The process by which Hyundai Motor Group’s R&D headquarters has developed the research expert system over the past 16 years provides the following lessons:
1. To prevent the tragedy of filling managerial positions with incompetent individuals, it is necessary to establish a separate career path for technology experts, apart from the managerial career path, to offer diverse growth opportunities to talents.
2. When creating a growth ladder for key talents, it is essential to provide learning opportunities needed at each stage of growth, and guide them to contribute to the company by using the joy of learning as a powerful internal motivation.
3. The qualities of managerial-type leaders and expert-type leaders should not be dichotomized into leadership and technical expertise. Managerial-type leaders also need technical expertise, and expert-type leaders also require leadership to lead the organization. However, the required level and characteristics vary depending on the role and working style.
As technological advancements accelerate globally and competition intensifies, more companies are developing systems to nurture and support core talents in order to prevent the outflow of technical personnel. A representative example is Samsung Electronics, which has supported outstanding talents in R&D positions since the early 2000s by selecting "Fellows" and "Masters," offering them financial rewards comparable to these of executives and the opportunities to focus solely on research. Many companies motivate the enhancement of technical skills in R&D positions by providing top technicians with financial rewards and honors, granting them authority equivalent to that of managerial executives.
Hyundai Motor Group (hereinafter Hyundai Motor) has similarly appointed individuals who have demonstrated outstanding skills among the research staff at the Namyang R&D Center as Research Fellows and Senior Research Fellows, giving them executive-level treatment equivalent to the general managerial career path. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Hyundai Motor has systematically structured a growth path for technical talents—Global R&D Expert, Global R&D Master, and Research Fellow—so that more technical talents can pursue continuous growth with the position of Research Fellow as their ultimate goal. It is noteworthy that this system helps relieve technical talents from the pressure of needing to be promoted to managerial positions by selecting them as candidates for team leader positions and allowing them to focus on R&D projects early in their careers, based on their expertise. Moreover, Hyundai Motor provides differentiated support and benefits at each stage of the expert path, enabling them to maximize their capabilities.
Hyundai Motor did not initially design and create the Research Expert System as it exists today; in the early stages of its introduction in 2006, it included only the Global R&D Expert and Research Fellow roles. Additionally, at the beginning, there was not much interest among the members in the unfamiliar career path of a research expert. However, after 16 years of accumulating operational know-how and identifying problems, the system has been steadily improved, and today, the Research Expert System has become a cradle for nurturing technical leaders who will lead Hyundai's future technologies. Currently, Research Fellows, who have grown within the framework of the Research Expert System, independently carry out research projects aimed at securing long-term and high-difficulty new technologies that are difficult for operational teams to tackle through research labs, thereby supporting Hyundai’s mid- to long-term strategy. As of September 2023, there are a total of 135 research experts, including 87 Global R&D Experts, 35 Global R&D Masters, and 13 Research Fellows. Although this represents only about 1% of the total research workforce, when including personnel who have shifted to the managerial track during the process, approximately 430 key talents have grown within the framework of the Research Expert System, contributing not only to Hyundai's advanced technology research but also to the development of mass production technologies in the field.
DBR analyzed the development process and future challenges of Hyundai Motor’s Research Expert System, based on interviews with Baek Jung-uk, Team Leader, and Jeong Sang-hyuk, Manager of the R&D HR Operations Team in the R&D Division, who plan and operate the system; Kim Se-eun, Senior Manager of the R&D Growth Support Team; and Kim Jae-yeon, Research Fellow who was promoted through the Research Expert path and now leads the Thermal Energy Systems Research Lab.
This content was translated into English by AI (using DeepL) from an article that was originally written in Korean in the DBR (Donga Business Review). Therefore, please understand that there may be some awkward expressions.
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