PUTRA BUSINESS SCHOOL

GSM5500 HUMAN
RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
ANALYSIS ON LOCAL COMPANY

KOH CHIN MIN (PBS1311218) & TAN CHWEE GUAN

(PBS1311217)

This assignment is to determine the good human resource management practices of Dell and
try to utilize them in a company that the students created to attract candidates to join the
company.

Table of Contents

Page
1.

Introduction: Objective of the assignment

2.

Companies background

3.

Companies best practices

4.

Recommendation to future company

5.

Rationale: Benefits

6.

Conclusion

Reference

1. Introduction: Objective of the assignment

During our class for Human Resource Management, we recognize the importance of
recruiting, training and retaining good employees. As instructed by our lecturer, Dr. Tee,
we will pick 1 local and 1 international company to analyze their employee best
practices. Then we will recommend or propose employee best practices with regards to
either recruiting, training, and retaining good employees to your future organization.
Currently we are working in a team of 2, Koh Chin Min and Tan Chwee Guan.
This report will focus on the best practices of a local company, for this purpose, we chose
Dell Malaysia. We will analyze the best practices by Dell Malaysia and come up with
several recommendations to future company. Dell Malaysia is currently the 8th best
company in Malaysia according to the assignment handout we received from Dr. Tee. The
reason behind we chose Dell Malaysia is because the company's practices actually
attracted our interest. If given the chance we have quite the tendency to be part of Dell
Malaysia. Hence, this report will covers the best practices of Dell Malaysia in terms of
Human Resource Management and the recommendations.

2. Companies background
Dell was initially known as PCs limited founded by Michael Dell at the age of 19 with
capital of $1,000 in the year of 1984. In the year 1985 they successfully design and build
their first computer. After establish for four years, Dell successfully complete its initial
public offering (IPO) and manage to raise $30million and renamed Dell Computer
Corporation. In the year 1995, Dell extends its operations worldwide to Europe, Asia,
Japan and Americas. 1995 also is the year where Dell opened its first plant in Penang,
Malaysia. The facilities in Penang together with China serve 95% of the Dell Asian
Market. In 2005, Dell listed in America Most Admired Companies in Fortune
Magazine. Meanwhile, in Malaysia Dell awarded IT Employer of the Choice (20112012), Employer of Choice Award (2011) and Gold Award in MSC Malaysia Innovation
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category (2013) by Malaysian Institute of Human Resource Management (MIHRM). Dell

also listed as top 10 best companies to work for in Malaysia for the year 2013.
Nowadays, Dell Malaysia employs approximately 4,000 team members.

3. Companies best practices

To attract and retain global talent, Dell introduces Connected Workplace as part of their
value proposition. Connected Workplace offers Dells employee flexibility, mobility and
agility which enable the team members to deliver the best of work. On the other hand,
teal lead also benefit from the Connected Workplace because it improves team members
engagement with them and increase capabilities in virtual leadership. With Connected
Workplace Dells employee have the flexibility to choose where and how to get the work
done as they equips with the technology and spaces to work collaboratively.Dell initiated
the idea of Connected Workplace because it is industries trend nowadays. As the
increasing in women workforce driving the demand of flexible work arrangement.
Meanwhile the younger generation of employee also demands for flexible and balanced
career and lifestyle. In Malaysia, Dell offers three flexible work arrangement which are
remote, mobile and flextime. For remote the staff can work at any location and at least go
to office once a month unless required by the manager. On the other hand, mobile is the
opportunity provided to the staff to come in to work one to four days and they can choose
to do their work at workstation or cafeteria. Last but not least, flextime is to allow the
employee to choose for their start time and end time of workdays.
Apart from Connected Workplace, Dell also emphasis on the Learning and
Development Strategy where they focused on three outcomes which are culture that
foster exceptional and agile organizational performance, best teams in the industry and
superior learning experiences. There are few approaches implemented by Dell to create
learning experiences. Dell practices on job experience and assignment, networking,
coaching, mentoring and formal learning experience. One of the approaches is learning
through experience and others. Their employees will work with their managers and create
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a development plan that act as a preparation for the employees future role. The ideal plan
is to training with experience, career move, mentoring from colleagues and others. Thus
employees can build a network where they can provide and receive feedback. As a result
the 360 feedback will help the employees to identify the opportunities for improvement
and growth as the employees are allow to provide anonymous feedback working
environment, managers, culture, benefits. Another approaches used by Dell is Training
and Learning Programs. Dell provide their employees with formal and informal learning
program for their professional development. Courses offers to the employees will match
to the business needs and are designed for specific competencies. Dell invested in online
tools for the learning programs which are Harvard Mange Mentor that covers 38
management topics provided by Harvard Business School. Furthermore, there is also
MentorConnect that will matching the employees as mentors and mentees globally across
the corporation.
To improve employee communication and to nurture an inclusive environment for work,
Dell setup Employee Resource Group. This group act as a networking platform among
the employees of Dell around the world. With this group member will able to encourage
each other through informal mentoring. In addition this group will also leads to personal
and professional development and growth. The objectives to setup this group to increased
team member development increased retention of talent and referrals of other talent.
Some of the current structure of this group are Asians in Motion (AIM), Women in
Search for Excellence (WISE), Building Relationships in Diverse Group Environment
(BRIDGE), True Ability and others. AIMs mission is to improve personal and
professional development of Asians and encourage cross cultural awareness. The
initiatives done are increasing knowledge and skills of the member, promoting Asian
talent, raising awareness of job and leadership opportunities by providing cross
networking group leadership development, six month programs for leadership skill,
creative thinking, networking and others. While for cultural awareness, Dell successfully
connect the AIM members to each other as well as external community through Asian
Pacific Heritage Month (May of each year).

4. Recommendation to future company

Inspired by Dell Malaysia, we would like to recommend to SME IT companies the
human resource practice as listed below:
Analysis and Design of Work
Flexible working hour and space: the design of work should have flexible working hours
where the total working hours per month is 176 hours (calculated by 8 working hours
times 22 working days). Employees are required to fully commit 176 hours of work per
month where they can choose the time to start and stop work as long as it is within the
period of 7 am to 8 pm of normal working days. As long as they can commit to 176
hours, they are good to go. Any extra working hours on overtime will only be recognized
upon superior's approval. However, each of the employees are still required to reach or
report to office from 9 am to 6 pm unless emergencies or upon superior approval.
Training and Development
We suggest learning from experience where the design of the office space is such that the
superior's seat will be among the employees. This is because we would want employees
to work side by side with their superior and the superior can guide them directly. For this
instance, employees are required to report to office at least one day a week if their work
does not require them to work in the office. Other than that, each employees is entitled to
claim the fee of attending conference, training or talk as long as it is related to company's
field of business. Nonetheless, the superior's approval is still necessary.
Employee Relations
We would suggest the future company to have a few workgroup chat space and we
recommend Facebook Group and Facebook Group Chat. The Facebook Group is for
announcement and feedback purposes and most important one of the group chat will be
department group. In the group chat employees and their superior can free to chat and
discuss problems among them.
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5. Rationale: Benefits
Flexible working hours and space:1. Employees can have a balance work and life - happy employees gives better work
performance and quality. Oswald, Porto and Sgroi (2014) mentioned that happy
employee with have a better productivity.
2. Employees can adjust their working time so that they can plan for their month
errands - employees need not to bring their personal problem into the work
3. Employees can adjust their working time so that they can avoid traffic jams employees does not have to waste time on mobilizations
4. Employees still can commit to their work if their work need not to be within the
office when they need to travel to settle some personal issue - help employees to
save unnecessary leaves
Learning from experience:1. Direct supervision by superior - superior can help stabilize situations and
minimize double handling, and generate confidence within the employees
themselves (Social Care Institute for Excellence, n.d.)
2. Direct monitoring by superior - increases accountability of superior
Group Chat:1. The platform for employees to share their ideas and discuss their problems
together with their superior which leads to a better relations and understandings as
supported by Institute of Heartmath (n.d.)
6. Conclusion
In conclusion, we need to change our current working system according to the needs and
wants of current generations to attract and retain the best human potential and advance
together.

References
Dell Corporation. (n.d.a). Employee Resource Group. Retrieved 11 July 2013 from Dell:
www.dell.com/learn/my/en/mycorp1/corp-comm/cr-diversity-nwg-overview
Dell Corporation. (n.d.b). Employee Resource Group, Asian in Motion (AIM). Retrieved
11 July 2013 from Dell: www.dell.com/learn/my/en/mycorp1/corp-comm/crdiversity-aim
Dell Corporation. (n.d.c). Workforce Commitment. Retrieved 11 July 2013 from Dell:
www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/corp-comm/cr-diversity-wf-talent-mgmt?
c=us&s=corp&cs=uscorp1
FlexWorkLife.my. (n.d.). Work-Life Practices: Success Stories. Retrieved 11 July 2013
from FlexWorkLife: flexworklife.my/dell
Institute of Heartmath (n.d.). Effective Communication & Relationships. Retrieved 11
July

2013

from

Institute

of

Heartmath:

http://www.heartmath.org/education/education-applications/communicationrelationships.html
Oswald, A. J., Porto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2014). Happiness and Productivity. JOLE, 3, 1-42.
Social Care Institute for Excellence (n.d.). Effective supervision in a variety of settings.
Retrieved

11 July 2013 from Social

Care

Institute

for

Excellence:

http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/guides/guide50/recommendations.asp