YAHOO! A NEW HR CHALLENGE

Group 5

CONTENTS

About Yahoo!

Facts about the case

Strategies at Yahoo!

Yahoo!’s Structure and culture

Problems due to dot-com burst

HR Department at Yahoo!

Solution

ABOUT YAHOO!

1994: A Web guide created by Jerry Yang and David Filo

Originally called “ Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. Renamed to Yahoo!(Yet Another Highly Officious Oracle)”.

1995: Hired Tim “TK’’ Cook as a CEO.

1996: Spent heavily on TV commercials to reach the mass market. Launched a campaign “Do you Yahoo!”?”.

Yahoo! Japan launched.

1996-2001: Grew from 25 employees at its IPO to 3510 employees.

2001: Hired Libby Sartain as new chief of people and SVP of Human resources.

FACTS ABOUT THE CASE

Expanded variety of services through partnerships, internaldevelopment and acquisitions.

Yahoo! over-relied on advertising revenue.

Dot com boom Impacted HR practices

Dot com burst reduced advertising revenue

STRATEGIES AT YAHOO!

Product Strategy: Fundamental goal was to keep services free.

Branding Strategy: Spent heavily on TV advertisements to reach the masses.

Service Platform Strategy: Functionality was obtained through partnerships, internal development and acquisitions.

YAHOO! STRUCTURE & CULTURE

Consisted of two groups :

Property Development and Marketing & Sales.

It consisted primarily of engineers.

Always considered to be a fun place to work

Collaborative environment where quality of idea mattered more than the position or title.

Entrepreneurial , Innovative behavior was a norm.

Hard work , fast pace and long hours persisted at Yahoo!

PROBLEMS CAUSED DUE TO DOT COM BURST

Stock prices has

plummeted 86%

Revenues dropped

Several top executives resigned.

First ever layoff was

announced at the

company

Credibility of the firm of affected

HUMAN RESOURCE DEPARTMENT AT

In 2001, The HR department consisted of only 50 people.

Position of director and benefits was unfilled.

HR lacked a common vision or strategy in it’s approach to staffing and development.

Standard metrics didn’t exit.

On demand recruitment. No rigorous or systematic hiring procedure.

Lacked a recruiting strategy. It consisted of only posting jobs and circulating resumes.

Interviews were conducted according to the particular habits of the interviewer.

CONTINUED……

Resources of the company were not viewed as the contributing factor to the Brand strength.

Employees did not knew the HR staff well enough.

No central database of skills and competencies in the workforce.

On boarding process was only of 1 day.

Managers considered the process(about Yahoo!’s business model) as non essential and encouraged employees to skip it.

Average length of services only 2.2 years.

No established Learning and development function.

PRIORITY ORDER FOR SARTAIN (SOLUTION)

1. Do away the anxiety and fears of the employees of the company

2. Synchronise the HR Strategy with the future strategy of the new CEO. With new business models, organisation structure will become more complex.

3. Design common strategy and approach to hire people

4. Distinguish its HR practices from other companies in the same domain so as to acquire and retain the best talent in the industry.

5. Enlarge the role of HR in the organisation such that every employee is familiar with the HR.

6. Design a proper training program for the new employees in the company which also tells about how Yahoo’s business is operated apart from basic administrative details.

FOCUS TO CREATE LONG TERM IMPACT

The main focus of the HR should be on designing proper strategy to hire people, employee training and employee engagement to create a long term impact on Yahoo.

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS :

There should be proper co-ordination between the CEO and the HR head as to what the strategies the new CEO is going to bring so that HR can plan accordingly.

The challenge is to maintain the informal culture by integrating formal mechanisms into it.