Designing a Human Resource Strategy for a business

Scenario

After graduating last year you are now working as a HRM consultancy business and an entrepreneur has approached you to set up a new medium sized company with the intention to employ 200 staff.

You are required to write a report with detailed analysis and evaluation of how the business will be managed and organised from a HRM perspective.

You need to show how you apply the organisational behaviour concepts you have learnt on your degree course to the functioning of your company.

Challenges to factor in

The business will partly operate as part of the gig economy and there are restrictions to the staffing of the business in terms of contracts and managing a flexible workforce.

Another added dimension is the business needs to operate differently due to corona virus regulations. A number of staff will need to work from home and other staff will need to work in the new offices being built.

Key guidance

Using current research and theory you are required to write a 1000 word report ( +/- 10%) with the key aim to critically evaluate your HRM strategy. You may need to create any key documents you would use for your strategy and include these documents in the appendix of your report.

Theoretical ideas must be used in your analysis and evaluation with supporting evidence and references.

Therefore it is important to critically evaluate your HRM strategy (including the documents created) and be clear to why your strategy will be successful.

Some of the following areas below need to be considered as part of your HRM strategy;-

Soft or Hard HRM approach – plus explain the key functions of the HRM department to help the success of the business

Recruitment – Internal or external recruitment. How will staff retention work and talent management?

Organisational structure – How will this work? Type of structure?

Management and leadership style – which theoretical models to adopt and why will they help the development of the business? Advice on theoretical ideas which may not help?

Gig economy – challenges of managing this?

Re-designing the workplace due to corona virus – new ways of working? How will this work?

Methods of motivation – Non-financial and financial methods? Which motivation theories could help the business or which theoretical ideas may create problems?

How will teamwork and communication work in the business?

ANSWER

 

Introduction

Human Resource Management is a key department in an organization tasked with hiring, staffing, remuneration and general welfare of the employees. In this competitive world and technology advancement, human resource department plays a very vital role in ensuring general growth in an organization. Strategic human resource management is a new approach linking human resources with set objectives and clearly defined goals to ensure improved business performance. Additionally it promotes flexibility, competitive hedge and innovation to actualize goals. Exceptionally, the department is tasked with knowing the nature of the work to be done, skills required to perform the task, background check, proper communication flow to ensure feedback and ensuring safety and health of employees are maintained. The key focus is on human resource programs with long-term objectives and improved employee productivity by taking keen interest on business obstacles that occur outside of human resources. It is considered to be the key to enhance business performance.

 

In the current world with modernization in place, older solutions and recipes that worked in local context do not work. As a result, Human Resource Management professional faces issues of human resource flow, employee participation, reward system and high commitment work system. Cross cultural factor plays a key role. There are numerous issues associates with the strategic HRM in the global context such as increased competition, may not be local or even national but through free market ideology, speedy technological change, internationalization of market integration, cross cultural issues, shifting of economic situation from stable economic status to developing status.

 

Qualified and skilled employees are great assets to the organization. Additional 200 employees will go a long way in building labor capacity, increased in production and growth of the organization. However, the cost of acquiring and maintaining that huge number of employees requires some strategies to be properly put in place. Furthermore, with the inception of Covid -19 only a certain number can be accommodated in the organization to curb the spread of the virus. Remote working may not be everyone’s piece of cake. Human resource manager is tasked with responsibility of ensuring employees working remotely are facilitated .Basically the spirit of teamwork is affected for the employees working from home and self reliabity becomes a major factor in determining the general productivity of the firm.

 

Based on the trend, communication channel have been modernized whereby physical meeting culture has been abolished. To salvage the situation, zoom meeting, goggle meet and skype meetings have taken centered stage in ensuring communication flow is maintained.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HRM practices create procedures that constitute the building of employees’ knowledge and skills throughout the organization to promote valued and unique organizational competencies which support competitive advantage. Strategic HRM is a new paradigm in managing HR in the modern organization which is hinged on the understanding that the most critical resource that any organization must provide itself of is HR, since it is the HR that is responsible for coordinating the other factors of production to spur corporate performance. Strategic HRM aims to achieve strategic fit. It produces HR strategies that are integrated vertically with the business strategy and are ideally an integral part of that strategy. Vertical integration is necessary to provide congruence between business and HR strategy so that the latter supports the accomplishment of the business strategy and helps to define it. HRM is also about horizontal integration which aims to ensure that the different elements of the HR strategy fit together and are mutually supportive .It enables strategic decisions to be made that have a major and long-term impact on the behavior and success of the organization by ensuring that the organization has the skilled, committed and well-motivated employees it needs to achieve competitive advantage. Strategic HRM is concerned with the relationship between human resource management and strategic management in the firm. Strategic HRM refers to the overall direction the organization wishes to pursue in order to achieve its goals through people. It is argued that, because intellectual capital is a major source of competitive advantage, and in the last analysis it is people who implement the strategic plan, top management must take these key considerations fully into account in developing its corporate strategies. Strategic HRM is an integral part of those strategies. Strategic HRM addresses broad organizational issues relating to organizational effectiveness and performance, changes in structure and culture, matching resources to future requirements, the development of distinctive capabilities, knowledge management and the management of change. It is concerned with both meeting human capital requirements and the development of process capabilities, that is, the ability to get things done effectively. Overall, it will consider any major people issues that affect or are affected by the strategic plan of the organization. ‘The critical concerns of HRM such as choice of executive leadership and formation of positive patterns of labor relations are strategic in any firm.

The acquisition and development of the skill of employees and job design for specific task.

Firms with a high commitment strategy had significantly higher levels of both productivity and quality than those with a control strategy, productivity is influenced by employee motivation; financial performance is influenced by employee skills, motivation and organizational structures.

There are two major strategies used human resource managers to promote efficiency in an organization. They include

Corporate strategy

It focuses on the restructuring and paying much attention to the long term objectives of the organization. Addition the human resource can re-align various operation units

Business strategy

Here human resource department identifies competitors and works towards improving the products. This can be achieved by product differentiation, low cost providers and looking for new opportunities to invest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

The global business competition is rapidly changing from effective production to innovation and from economies of scale to creation of value, management needs to be oriented towards the strategic use of human resources. Â Strategic human resources management focuses employee productivity and the ability of agencies to achieve their mission. Integrating the use of personnel practices into the strategic planning process enables an organization to better achieve its goals and objectives. Combining human resource practices, all with a focus on the achievement of organizational goals and objectives, can have a substantial affect on the ultimate success of the organization

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Hashmi, Kiran. “Human Resource Management Strategies and Teacher’s Efficiency within Schools: A Co-Relational Study.” IAFOR Journal of Education 2.1 (2014): 65-87.

 

Boxall, Peter, and John Purcell. Strategy and human resource management. Macmillan International Higher Education, 2011.

 

Youndt, Mark A., et al. “Human resource management, manufacturing strategy, and firm performance.” Academy of management Journal 39.4 (1996): 836-866.