Tofaş regards human resources who are both experienced and creative as a driving force of its ability to quickly adapt to changing competitive conditions and to be a leader.

Tofaş human resources policy is focused on employing qualified people who are compatible with the company’s operations and on providing employees with a highly motivating workplace environment.

As of end-2018, Tofaş had a total of 7,665 people on its payroll, of whom 1,656 were white-collar (those paid monthly salaries) and 6,009 were blue-collar (those paid hourly wages)

Number of personnel
White-collar	1,656
Blue-collar	6,009
Total	7,665

 

Breakdown of employees by gender
Male (white-collar)	1,283
Female (white-collar)	373
Male (blue-collar)	5,588
Female (blue-collar)	421

 

Average age of employees
White-collar	36.4
Blue-collar	32.8
Total	33.6

In 2018, production activities at Tofaş were temporarily suspended for a total of fifty-seven days for such reasons as scheduled maintenance & repairs, stock planning, and personnel taking annual leave.

HIRING PROCEDURES

In the conduct of its recruitment and hiring processes Tofaş Human Resources makes use of reliable tools and methods that will help identify and select the best candidates. These tools and methods include competency-based/technical interviews, video/telephone interviews, Assessment Center practices (roll-playing, group studies, case studies, “in-tray” exercises), personal inventories, foreign language proficiency tests, and reference checks. When adding to its candidates’ pool, Tofaş not only makes use of extramural resources but also publishes position vacancies through the internal announcement systems of Koç Group companies.

Tofaş Human Resources also engages in university-industry collaborations in line with its objective of pioneering new human resources practices. Among the innovations introduced in this vein in 2018 were an “On-The-Job Training & Traineeship Program”, “Trial & Long-Term Traineeship Program”, “Assessment Center” practices that are used when recruiting for management positions, and digital “Pre-Boarding”, which helps newly-hired personnel get up to speed before they actually start work.

TOFAŞ ACADEMY PROVIDES HUMAN RESOURCES TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT SERVICES TO NEARLY 15,000 PERSONNEL EMPLOYED BY TOFAŞ, ITS DEALERSHIP NETWORK, ITS CUSTOMER ATTENTION CENTER, AND ITS SUPPLIERS.

TOFAŞ ACADEMY

Tofaş Academy defines its mission as “Providing Tofaş and its value-creation chain with a learning experience that is the most appropriate to their ability to do today’s tasks better and prepare themselves for the future” and its vision as “Inspiring the entire global automotives industry and other sectors’ academies with its original techniques, its pioneering activities, and its sustainable success.”

Tofaş Academy provides human resources training and development services to nearly 15,000 personnel employed by Tofaş, its dealership network, its customer attention center, and its suppliers.

In 2018 Tofaş Academy continued to develop field and office employees’ 7/24 digital learning experience through its Training Management System, interactive video platform Tideo, and corporate memory and social learning platform Wiki. 71% of personnel-development activities taking place at Tofaş Academy are internally resourced. The academy employs 194 active internal trainers, 8 developmental consultants, and 8 internal coaches while also supporting their own instruction.

In order to support field personnel development and help them achieve the competency levels expected of them, Tofaş Academy also conducted special training programs under the Production Academy, such as the Maintenance & Mold School in 2018. In-house instructed internal trainers provided 1,669 field personnel with classroom training on a total of 114 different subjects.

Attaching importance to stakeholder development as well, Tofaş Academy continues to employ its own training personnel to provide specialized developmental training for suppliers and through its Synergy, UP, and GO HR programs.

A training management system for about 5,500 personnel employed by the sales departments, after-sales services, and customer attention centers of Fiat, Alfa Romeo, and Jeep and by spare-parts suppliers Magneti Marelli and OPAR was updated with the incorporation of new-generation technologies. In addition technical and behavioral training using mixed training methods is provided for dealers’ employees through programs such as “Sales School” and “Services School” and events such as “I’m Proud To Be A Part Of Fiat” and “Discovery Days”.

Tofaş Academy continues to inspire automotives industry and other sectors’ academies with training and development content that it makes available online through www.tofasakademi.com, a website designed to be an information aggregation and sharing platform.

Because innovation is one of Tofaş’s strategic priorities, Tofaş Academy also employs in-house resources in order to provide training, coaching, and consultation services for projects dealing with such issues as human-centered design, lean new initiatives, and agility.

Last year Tofaş Academy was the recipient of a total of thirteen awards on such platforms as Stevie and Brandon Hall. Applying for inclusion in the ATD BEST list for the first time in 2018, the academy was accepted the same year and placed first in a ranking of 45 corporate academies. As in previous years and in its capacity as a program partner, for the third time in 2018 Tofaş Academy supported the Summer R&D Engineer Training Program organized jointly by the Bursa Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association and the Uludağ Automotive Industry Exporters’ Association.

Participants	Report headings	Values
Office personnel	# people taking part in 8-hour classroom training	7,514
	# people taking part in distance learning	14,698
	Average training time/employee	73.9 hours
Field personnel	# people taking part in 8-hour classroom training	9,096
	# people taking part in distance learning	7,680
	Average training time/employee	28.4 hours
Business partners	# suppliers	57 companies
	# supplier employees taking part in training	618
	Total training time	10,096 hours
Dealer employees	# people taking part in 8-hour classroom training	2,633
	# people taking part in distance learning	30,459 people
	Average training time/person	13.4 hours

LAST YEAR TOFAŞ ACADEMY WAS THE RECIPIENT OF A TOTAL OF THIRTEEN AWARDS ON SUCH PLATFORMS AS STEVIE AND BRANDON HALL.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

All Tofaş employees are covered by a performance management system that is designed and managed so as to support a corporate culture that focuses on performance and development. The two crucial cornerstones of this system are “Targets” and the “Leadership Principles” referred to as behavioral competencies. Targets are defined at the beginning of each year and are reviewed by means of “Check-In” meetings between an employee and their supervisor during the remainder of the year. A 360º Competency Assessment approach provides the means by which employees, managers, and coworkers give feedback about leadership principles.

Field personnel technical competency assessment

A system for assessing the technical competency of field personnel was introduced in 2018. This system was designed to respond to the need for a way to keep track of role-based development which would be capable of adapting quickly to Tofaş’s constantly evolving and changing processes, which would conform to specified quality standards, and which could be managed through a single technological platform. The system allows field personnel to keep track of their own progress and to see what competencies they need in order to qualify for other possible positions within the company.

This system is currently being developed so that employees will also be able to use it to display and select upcoming technical-competency training programs and to generate and examine summarized team-progression reports.

TOFAŞ’S REVERSE MENTORING: “TODAY’S YOUTH”

Tofaş’s “Today’s Youth” reverse mentoring program was introduced in 2018 with the aims of increasing intergenerational interaction and readying Tofaş for the future. Under this program, 21 members of Tofaş’s senior management (directors and general managers) meet with 66 “Next-Generation Mentors” chosen from among Tofaş employees. During these encounters, senior-management “mentees” gain a better understanding of the “mentors’” attitudes towards such issues as next-generation leadership, digital transformation, career opportunities, and workplace environment and conditions.

PERSONALIZED COMPETENCY-DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS

Development Counseling

Through professional coaches trained in-house, Tofaş provides its employees with development counseling, individual coaching, and team coaching support on Tofaş-specific competency and behavioral development issues. Tofaş Development Counseling is a seven-step behavioral development program that has been designed for employees wishing to advance through changes in their professional and personal development by productively transforming their existing potentials and competencies.

The Development Counseling program provides Tofaş employees with the professional support that they need to progress from their current state to the one that they aspire to be in. The Development Counseling program was designed to be a program whose details are individually and uniquely tailored according to each person. Making use of coaching and mentoring tools, development counselors help employees spot new paths and destinations and to acquire new points of view.

Team Coaching

Team Coaching is a Tofaş program that takes a coaching approach in order to help in-house teams of employees to mobilize themselves through target-specific motivation and to develop the leadership competencies of team members.

Follow-Up Meetings

After Tofaş employees’ targets have been set and development plans have been identified, intermediary performance reviews are conducted to determine if there are any areas that are in need of improvement. If there are, they are taken up at two check-in meetings that take place during the same year. During these meetings between employees and their supervisors, feedback is reviewed and assessed, actions that will lead to improvements are discussed, and support is provided for the formulation of an effective development plan. During 2018, more than 200 such meetings were carried out for more than 100 employees.

For newly-hired Tofaş employees, three rather than two such meetings are held during their first year of employment. These meetings focus on reviewing and assessing development plans and the personal inventories that applicants filled out during their job interviews and also on providing feedback concerning issues that need improvement. A total of 219 such meetings were conducted by review teams during 2018.

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

Every white-collar employee who begins working for a Koç Group company joins the Koç Holding Pension & Assistance Fund as part of the hiring process. Blue-collar workers who are hired by Tofaş may elect to sign up for this fund as well. The fund invests contributions deducted from wages and salaries in marketable securities and real estate assets. Such deductions and their earnings are repaid upon retirement or withdrawing from the fund as a lump sum or pension. Both active fund members and pensioners as well as their spouses and dependent children are covered by health insurance and may also be entitled to various rights such as housing acquisition assistance, financial support to cover specified needs, and insurance against such risks as death, incapacitation due to sickness, and partial disablement.

All wage-earning Tofaş employees are covered by a complementary health insurance scheme whose premiums are paid entirely by the company. Employees may elect to have coverage provided for their spouse and dependent children as well. As of end-2018, 8,109 Tofaş employees along with 5,616 of their family members were benefiting from this coverage.

To date, 1,886 students have benefited from the scholarship program that Tofaş originally introduced in 2011 for its employees’ dependent children.

In 2016 the company introduced daycare assistance for the dependent children of female employees in order to encourage women’s participation in the workplace and to help them better balance their working and home lives. As of end-2018, 304 Tofaş employees had benefited from this program.

As an employer, Tofaş is a member of the Turkish Employers’ Association of Metal Industries (MESS). The collective bargaining agreement that MESS entered into with the Turkish Metalworkers’ Union on 30 January 2018 will expire on 31 August 2019.

New contract negotiations between the union and MESS, which commenced on 31 December 2017, are still in progress and have reached the arbitration stage as of this writing.

As of 31 December 2018, Tofaş had a total severance pay liability of TL 175,684,229.87, all of which amount is covered by provisions that have been set aside. Employees are regularly and systematically provided with such rights and entitlements as may be mandated by laws and regulations.

The fringe benefits provided to the top management within the year ended on 31 December 2018 are explained in the note 27 of the financial report.

DOCTORAL AND MASTER’S-DEGREE PROGRAMS

To satisfy the staffing requirements of the Tofaş R&D Center, priority is given to candidates who possess appropriate master’s or doctoral-degree qualifications. As of end-2018, the number of the center’s personnel who held such qualifications had risen to 139.

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES

Sixteen clubs and fifteen sports teams voluntarily formed by Tofaş employees engage in a wide range of activities. All of them remained active during 2018.

These groups organize an average of 300 cultural, artistic, and sporting events such as concerts, exhibitions, shows, conferences, and athletic meets. More than 50 thousand employees and their family members and friends attend these events every year.

Tofaş employee football, volleyball, basketball, tennis, bowling, chess, swimming, athletics, and sailing teams regularly take part in the annual Koç Sports Festival and contend in inter-company events.

All Tofaş employees and their families also come together in the company’s annual “Tofaş Day” and share in the joy of being a part of the great Tofaş Family. Tofaş plant is also equipped with social facilities which are enjoyed by all employees as well as by their spouses and children and which underwent a renovation in 2018.

Located within the Mustafa V. Koç Sports Complex are a fitness center, basketball courts, and a table tennis area for the use of those who enjoy sports. The Tofaş Sports Club provides Tofaş employees’ children with opportunities to take part in basketball, football, and swimming. General healthcare services are provided both at the Tofaş plant in Bursa and at the company’s headquarters in İstanbul. The latter also contains a gymnasium that may be used by all employees.