Strategic Human Resource Management at Kazamy Manufacturing - Case Study Example

Strategic Human Resource Management Analysis with respect to the Theories Strategic human resource management is a process in which the strategic goals and objectives of an organisation are interlinked with human resource. This is applied in an organisation to improve the performance of the business and also cultivate an organisational culture. Here, the intent is to promote innovation, competitive edge and also flexibility. In the strategic HRM process, the HR policies and functions are used as guide and associate in the execution of organisational strategies. HR policies like recruiting, training, selection and personal reward system are used as a strategic guide in organisational strategy. A business strategy no matter how good it is, will succeed without the contribution of people. A proper analysis of data collected from human capital can help an organisation in developing business strategy process. In majority of the organisation people is regarded as the most important asset. To create value, an organisation has the task of utilising the knowledge, skills and also abilities of its people. Intangible value that is present in an organisation is its people. The HR personnel therefore have a greater task of managing the people of an organisation. An organisation will be able to achieve its objectives in the business front if strategic HRM is considered as a contributor in business strategy (CIPD, 2009). The case study is about Kazamy Manufacturing, a company having their business in both manufacturing and sales operation. Kazamy is different from other Japanese plants in this regard as most of them are involved only in manufacturing operation. Kazamy has established itself as one of the leading companies in Europe. It focuses on building a cordial relationship with their customers and also they enable their human resources i.e. their staffs to have a say in their marketing policy. Kazamy has given great importance to their manpower resources and utilised their knowledge and qualities in developing the company further. HR director of Kazamy joined in 1986. Since then he along with other members of kazamy hierarchy has worked hard in establishing their position in their business sector. Kazamy followed a strong HR philosophy. They didn’t want a traditional factory which is already present in UK. Their major policies were developed by the use of two principles. They firstly didn’t want to create a prototype Japanese plant existing in the rural Midlands area; secondly they strongly wanted to manage their manpower resource without the influence of any trade union. They valued their people and also their opinion. They wanted to operate in a team environment with each and every team member being visible. So, they get a feeling of belongingness with the company environment. They had a recruitment policy which confirmed their endeavour of giving importance to individuals in the organisation. They preferred youth rather than the experienced in their recruitment policy. They believed that young people who are in the threshold of their career would be more challenging and also demanding in nature. They wanted people who were confident, would question and also challenge the organisation if they felt something was done wrongly. In their recruitment practices they used psychometric party games to judge an individual. They used a procedure of two interviews. First interview is conducted with the personnel while the second one is with the team leader/manager/supervisor. This method is applied to see whether the interviewees can mingle with the people with whom they are going to work. The company follows a paternalistic leadership style in the organisation. They wanted to help their staff if they felt that their input can help them in solving any problem. People oriented leadership helps the organisation in conveying the benefits of working in the company to its people. This helps in creating a mutually benefitting relationship between the organisation and its staffs. Kazamy wanted their staffs to contribute to the company cause. They wanted to make the people feel that they were part of company endeavour. Kazamy followed an annual appraisal strategy. They wanted to keep informed about the performance of their people. The salary is linked to the contributions that an employee makes across a number of factors. The employees were informed about their performance by the board members. Their compensation criterion is decided according to the amount an individual deserves to get paid. They often paid an individual a salary which they required to maintain a standard of living. Appraisal is maintained on a continuous basis. An employee is informed about any deterioration or improvement in their performance by the appraisal. An appraisal is followed by a salary increase for the deserving employees. Appraisal and increase in salary is continued throughout the year. The appraisal is conducted by the departmental managers who get valuable inputs about the employee performance from the team leaders. Appraisal criterion which is followed at Kazamy involves quality of work, problem solving ability, innovative thinking and contributions that an employee makes in improvement of the organisation. Appraisal criteria also focus if they are self-centred in carrying out their job and also stay out from making any contribution to the organisational benefit. The company expects from a team member, positive influence which rubs off in other members of the organisation. They didn’t believe in taking money off the salary of an employee if their performance dropped. They intend on making allowance so that the employees can improve the performance. Kazamy wanted to keep a flexible recruitment policy which enables them to recruit manpower from both internal and external sources. The team leaders and supervisors were internally promoted in Kazamy in most of the cases. The supervisors in the organisation were instructed to watch out for the growth in an employee and whether they are competent enough to take up a job in a higher position. At Kazamy, a pay structure followed a 40% spread in salary according to the capability of the employees and whether they are newcomer or an experienced employee. There is a grade based system in Kazamy. The three grades are A, B, C. These grades are given to the employee performance according to what they deserve. The grades are similar to three skills level like that of unskilled, semiskilled, and skilled. At Kazamy, they don’t use these terms as they value each and every work that is performed by the employees. They acknowledge the team performance of an employee by using TQC program. They believe that if a team has to do well than it has to involve good individual performance. So, they put emphasis functioning as a team well. They believe that it will result in successful individual grades. The job and work design the company follows is related to both individual work and combined team work. The combined work that they perform enables the employees to use self policing method. This help in keeping a watch on an employee’s peer performance as the peer performance is involved in them getting a higher grade. Kazamy follow a relaxed working pace. The Kaizen or TQC methods are all done by sticking to company work timings. The employees are not monitored by using a stopwatch. They are encouraged to work by managing their own time. At Kazamy, there is a Japanese influence on the production and quality that they follow. They have overcome a cross cultural barrier and have involved Japanese work ethics. They encourage employees to maintain self discipline. The personnel position present at the organisation has been empowered to deal with people. There is no trade union in the company. So, HR person has to make sure that they listen to any grievance that comes up in the minds of the employees. There is a non - monetary reward system present in Kazamy. There has been a deliberate policy of paying average starting salary rates so that there wasn’t any discontent among employees. All staff positions were encouraged by providing them with benefits like sick pay, life insurance, medical insurance and they were entitled to join pension scheme. One pension scheme is available for everybody. The organisation tries to secure complete life of the employees. This policy is useful for employees when it comes to situations where they fall sick, compensate the family in case an employee unfortunately dies and also provide a pension policy when they retire from the job. Here, the management try to use the slack period for training when there is less work pressure. The training method used comprises of both on the job and off line or off the job training method. The off - the - job training is provided to the employees in combination with local colleges. Here, certain tasks which would be easier to train off line are done first. Then, the off line task are integrated with on the job training method. The organisation tries to encourage people for taking up the training. This enables them to have a database of people from whom they can choose their manpower. This enables them to have a wider choice of people to recruit from. The manufacturing staffs are very important to the organisation. They generally work as a team in batch or unit production. The team leader is vital for the organisation as they generally do the TQC projects. The employees are monitored to see whether they are achieving the given target or not. The team works as an autonomous work group. The production plan is directed by the sales plan that the organisation wishes to undertake. The team leader is provided due encouragement to come up with the solution for solving the drafting of manpower related problem. People are encouraged to be flexible in their task so that they can come up any contingency plan to solve the problem related to achieving a target. The team leader is assigned the task to decide on overtime that an employee has to do to achieve the task which he has been assigned. People are encouraged to take up different jobs for performing in different teams. The employees are required to be taking up multi-skilled jobs. The organisation encourages people to move up the grades from one grade to another. There is a policy of internal advertising among the employees. The employees are given a role of passing on their knowledge to the next level of employees. They are encouraged to train some other employee so that they can achieve knowledge and skills internally without the requirement of outside training. This process builds internal bonding among the employees. Therefore, they don’t feel the need of asking the management to provide them training on every particular topic as they get constant up gradation in their knowledge, skills and abilities. The management of Kazamy encourages the people to take up daily tenko meeting. There is a meeting which occurs every month for discussing the achievements of target. The company is considered secure and stable as they have a scope of proper communication among the employees. The employee feedback system is constantly monitored. This keeps the employees on their toes. The evaluation measures also help the employees to be properly encouraged to work hard. The constant feedback helps the employees to keep up with the global competition. Kazamy has employed a policy of encouraging their human resources to be team players. They give paramount importance in developing employee skills and abilities by means of training them on – the - job as well as off – the - job. They also encourage training people under them so that there is a constant learning process. Kazamy has been successful over the years to attract manpower to their organisation as they want their people to remember them as a beneficial organisation. They also follow a paternalistic type of leadership style in which they want their people to feel that in the time of distress, the organisation will support them. Thus, Kazamy has successfully achieved a strong position in manufacturing and sales operations with effective and efficient strategic human resource management. References CIPD, 2009. What is strategic human resource management? Corporate and HR strategy. [Online] Available at: http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/corpstrtgy/general/strathrm.htm [Accessed on May 25, 2010]. Read More