Toyota’s North American Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jim Lentz, said 75 percent of its employees favor the possible move from California to Plano. In a company survey, 4000 employees were asked about their view on a possible relocation to the 100-acre site at West Plano where Toyota is currently building their 2 million-square-foot headquarter.
The new headquarter is a five-story building. The structures for the front buildings are already up. Toyota’s move to West Plano will boost the real estate sales as 3,000 employees will be relocated.
If the numbers hold up about 3,000 employees will be relocated to the new site and about 1,000 job opportunities will be opened. The CEO said these vacancies might probably be filled by workers from North Texas.
The move is not only based on the good turn-out of approvals but seasoned employees were well considered as Toyota will not compromise their top performers over the approval of majority of its employees for the proposed move to West Plano. Toyota does not want a repeat of what happened to Nissan where they lost 50 percent of their employees during their move from Southern California to Tennessee.
Toyota’s employees are spread among their offices in Southern California, Kentucky and New York but in their new headquarter in Plano, everyone will be housed together as part of the new organizational structure where Toyota wants to create a different culture from their previous set-up where different divisions were in separate locations.
Majority of the success of this relocation relied on the good report of about 400 employees that moved to Texas a couple of years ago who mainly settled in the Dallas area. These 400 employees had great experiences during their stay in the area. They loved how family-friendly the community was, especially the schools and neighborhoods. They became the ambassador of Texas to the 3,000 employees who favored the move.