General Motors: People, Culture and Contemporary Leadership

General Motors
PEOPLE, CULTURE AND
CONTEMPORARY LEADERSHIP –
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General Motors
Table of ContentsIntroduction.......................................................................................................................3
Performance Management Systems..................................................................................3
Improving Organisational Culture At General Motors........................................................4
Employee Engagement Strategies......................................................................................5
Scope for Improvement.....................................................................................................6
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................6
Bibliography......................................................................................................................7
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General Motors
Introduction
General Motors, commonly known as GM, is an American multinational company that
designs, manufactures, markets and distributes vehicle and vehicle parts. The company has its
headquarters in Detroit’s Renaissance Centre. The company is the largest American
automobile manufacturer and was able to occupy the 10th position in the Fortune 500 rankings
of the largest United States corporations by total revenue in 2018. GM had an estimated
workforce of 173,000 employees as of December 2018. In this report, we will discuss how
General Motors has been bringing about changes in its performance management systems,
organisational culture and employee engagement policies (Marr, 2009).
Performance Management Systems
Contemporary business world is highly competitive and is forcing business organizations to
eliminate any kind of inefficiency that can have an adverse impact on the overall performance
level of a company. There are a number of success stories in the business world, which
describe the way in which business organizations have outperformed their competitors
thorough their performance management systems.
General Motors is one company that implemented a number of changes in its workplaces
around the world. The company started by implementing employee engagement surveys,
which helped it in discovering that the individual contributors and first line leaders were
struggling because they were not given adequate tools and strategies by the human resources
to talk about career paths and performance feedbacks in a meaningful way (Zenger, 2017).
The company implemented certain changes in its performance management systems by
involving goal setting strategies in the beginning of the year. Along with that, the company
also implemented a mid-year discussion plan, which involved talks about career paths of the
employees, assessing the progress on goals, interests and passions, development
opportunities, etc. Finally, the last step in the new system was a year-end discussion where
the employees were required to provide feedback on their own performance levels throughout
the year.
The new performance management system was one of its kind as it was planned according to
the needs of the employees and to foster a positive feeling amongst the workforce. The
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