Colour coding HRD, Samsung style

It could well be a resort. It is, though in a different sort of way. The complex, located on rolling hills an hour's drive from Seoul, is Samsung's Human Resources Development (HRD) Centre, the place where the South Korean giant forges the mind and heart of its employees to its philosophy.

Samsung takes its people seriously. It is constantly preparing them, at every level, for the rapidly changing world market that throws up ever-changing challenges. Employees of all the 70-plus companies of the group at one time or the other come here to be inspired and to learn to think out of the box..

Indeed, so serious is Samsung about its people thinking differently and spontaneously that it has designed the campus unlike any other. While many training/excellence centres recreate the college campus, Samsung has ideated differently, colour-coding its values and integrating them all over the campus so that these values get hard-wired among the trainees. If for people, it is Purple, it is Blue for Excellence, Red for Change, Green for Integrity and Orange for Co-prosperity.

But the predominant theme in the campus is Green, emphasising the company's commitment to integrity. As Mr Ja Hwan Song, Vice-President, Globalisation Team, HRD Centre, recently told a group journalists from India, the people philosophy is quite simply giving them a wealth of opportunities to reach their full potential. Realising that change is a constant and the innovation is critical to keep pace, the HRD Centre tries to equip its people to think differently.

Believing that a business cannot be successful unless it creates prosperity and opportunity for others, he says Samsung cares as much for its staff as for societies it operates in by being socially and environmentally responsible.

The training centre prepares new comers to Samsung for the journey with the organisation, promotes to take up the new responsibilities, senior executives to exchange ideas, and the top echelons to think far into the future. This is done chiefly through three key initiatives:

Shared Value Programme: The attempt is to give new comers the basics of doing good business. History, tradition, values form the basis of the programme with sessions on teamwork and creativity.

Business Leader Programme: A five-month initiative to develop the leaders of the next generation.
The participants are those with global competitiveness and all-round management skills. Global business management, leadership, and problem solving are the focus.

Global Expert Programme: A larger programme with varying periods, here the effort is to develop global spearheads with an emphasis on the local customs, cultures and practices besides foreign language, all designed to ready the managers for international assignments.

The HRD Centre also promotes Knowledge Management and Innovation in Practice with its cutting-edge education infrastructure, promoting values, and continuous assessment. The centre actively promotes field learning so that people can develop themselves wherever they are.

The campus is inspirational, and it has borrowed from the works of famous artists to design the spaces so that the trainees are positively influenced by the energies of these greats. So if the fifth flow has 3D in 2D format you are but reminded of cubist Pablo Ruiz Picasso. TV screen on the second floor corridor's ceiling could but be inspired by Nam June Paik, the Korean American artist, who has worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist and also credited with early use of the term ‘super highway' in application to telecommunications.

The sixth floor is inspired by the Russian-born French Expressionist painter Wassily Kandinsky, and the fourth has a Belgian artist Rene Magritte's surreal touch to it. But the piece de resistance is the third floor, whose corridor are lined with small and large images of Marilyn Monroe, unmistakably by pop-art icon Andy Warhol. The idea for front courtyard has been borrowed from Vatican's St Peter's Square.

If there all the paths led Christians to their temporal centre, here the pathways draw ‘Samsung's People' from across the 150 nations it's present in to its learning headquarters.

It is not all work and no play at the HRD Centre. The training sessions, according to Mr Ja Hwan Song, are fun-filled including pop performances as interludes to the think sessions. The two/three kitchens bring to the table a variety of fare from across the world.

Samsung taking its human resource so seriously is reflected in its attrition rate of five to six per cent among its worldwide staff roll of over two lakh.