Employee trust and reporting in the Toyota recall crisis

Toyota Recall

The objective of this study is to examine how employees of Toyota view of the company changed after the defect the company had in the Toyota Recall Crisis as compared to their view of the company before the crisis. As well, this work will examine the benefits that Toyota offer to its employees.

Employee's View: Prior to the Recall

Employees of Toyota were hesitant prior to the recent recall on Toyota vehicles to admit to errors or to reports problems in the company's vehicles and according to reports, the management of the Toyota company perpetuated this fear in their employees. Failure to report problems during the manufacturing process is blamed for the failure of the equipment, which resulted in approximately 60 deaths and another 57 injuries. This is reported to have placed a great deal of stress on employees when attempting to explain the problems to the public. This also is stated to have resulted in low worker morale among Toyota employees.

IV. Labor Relations Management

The labor relations management of Toyota are such that have as their basis the "concepts of mutual trust between labor and management" including "improvements in the lives of employees" are parallel with the company's prosperity. Mutual respect was added to mutual trust in the 'Labor and Management Resolutions for the 21st Century" which labor and management signed together. Basic principles of personnel management at Toyota include:

(1) creating a workplace environment where employees can work with their trust in the company;

(2) creation of a mechanism for the promotion of "constant and voluntary initiatives in continuous improvements;

(3) fully committed and thorough human resources development; and (4) promoting teamwork aimed at pursuit of individual roles and optimization of the entire team. (Environmental and Social Report, 2003)

Summary and Conclusion

Toyota has realized that empowering employees in their reporting of potential failures of equipment of Toyota results in a better chance to avoid recalls in the future such as have occurred in the recent past of the company. Employees are not just workers but as well are stakeholders in and spokespersons for the company and as such should trust in the company to support them when they identify problems and should be able to trust that the company will take ethical actions when such notification is made on a product failure.