MANAGING HUMAN CAPITAL
Topic: “Do you think “the linking of HRM with strategic goals and objectives by any organisation will help to improve business performance and develop organisational cultures that foster innovation and flexibility” Discuss and debate.
What factors should management consider in your opinion? Substantiate with many examples”
INTRODUCTION:
“Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that mainly focuses on recruitment, management, and providing direction for the people who work in the company. Human Resource Management can also be performed by the managers.”
(http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryh/f/hr_management.htm)
“Storey defines HRM as ‘a distinguishing approach to service management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the planned development of a highly committed and capable workforce, using an array of cultural, structural and human resources techniques’.” (Human Resource Management by Julie Beardwell Tim Claydon 5th edition)
Thus, HRM includes so many activities like planning, recruitment, selection, training, motivation, remuneration, etc. HRM aims at mounting people through work.
In addition to this concern for the individual, HRM is also about developing the environment within the company for developing good qualities. There must be good professional relationship between boss and the employees. The HR manager has to look at all these aspects of the company with long term view to the company.
One way of presentating this is that it might have been said of the personnel manager that they were involved mainly in recruitment, payment and keeping account. They therefore concerned themselves with a fairly slight view of the people in the organization.
(http://www.encompassculture.com/readinggroups/teachingmanagement/humanresourcemanagement/)
The main activities of HRM:
- “The one that we would list are as follows:
� Recruitment and selection
Examples:
HRM at nokia:Nokia – “Connecting People” this motto is known all over the world.
Nokia employs thousands of people from the world each and every year. Their method of recruitment is really very accurate and selective, and they recruit the people who fulfill their all requirements for the job.
( http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Nokia-Analysis/131739)
� Training and development
Example:
HRM at hospitality industry: Nowadays, in each and every industry, training is necessary. An introductory guide is fully updated with recent informations, news and datas.the hospitality industry mainly give attention to following avtivity of human resource management.
-Selection, appointment and induction
-Training and management development
-Labor turnover
-Employee relations and employment law
(http://www.flipkart.com/human-resource-management-hospitality-industry/0750666366-s5w3f9hgko)
HRM at B & S healthcare London: It is the place where I am working. After interview they had a training for all new comers. It is basically a pharmacy industry which makes the medicines on daily order bases. When I was selected in the interview, I was told to complete 10 specific tasks related to my job of making the medicines, specially suspensions. And after identifying the skills they train the new employees nicely.
(Personal experience)
Example:
Disney’s Polynesian Resort: It has developed a training program. The main purpose was to smooth the progress of employee understanding and commitment to the business and its principles called Magic of Polynesia.
They have spent a lot of money in training the persons at Edward Jones. Conversely, many organizations provide minimal initial training, little on-going development programs, and poorly implemented on-the-job training (http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/1100302-1.html)
� Human resource planning
� condition of contracts
� Provision of fair treatment
� Provision of equal opportunities
� Assessing performance of employees
� Employee analysis
Example:
HRM at health centers: Health centre employees must have some nice degree but it is also important that they behave very nicely to the patients. So continuous viewing of the staff in health centers must be monitored by the manager. Generally, in health centers HRM is being observed in following ways:
� A study of nurse staffing, organization and quality of care
� A study of staffing level, mix and outcome indicators
� An examination of nurse staffing, patient mortality rates.( http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/2/1/6#IDAQXWED)
� Employee welfare
Example:
HRM at Starbucks: Starbucks believes that one of their most expensive resources are their workers. Here the personnel are provided very good environment to work and they are very well treated by the boss also. Managers believe that they are playing the major role in their benefits. All workers are called “partners” of the starbucks, no matter what job they are doing in the coffee shop.
Each partner is able to receive health care whenever he needs. (http://www.academicmind.com/unpublishedpapers/business/marketing/2002-04-000aag-catching-the-starbucks-fever.html)
Example:
HRM at Hotels: “Here, management staff is getting more benefits than non management receives. If the staff work more than 40 hours then they are paid per hour on regular basis and thay may get extra pay for doing over-time. They also have very good pension scheme and they can join in from day 1.”
- (Human Resource management in hotel industry: strategy and innovation by Kim Hoque)
� Health and safety
Example:
HRM at airlines industry: Airlines have adopted a short-permits, cost-rational move toward to HRM and health and safety, evidenced by a range of plannings, in order to increase competitive advantage. But, here profit was considered more important than the health and safety of the workers. But nowadays, the management has been improved and the workers get more benefits from the company.
(http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkpdf&contentId=879290)
� Disciplining individual
� Dealing with grievances
� Dismissal
� Negotiation
� Encouraging involvement
(Introducing human resource management by Margaret Foot 2nd edition)
Major characteristics of HRM:
“The major characteristics of HRM have been known as follows:
� The importance of adopting a strategic approach is emphasized.
� All managers play a very important role.
� They achieve the competitive advantage by the efforts of the workers. This can variously be interpreted into actions known as soft HRM.
� A unitary rather than a pluralist approach overcome in the relationship between employees and managers.” (Introducing human resource management by Margaret Foot 2nd edition)
Strategic human resource management:
“Strategic human resource management is generally defined as the relating of human resources with strategic goals and objectives in order to progress business performance and develop organizational culture that foster innovation, flexibility and competitive advantage.” SHRM is really very important for any organization and company for achieving its goals and objectives.
In any company, SHRM means long-suffering and involving the HR function as a strategic colleague in the formulation and implementation of the company’s strategies through HR behavior such as recruiting, selecting, training and pleasing personnel. (http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Strategic-Human-Resource-Management?&id=549585)
(http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC722/fc722.html)
Since last 30 years when human resource management arrived on the managerial schedule, there has been considerable discussion concerning its nature and its nature and its value to organizations. Indeed, the now large literature rarely differentiates between HRM and SHRM. Some have focused HRM as a means of gaining promise and linked this to outcomes of enhanced organizational performance and business effectiveness through best practice models or high performance work experience.
(Human Resource Management by Julie Bardwell Tim Claydon, 5th edition)
Features of SHRM:
The main features of SHRM are:
� There is a strong relation between HR policy and practices and final organizational strategic aims and the firm’s environment.
� There is some organizing diagram linking HR intervention so that they are equally helpful
� Much of the duty for the management of human resources is developed losing the line.
Example:
HRM at Cisco System: Charles Schwab was the manager at Cisco system. They think that for providing outstanding customer services, it is necessary to treat their own employees very well. This makes the employees with more than 10 years of service, and they are paid for four week combined with vacation time.
( http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/1100302-1.html)
How SHRM differs from HRM:
In last 2 years, people are more concern about their HR functions and the planning of the organizations. HR functions are more easier than the strategic HR. because HR is still people and worker centered. They are away from the business mind strategy and real business. They can give up their profit for welfare of the employers. But, SHRM is the different case.it just think about the business world and benefit. They are more concerned with the profit rather than the welfare of the workers.
Strategic human resource management do not worry about what is internally going on in the organization, but they see the long term goals and objective. They focus on the factors outwards the company. They don’t care about issues happening inside the organization or any problem related to the employees.
((http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Strategic-Human-Resource-Management?&id=549585)
(http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC722/fc722.html)
What are strategic goals and objectives?:
Strategic goals are statements of what you wish to get over the period of planned plan, for examples next month, next year, ten years. It reflects the idea or the work statement and our own analysis of whether it is achievable or not. One must see the opportunities, conditions, strengths, and weakness of every factor which comes in between for achieving the goal. The linking between strategic goals and objectives with planning to achieve it needs a high analysis of the particular topic. One must consider each and every of above factor for detailed analysis of their goals.
Example:
HRM in boots: boots is a company which produces different kind of products. It is very difficult to make a major change in the organizational staff, and also it is too difficult for multitask business to single task operations. During the year 2002-03 boots engaged in a programme of focus group meeting for all of their retail employees with the aim of informing and engaging everyone in the business; this involved more than 51000 people staff. The key objective of the meeting was that all staff develops understanding of Boots’ markets, customers and competitors. (http://www.bized.co.uk/compfact/boots/boots_old/boots_old_15.htm)
Organizational innovation and HRM
Innovations as general, may be defined as purposeful and essential changes in existing products or services, processes or the organisation in order to reach competitive advantage compared with competitors’, the definition explains the following matters:
� Innovation itself means that we are going to introduce totally a new idea and new thing rather than traditional services or goods;
� Whenever any innovation takes place, it comes with the aim of achieving something more than before
� Innovations develop through some bad experiences which has created any loss anywhere.
� Innovations can be managed; this means that there so many parts involved in it like formulation, design, implementation, monitoring, analyzing.
But they can also present an opportunity: answering them gives the organization the option to expand or to develop into a new direction. In our conceptual framework we distinguish four types of developments:
� Economic developments, like changes in markets and industries,
� Technological developments, like the development and application of new technology.
� Social/cultural developments, like demographical changes, changes in individual (http://www.allbusiness.com/professional-scientific/management-consulting/1024364-1.html)
(1) Example of HRM-innovation: The allocation of the responsibility for the development and introduction of new work methods to a team (devolution).
(2) Example of HRM-innovation: The introduction of a new attractive and useful system that is related to innovation outcomes, like the number of new products, the successful implementation of a new technology, etc.
(3) Example of HRM-innovation: The HR leadership award which was a part of global excellence awards presented at the congress, is in recognition of Mr. Joshi’s leadership and contribution to the field of HR. as a tradability.
(4) Example of HRM-innovations: The introduction of a more flexible staffing approach e.g. by giving people contracts for the duration of their projects instead of permanent contracts.
(http://www.zyduscadila.com/press/Asia%20Pacfic%20HRM%20Congress%20Award%20.pdf)
HRM and FLEXIBILITY:
The human resource management practices that may affect labor flexibility, that is, the malleability of a firm’s labor force. A random sample of managers in the largest manufacturers in Taiwan completed a structured opinion poll containing a measure of employee participation as an indicator of a firm’s labor flexibility. Important terms related to flexibility of an organization are listed below:
� Labor market flexibility, where it is said that regulation and resulting inflexibility of the job market act against growth and should be minimized.
� Flexible firm: the flexible firm has different flexibility for employees in terms of payroll, hours, etc.Peripheral workers are split into three categories:-
a) normal employees, they are busy within relatively low-skill, routine work. They are getting low pay and insecure – the next wave of technology can remove the need for these people.
b) dependent employees working on high-skill tasks, perhaps on short-term contracts or projects. High pay, there is no job security but this is compensated for by the freedom to pick and choose projects.
c) Low-skill, low pay contract workers often provided by an agency for cleaning, routine security, catering, etc.
Within the model there are some key descriptive concepts:
They are numerical,functionalandpayflexibility and also ‘distancing’. The model has its critic and there is little evidence that organizations have made much use of it as a strategic concept
Flexible specialization. An argument that ‘fordism’ or mass production is on its last legs in favor of smaller niche marketplace manufacturing. customers are more demanding, it seems, inadequate more individual products. Questionable.
Example:
HRM at McDonalds: McDonald’s is the places which is very famous all over the world. They give very good career opportunities for people to achieve their goals. Specially, the firm offers both part-time and full-time career opportunity, which helps staff to merge work with family or educational commitments. Job succession is used to encourage employees who got their 1st job in the firm to improvement to manage positions. Over half of the company’s middle and senior managers have moved up from restaurant-based positions.
( http://www.bized.co.uk/compfact/mcdonalds/mc16.htm)
Managing organizations strategically:
“A ‘processual’ view of strategy sees it as the pattern emerging over the time in an organization as actions of both planned and unplanned nature are carried out to enable the organization as a whole to carry on into the future. It follows from this view that strategic choices or managerial decisions are those that have:
� A corporate dimension: relate to the whole organization as opposed simply to a part of it;
� A long term implication: whether this be a matter of just surviving in the sense of staying viable or a matter of aiming to operate at higher level of performance.”
(The strategic management of human resources-Jhon Leopold 2nd edition)
SHRM and culture:
From last decade, it is very important for any organization to know about the culture of the company. The management of company’s total supply chain is also very important. The culture of any organization may be short, tall, flat, etc. managing the people of different culture is also very important part of strategic human resource management. Some firm have their own view that they are recruiting the persons of the same culture, while on the other hand some have tendency to select people of different culture. . Over the past decade, the management of a firm’s total supply chain has become the process for building better and stronger upstream and downstream business linkages. Culture of the organization play important role in success of the organization. As defferent people have different tendency to think about, culture management in the organization is very much important. The HR manager must involve different cultures so he gets different innovative ideas and apply them.
The first element of culture is the shared nature of occupation or role expectations. Over time, supply chain members also develop a common awareness about what is expected of them and what they can anticipate in return. In this sense, there are two aspects of shared potential:
(1) the internal culture that characterizes employee expectations and
(2) the external culture that designates channel member expectations.”
(The strategic management of human resources-Jhon Leopold 2nd edition)
Conclusion:
I, definitely, think that the linking of HRM with strategic goals and objectives by any organization will help to improve business performance and develop organizational culture s that foster and flexibility. Research on diversity of national cultures and their influence on employees’ behavior inspire much optimism about emerging perspectives on culture and SHRM practices. There is a growing amount of research that illuminates differences in the way organizations around the globe make decisions, allocate resources, negotiate, manage and motivate employees and train them. Also, from above examples, it can be said that human resource management plays most important role in development of any organization. Strategic HRM is really important for creating innovative culture of an organization.
REFERENCES:
(1) What Is Human Resource Management?-http://humanresources.about.com/od/glossaryh/f/hr_management.htm
(2) HRM INTRODUCTION-http://tutor2u.net/business/people/hrm_introduction.htm
(3) hrm- http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/human-resource-management-HRM.html
(4) Strategic human resource management http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/corpstrtgy/general/strathrm.htm
(5) HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT – http://www.encompassculture.com/readinggroups/teachingmanagement/humanresourcemanagement/
(6) Influence of Culture on Strategic Human Resourcehttp://www.strathmore.edu/research/strategic-human-resource-mgt.pdf
(7) challenges of hrm-http://www.zeromillion.com/business/hrm.html
(8) what is hrm?-http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Strategic-Human-Resource-Management?&id=549585
(9) Can you give me an example of human resource management at the company? http://www.bized.co.uk/compfact/mcdonalds/mc16.htm
(10) nokia analysis-http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Nokia-Analysis/131739
(11) Office of Personnel Management- http://www.opm.gov/studies/alignnet.pdf
(12) Can you give me an example of HRM at the company?-http://www.bized.co.uk/compfact/boots/boots_old/boots_old_15.htm
(13) HRM in the airline industry: strategies and outcomeshttp://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do?contentType=Article&hdAction=lnkpdf&contentId=879290
(14) Hrm at The Hospitality Industry http://www.flipkart.com/human-resource-management-hospitality-industry/0750666366-s5w3f9hgko
(15) The effects of culture and human resource management – http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/1100302-1.html
(16) hand book on hrm- http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D78K7QIdR3UC&pg=PA142&dq=hrm%2Bgoals&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q=hrm%2Bgoals&f=false
(17) Innovating Organisations and HRM: http://www.allbusiness.com/professional-scientific/management-consulting/1024364-1.html
(18) What Are The Characteristics of “Good” Strategic Goals and Objectives Within Strategic Planning?http://work911.com/planningmaster/faq/goalsgood.htm
(19) http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/2/1/6#IDAQXWED
(20) JOURNAL of diversity management- Third Quarter 2007
(21) Human Resource Management by Julie Beardwell Tim Claydon, 5th edition
(22) Organizational Behaviour by David Buchanan, 5th edition
(23) Introducing human resource management by Margaret Foot 2nd edition
(24) The strategic management of human resources-Jhon Leopold 2nd edition
(25) human resource management practiceBy Michael Armstrong page 144
(26) Human Resource management in hotel industry: strategy and innovation by Kim Hoque
(27) Strategic Human Resource Management by Susan Jacson
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1) JOURNAL of diversity management- Third Quarter 2007
(2) Human Resource Management by Julie Beardwell Tim Claydon, 5th edition
(3) Organizational Behaviour by David Buchanan, 5th edition
(4) Introducing human resource management by Margaret Foot 2nd edition
(5) The strategic management of human resources-Jhon Leopold 2nd edition
(6) human resource management practiceBy Michael Armstrong page 144
(7) Human Resource management in hotel industry: strategy and innovation by Kim Hoque
(8) Strategic Human Resource Management by Susan Jacson