Case Example: Human Capital Planning at 3M
In 1902, five businessmen set out to establish Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. With
their entrepreneurial drive as the fuel and the vision to make an innovation-driven organisation
as their destination, those five businessmen laid the foundation to one of the most illustrious organisations in the world. More than a century later, that company, now known as 3M, has become a global giant. With global sales of around $30.8 billion, 3M has operations in more than 70
countries.
In and around 2006, 3M decided to expand its businesses to a global level. The then Chief Executive Sir George Buckley mandated companywide productivity gains in this transition phase; as a
part of this mandate, headcount-to-revenue ratio had to be increased. It was here that SWP
found its lion’s share of responsibilities. In framing the SW Plan, it was very apparent that HR had
an important role to play in the strategic imperative of the business (ST#1 and #2). Initially, 3M
had little information about its global workforce. By the virtue of SWP, business leaders were
presented with highlights, trends, and country-by-country comparisons of workforce demographics, skills gaps, productivity, and return on human capital investments (ST#3). In the
case of 3M, there was another problem which compounded the initial implementation of SWP.
When 3M was planning to expand into an international foray, the major point of concern was
integrating the central business in USA with its subsidiaries across the globe (ST#8). This effort
was however, not a complete success which was why it was revised in 2007 by Sir Buckley. Contrary to the common practice of setting departmental targets, Sir Buckley instituted a companywide productivity benchmark (ST#5). In the implementation of SWP, the call for a global workforce strategy was made multiple times; it was even touted as departmental/SBU requirement.
However, instead of simply responding to the stated demands, when the SWP was revised in
2007, the move was made from global to a glocal strategy i.e. customising the needs of the
workforce to the demo-geographic needs of the business unit (ST#6).
Since 2008, SWP at 3M has taken multiple new dimensions, one of them is succession planning.
In 2007, succession planning was put forth as the biggest challenge that 3M’s SWP was facing.
This is why, when the revised SWP was brought into force, an additional component of succession planning and leadership development was added into the SWP (ST#4). As of now, 3M is contemplating the inclusion of many other practices such as scenario planning and contingent workforce evaluation, which would be in the direction of providing a cushion to the SWP (ST#7).
With the implementation and continuous revision of Strategic Workforce Planning, 3M has ensured that both line and staff functi