Patty McCord was the Chief Talent Officer for Netflix from 1998 to 2012, and recently wrote a blog for the Harvard Business Review on “How Netflix Reinvented HR”. McCord shares stories of how Netflix went about improving its human resources. Netflix had cut its employees by 30% after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, but in 2002, Netflix was seeing a large increase in sales because of its DVD-by-mail service. With its smaller workforce, McCord was worried for the lone engineer and wanted hire help for him. The engineer didn’t want help and this is when Netflix realized to only hire “A” employees. People tend to be more productive if they are not constantly correcting other peoples mistakes. I think most businesses work like this today, the job market is very competitive and employers are only hiring the best candidates for the job.
The second thing that Netflix did to change HR was to let go of under qualified, but good workers. As Netflix wanted to go public, the accounting division was going to be more important than ever. McCord had to let go of Netflix’s very good bookkeeper because she only had an associate’s degree, not a CPA. Netflix was expanding and needed better qualified workers to keep track of its financials. Education is more valuable than ever in this day and age, I think it is crucial for people to obtain at least an undergraduate degree in order to hold a steady job.
I think that as societal norms change so will the way we do business. Netflix is a good example of a company that has grown and made revisions along the way. We are beginning to enter into a phase of the world which business will be conducted in a very different way. The use of technology and other resources has, and will continue to grow exponentially and continue to change the way business is orchestrated.
Resources:
https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr
https://www.netflix.com/?locale=en-CA
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/merrillbarr/files/2014/04/netflix-logo.png
http://media.bestofmicro.com/U/3/413211/original/netflix1.jpg