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.  : 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, internal development 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.