organizations worldwide face increasing pressure to maintain combine
conflicting priorities, such as attracting and retaining the next-generation work
force while managing the high cost of health care and other merit (Hessburg,
1998). For Boeing, the pressure to the pressure attract and retain new workers
has never been this high. Today, 18 percent of the company’s employees are
eligible to retire. With reference to Hessburg (1995), another 19 percent will
be eligible in five years, and in 10 years, fully 60 percent of the current Boeing
population will be eligible to retire.
The Boeing human resource management department wants to make sure that
they have best employees in Boeing, developing their employees and providing
the right environments for their employees to be successful at all levels said
Rick Stephen, senior vice president, Human Resource and Administration
(Hopkins, 1995).
Majority of the workers in Boeing rates Boeing as the best places they have
ever worked and over 99 percent of Boeing staffs wish to retire in Boeing
Company (Knezevic, 1998). Through strategic management, the human
resource of Boeing have developed series of competitive advantages over their
competitors and this makes them the world leader in aerospace industry in
terms of revenue, orders and supplies (Poctor, 1995)

• Comparison:
➢ From the beginning the Boeing emphasized the research and developing
for creating the quality product and distinguishing from others. Running
ahead, the financial analysis reveals serious investment in R&D
procedures. The company developed different models of airplanes for
any type of operations, with possibility to change the configurations.
That favourably distinguishes it from its closest and strongest rival: An
Airbus. The Boeing provides lease opportunity for customers, the spare
part chain, technical documentation and information updating. The
Boeing also has educational centres for certification the technical
centres. After certification those centres allowed to perform the special
maintenance, inspection procedures, and configuration change
procedures. Thus, enhance the service network of Boeing and support
the requirements of periodical aircraft maintenance check.
➢ Other difference from an Airbus, that Boeing build it products in one
place. Thus, company is able to control the manufacturing process
better and avoid unnecessary transportation expenses. The Boeing
invest to its personnel, hiring the high skilled professionals. The
contracting with government for military orders, provide also the
subsidizing from government.
➢ In general, Boeing has two programs to develop employee’s quality. The
first is off site program they call it learning together program. The
second is onsite and on-the-job training. Besides using the programs as
direct benefits for business performance, Boeing uses the program as
employee’s benefits and opportunities to attract qualified individuals to
work at the company.
 • Challenges:
The recent breach in security to the data of the Boeing employees, has
exposed the major challenge of inefficient HR security. The other challenges
being faced by the organization in terms of HR include managing the HR
department for different Boeing platforms. High expense of retired personals
and training of high skilled professionals has always been a non-ignorable
issue.

• Recommendations
For safety of data to be implanted by the HR department, the following steps
could be taken:
❖ Limit who is able to access sensitive data.
❖ Limit access to data on a need-to-use or need-to-know basis.
❖ Use multifactor authentication to help prevent unauthorized access and
to help identify unauthorized users.
❖ Frequently change passwords.
Building a common HR system platform to support its major businesses,
allowing HR to piece together multiple requirements and see where individual
projects have enterprise-wide implications. As such, it helps co-ordinate
projects in an environment that is both autonomous and entrepreneurial.
Proper budget planning and salary planning can help solve the issue of high
expenses.
 • Conclusion
The objectives of Boeing are targeted on all round development of the society
and are guided by the company’s mission. The company is committed to
continuous improvement of product quality through design and
manufacturing. This can be achieved through maintenance of highly skilled
human resource and technical efficiency managed by a focused
management. The company is committed to ensuring integrity and high ethical
standards and improving efficiency in the operations of the company.
The company has been strategizing on venturing into new markets in the
global market. This will enhance their competitiveness in the global market and
improve its performance. It aims at running health business to enhance
competitiveness. Cooperation of people in the global enterprise is essential to
enhance performance of the company as the leader of the aerospace
industry. The company also aims at capitalizing on critical success factors to
introduce new products in the market that will increase customer satisfaction.

• References:
o Researchgate.net
o Shrm.org
o personneltoday.com
o Boeing.com
o Hrdrive.com

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