Focusing HR on growth at Harley‐Davidson: Sustaining widespread success by prioritizing employee development
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Pages | 28-31 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390680000864 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Author | Harold Scott,Peter Cheese,Susan Cantrell |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
OUNDED IN A MILWAUKEE backyard shed
by William Harley and the Davidson brothers,
Arthur, William and Walter, Harley-Davidson
has been producing motorbikes for more than
100 years. The company survived the Great Depression,
an ill-fated acquisition and a brush with bankruptcy-
and has emerged as the dominant motorcycle brand in
the US, with 46 percent share of the heavyweight
motorcycle market.
However, for all its success, in the early 21st century
Harley-Davidson was concerned about how to sustain
its sizzling growth. During the past decade, the
company had focused on developing manufacturing
facilities to meet demand for its products that far
outstripped supply. However, while such increased
capacity meant more Harley-Davidson motorcycles
were available to customers, it also resulted in some
dramatic changes in the company’s workforce. Intense
hiring led to a massive infusion of new people, and, as
a result, half the company’s current employees have
been with the company for five years or less.
Coping with success
Because the attention to growth had effectively forced
the HR function to focus almost solely on recruiting,
other critical HR practices – especially performance
reviews, career development and succession planning –
were not prioritized.
This, in turn, was creating a potentially difficult
engagement situation for newer employees who had
not had the benefit of years of immersion in the
Harley-Davidson culture that veteran employees
enjoyed. Without the processes and programs in place
to help people continually improve and grow, Harley-
Davidson risked losing its competitive edge. The
company still had aggressive growth strategies,
including achieving greater penetration into markets
outside of the US. As a result, leadership felt that it was
time to take stock of the state of its HR function and
begin using the function to more effectively support
the performance of its employees.
In short, if Harley-Davidson was to implement its
new strategies and remain on its growth path, it had to
bring its workforce along in the right way. The challenge
was determining what steps to take, both immediately
and in the longer term, to ensure that its people
continued to perform as well as the company’s products.
A framework for change
Like many companies, Harley-Davidson had
traditionally made investment decisions in its people
largely on the basis of faith or immediate, short-term
needs, rather than on the basis of empirical,
quantifiable data on which investments were most
likely to pay off in better business results.
As company executives considered how to transform
the HR function into a more strategic asset, they
F
28 Volume 5 Issue 2 January/February 2006
Focusing HR
on growth at
Harley-
Davidson
Sustaining widespread success by
prioritizing employee development
Harley-Davidson was keen to maintain its continual
expansion, but was aware it needed to invest in its
people in order to keep momentum high.The
Accenture Human Capital Development Framework
enabled the company to take stock of its HR activities
and create a comprehensive human capital strategy
for the future. Here, representatives from both
organizations explain how the Framework was used.
by Harold Scott, Harley-Davidson Motor Company
Peter Cheese and Susan Cantrell, Accenture
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