Siemens is a German conglomerate and the biggest industrial manufacturing enterprise in Europe, having branches in other countries. The major divisions of the company include industrial manufacturing, energy, healthcare, home appliances and cities and infrastructure (Siemens.com, 2018). Thus, it has a large base of the customers across the world. Its mission is to electrify, automate and digitalize the world all-around by providing the best facilities to the customers (Karhula et al., 2018). This report will present strategies for Siemens based on the SWOT analysis done in the previous research paper, environmental analysis, stakeholder analysis, description of the organizational structure and design, ways to motivating the employees, recommendations and controls to monitor the progress of the business plans. All these will be discussed in a comprehensive manner to illustrate the strategic position of the company.
Strategies based on:
The advantage of brand name and reputation based on high quality products and services and product innovations and strong supply chain should be utilized while making new strategies for business growth. These aspects are beneficial as these focus on creating reputation based on highly developed and innovating products and services, which is the foundation of the company.
The competitiveness should be increased for high quality products to retain its market position. Expertise should be increased for forecasting the product demand. To make the business grow, the marketing activities should be made innovative, extensive, and efficient financial planning should be done.
Strategies should be made to explore the opportunities of IT expertise, green technology, Omni channel marketing and growing local and global digital market. The world is now heavily dependent on the technology and hence, it is wise to tap this new aspect of business for rapid and extensive growth.
Bad and unstable economy in the global market, availability of substitute products from competitors at lower price, and shortage of skilled workers are major threats for the growth of the business and Siemens should focus on improving the skills of the existing workers and innovation capability to handle these threats.
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Political |
· Stable political situation in Canada, encouraging industry growth and liberal industry policies (Poirier, 2015). |
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Economic |
· Canada is one of the wealthiest and developed countries in the world. · It has a stable economy, with largest trading partner being the USA. US-Canada Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA are beneficial for international trade and business growth (Innis, 2017). |
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Social |
· Growing population through immigration and cultural mixes are creating opportunities for business growth for Siemens. |
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Technological |
· Being a developed country, Canada provides resources for advanced technology |
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Legal |
· Legal systems of Canada are supportive for business growth and international investments |
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Environmental |
· There are regulations for protecting the environment as Canada is an active member in the international climate change initiatives (Bulkeley & Newell, 2015). |
Siemens is actively involved in the environment friendly projects, such as, sustainable development for the cities, producing CO2-neutral power, CSR activities, establishing safety measures for the employees etc. Thus, the global awareness and concern for sustainability and protecting the planet is a major challenge for Siemens as it needs to constantly innovate and upgrade its technology to encourage sustainable practices.
Sustainability challenge is the major environmental issue that Siemens is facing along with many other companies. Rising carbon level, pollution, receding sources of energy, deforestation, climate change etc. are major environmental constraints that a company must pay attention to. As Siemens operates in the energy sector and infrastructure, it is necessary that it employs technologies supporting the environment friendly developments. Moreover, with increasing globalization, there has been migration of skilled workers, which affects the productivity of different branches of the same company.
Siemens has its environmental portfolio that includes projects promoting decarbonizaton, green projects, usage of renewable energy sources for power generation, smart grids for power transmissions, sustainable mobility networks, buildings with green technologies and healthcare projects with environment friendly technologies (Siemens.com, 2018). For the shortage of skilled workers, Siemens arranges training and developmental programs for the employees. Siemens also encourage migration for the eligible employees within their branches so that they stay loyal with the company.
Usage of renewable energies for daily activities and shortage of skilled labor are two major constraints that create big challenge for the business growth of Siemens.
The technological advancement, CSR activities for community development, brand reputation combined with economical development and supportive government reputations have created opportunities for Siemens.
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Employees |
Pillars of Siemens for handling production, distribution, and all other business operations |
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Customers |
The providers of business and revenues: individual and corporations |
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Government |
It is a customer of Siemens and also a tax collector |
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Shareholders |
Earns dividends from the company profits for their investments in the shares |
Siemens should give highest priorities to their employees and customers. The customers or clients are responsible for the business and revenues and the employees are the pillars of it for handling production and all other business activities.
Figure 1: Organizational structure of Siemens
(Source: Siemens.com, 2017)
It can be said from the above organizational chart of Siemens, set up in 2008, that it follows mechanistic organizational structure (Siemens.com, 2017). As per the chart, it is seen that the employees are assigned to particular departments and they operate in a predictable way, which is the fundamentals of mechanistic organizational structure (Kanten, Kanten & Gurlek, 2015). Siemens has adopted divisional organizational design under mechanistic structure. Under divisional organizational design, the entire business operations are classified under different divisions based on the sectors and they are given more autonomy to operate as an autonomous company (Fairfield, 2016). Different sectors of Siemens are classified into industry, energy, and healthcare, with separate CEOs and separate cross sector business units and regional units. These divisions help in bringing efficiency in the operations, such as, decision making, reporting, production, supply and distribution, marketing, sales etc.
Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory of motivation can be used to motivate the employees. Appreciation for good work, rewards and recognitions, challenging work, responsibilities, sense of accountability, career growth opportunities and importance in the organization, are the motivators, and, salary, benefits, incentives, fringe benefits, etc. are hygiene factors (Miner, 2015). Siemens should focus on increasing the motivator factors in the workplace and decrease the hygiene factors. It should arrange suitable training programs for enhancing the skills of the employees and encourage their career growth, increase their rewards, benefits and incentives, and give them more importance while decision making. They should also be given creative freedom so that innovation process is better and spontaneous and employees feel a sense of importance in the company.
Based on the researches it can be said that for business growth, Siemens should focus on improving the skills of the existing employees as shortage of skilled labor is a major concern for the business growth in various locations. As migration of skilled workers is a common issue in the modern corporate world, Siemens also faces this challenge. This issue affects the business performance of the company and hence, it is essential that it arranges appropriate training and development programs based on training needs analysis of the company and train them as per their capabilities. This would increase their motivation. The company should also give the opportunity to place the employees in their overseas branches for some time to retain the employees.
Control measures should be implemented to assess the progress of the business plans. As the company aims to increase retention of skilled employees, it should focus on increasing the skills and motivation of the employees. A separate performance management system and training needs analysis system should be implemented and employees should be asked about their preference regarding overseas posting and that would make them feel motivated.
Siemens should use all the three types of controls, namely, feed-forward, concurrent, and feedback controls to monitor their activities. Feed-forward control is beneficial as the control measures are taken place prior to the activity to control anticipated problems (Cathcart, Greer & Neale, 2014). Concurrent control allows the organizations to implement the control measures while the activity is taking place simultaneously. This is beneficial for the company when it wants to correct the problems before those become too costly. Lastly, the feedback controls are those that allow the organizations to take corrective measures once the activity has ended (Serrat, 2017). This measure is helpful for future actions.
Thus, Siemens should conduct a training needs analysis for arranging the appropriate training programs as feed-forward control. Next, it should make the employees participate in the programs and have sessions with them during the trainings and workshops as part of concurrent controls. Lastly, after 3 months, they should conduct a survey for collecting feedback and opinions of the employees regarding the effectiveness of the training programs. This would be feedback control measure.
Performance management system should be implemented during and after the training programs to assess the effectiveness of the programs. Decrease in the employee turnover, increase in overseas posting of the eligible employees, and voluntary participation in the training programs will indicate the effectiveness of the control methods.
References
Bulkeley, H., & Newell, P. (2015). Governing climate change. Routledge.
Cathcart, A., Greer, D., & Neale, L. (2014). Learner-focused evaluation cycles: Facilitating learning using feedforward, concurrent and feedback evaluation. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(7), 790-802.
Fairfield, K. D. (2016). Understanding functional and divisional organizational structure: A classroom exercise. Management Teaching Review, 1(4), 242-251.
Innis, H. (2017). The Fur Trade in Canada: an introduction to Canadian economic history. University of Toronto Press.
Kanten, P., Kanten, S., & Gurlek, M. (2015). The effects of organizational structures and learning organization on job embeddedness and individual adaptive performance. Procedia Economics and Finance, 23, 1358-1366.
Karhula, H. O. H., Claeys, C., Pluymers, B., Van Der Auweraer, H., & Desmet, W. (2018). Innovation through cooperation between industry and university: Siemens Industry Software–KU Leuven; a golden partnership.
Miner, J. B. (2015). Motivation-Hygiene Theory: Frederick Herzberg. In Organizational Behavior 1 (pp. 77-90). Routledge.
Poirier, J. (2015). Intergovernmental Agreements in Canada: At the crossroads between law and politics.
Serrat, O. (2017). Seeding Knowledge Solutions Before, During, and After. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 419-427). Springer, Singapore.
Siemens.com. (2017). 2007-2017: Defining digitalization. Retrieved from https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/company/about/history/company/2007-2017.html
Siemens.com. (2018). Energy efficiency from generation to use. Retrieved from https://m.siemens.com/en/about/sustainability/environmental-portfolio/products-solutions/
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