Strategic Training Paper - Essay Example

Human resource management is also instrumental in determining and utilizing the strategic position of organizations in a competitive environment. Google Inc. is one such organization that uses human resource development as part of its competitive strategy. Its co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, put every effort to design Googleplex (headquarters complex of Google) as a lively and fun place to work. From a small web firm, Google Inc. has emerged as a dominant industry giant over the past 12 years.

Google’s set of available resources and capabilities enables it to build a strategy focused on company’s internal environment rather than following the market trends. According to Robert Grant, “When the external environment is in a state of flux, the firm itself, in terms of its bundle of resources and capabilities, may be a much more stable basis on which to define its identity”. The firm values its employees with a number of benefits, performance rewards and is also considering wide expansion to its current human resource.

A highly qualified and unique workforce is one of the prime resources of Google Inc. Organizations often tend to systematically evaluate potential employees in terms of setting up future performance targets at the time of hiring. Human resource development plays an important role in achieving cost effective and performance based targets. Rastogi (2000) noted that human capital is an important input for organizations especially for employees’ continuous improvement mainly on knowledge, skills and abilities.

Successful integration of business and workforce concerns is the strategic ability distinguishing the organizations from each other. Google as an organization has been able to acquire this ability to a greater extent and thus enjoys a firm competitive advantage. In order to utilize human resources to formulate effective competitive strategy, organizations should improve their ability to recruit, develop and retain employees. Reich (1998) has described human resource development as, "to attract and keep talented people, companies today are not just experimenting with how they approach the competitive marketplace of goods and services; they are also experimenting with how they approach the competitive marketplace of talent”.

An organization requires its employees' competence in achieving the present as well as future performance goals. As a company, Google is fully aware of the fact that employees’ commitment and devotion are the keys in developing a long-term competitive strategy. So, Google has its own unique way to encourage and value employed workforce in order to motivate their commitment towards innovative pursuits. For instance, an engineer at Google, Peter Norvig says that few years back the average search took about 3 seconds.

Now, it requires around 0.2 seconds, but still it's not fast enough compared to zero second. Despite facing growing criticism over its distinctive human resource recruitment methodology, the company has managed to maintain its competitive edge. The company's success among other technology giants is undoubtedly due to loyalty and strong commitment of its employees. Google offers a highest remuneration package and other thoughtful set of factors in return to their valuable services. For an organization to implement strategy effectively, it must consider human resource development as key strategic partner.

Human resource policies and practices determine the goals and