Toyota’s president, Akio Toyoda, has
admitted that the company’s desire to grow
and expand was not matched with adequate
training, causing widespread failure of the
Japanese cars.
“Up to now, we had been saying that the
rapid expansion was in response to
customer needs – that it was inevitable,”
Akio Toyoda said at a press conference. “I
think the company’s sales expanded faster
than we were able to train personnel.”
More than eight million vehicles have now
been recalled because of brake and accelerator
problems and reports of spates of incidents –
linked to an estimated 30 deaths – have led to
the world’s biggest carmaker’s public relations
nightmare. The Prius, Corolla, Auris and Avensis
models were at the centre of the car industry’s
biggest product recalls.
Commenting on HR’s involvement in the
debacle, Dr John Sullivan, a thought leader in
HR said “where employees fail to perform as
expected, investigators must determine if the
human error could have been caused by factors
beyond the employee’s control”.
He outlined a number of key areas in
which Toyota’s HR department may have
contributed to the mechanical failing of the
product. Some of these areas included:
rewards and recognition, hiring, performance
management, and risk assessment. He added
that that HR needed to periodically test or
audit each of the processes that could allow
this type of billion-dollar error to occur
For more on this story, and Dr John Sullivan’s opinion on HR’s involvement in the Toyota case, see the next issue of HR Leader magazine
