What Makes HR Strategic - Research Paper Example

What Makes HR Strategic Every firm must strive to maintain a competitive edge in the modern business environment that is highly competitive. The foremost approach to retaining relevance and improving competitiveness is by strategic planning, whereby a firm plans and anticipates changes before they occur. Among these approaches is the function of a firm’s human resource department as a strategic department. In order to plan clearly for future changes, a firm must identify and predict possible changes in the short-term or long-term future, then strategize on several routes it could take to overcome the obstacle. In this case, the department of interest is the human resources management, and the changes that should be made are workforce related. Strategic workforce changes include hiring new employees for a position expected to emerge in the future; giving employees a skill that may be needed due to market changes and replacing employees and management officials who go on retirement before their absence affects business performance. In addition, a firm should make strategic decisions like mergers, acquisitions and labor relations among others in an attempt to ensure its survival and sustainability in today’s volatile world economy (Berger and Berger 112). This study analyses the human resource function as a strategy, using the training and development function to demonstrate the strategic importance of human resource management. Role of human resource management Human resource management acts as the link between employees and the firm’s administration, conveying the needs of each to the other, and ensuring that neither the firm’s objectives nor the employees’ welfare is compromised. Moreover, this department works to align the personal objectives of employees to the strategic objectives of the firm, thereby ensuring that all employee effort is channeled towards fulfillment of company vision, mission and strategy. In order to do so, human resource management ensures that employees have unambiguous knowledge of the firm’s strategic objectives, mainly by communicating to them and keeping them motivated to work on these objectives. In addition, human resource management ensures seamless functioning of various departments by organizing teamwork and interdepartmental sharing of responsibilities (Connor and Shaw 361). On the other hand, human resource management communicates the needs of employees to the firm’s administration including employee requirements on minimum wage and working conditions. In addition, human resource management works on motivating employees with non-basic means including promotions, training and development, and organizing employee time offs. Moreover, these act as the firm’s way of ensuring that employees are fully equipped to deal with the requirements of their responsibilities at the workplace. Human resource management work to ensure that employees work in an environment with up to date equipment, infrastructure and other factors that may be necessary for optimal performance of a company’s workforce (Yaeger and Sorensen 83). According to Ulrich (88), human resource management has four main strategic functions including a strategic partner, an administration expert¸ an employee champion and a change agent. As a strategic partner, human resource management ensures the alignment of efforts and all other human resources factors with the achievement of company objectives. Human resource management plays a central role since employees are the key tool a company uses to achieve its strategic objectives, as they are the group that interacts directly with a company’s source of revenue, which are the clients. As an administrative expert, human resource management works with the firm’s management to implement, monitor, change, and improve the organizational process for maximum profitability and alignment with market requirements. In this case, human resource management integrates the output of the firm’s workforce with other resources to ensure that a firm retains a competitive edge. In addition, administrative functions include quality assurance and continual improvement of service delivery, mainly through improving employees’ capacity to work as most company strategies are implemented by employees (Yaeger and Sorensen 135). Human resource management also functions as an employee champion, in which case the department works to maintain a balance such that the company’s profiteering motives do not compromise the needs, rights and privileges of employees. For instance, human resource management advocates for payment of more than the bare minimum to employees by the management. Moreover, human resource management works to encourage employee innovation by minimizing micromanagement, allowing employees to find out on their own accord the best way of completing a task. In addition, human resource management advocates for recognition and rewarding of exemplary performance by employees including achievement of targets, and creative problem solving among others. Moreover, human resource management lays down clear guidelines for company processes like promotion to enable employees to develop their careers (Ulrich 143). As a change agent, human resource management anticipates, plans, and enables a firm to go through transitions without losing its competitive edge, especially in the volatile global economy. Human resource management played a central role in the survival and recovery of firms from the just ended global recession. In this capacity, human resource management is responsible for foreseeing changes in the market that may affect the demand or supply of a certain skill, and take strategic measures to protect the needs of the firm as well as those of existing employees. Some of these measures include hiring of new employees, training employees on new skills or improvement of existing skills, and replacement of retiring employees or management officials among other strategic approaches to handling and promoting change in a firm (Ulrich 200). Human resource management is responsible for a firm’s employees; and is a central player in maintaining a healthy relationship between the management and employee advocates like trade unions. In its responsibility for employees, human resource management attracts, recruits, trains, hires and retains the best talent for a firm. In addition, human resource management uses approaches like performance management, training and development, and employee reward schemes as a way of maximizing employee satisfaction with the job. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if the basic needs of employees are satisfied, then employees increase their output at work in an attempt to satisfy their upper hierarchical needs (Wick, Pollock, and Jefferson 122). HR in Training and Development Technological advancement is the main motivating factor for employee training and development; firms need to equip their employees with the knowledge, skills, and talents required to achieve optimal output. Training and development involves three main aspects that human resource management has to perform including training, learning and development. Training. This is ensuring that employees are up to date in their knowledge of their duties at the workplace, and possession of the latest sets of skills required in fulfilling their obligations to their employer. Moreover, it includes the analysis of such skills for appropriateness in the existing market environment in terms of efficiency and effectiveness; and making recommendations for a change in approach, improvement of skills, or giving employees a new set of skills. Training in a strategic sense involves the imparting of skills on employees that are not in high demand now, but are foreseen to be necessary for a firm’s survival in the future. Therefore, human resource management should be visionary enough to foresee human resources needs in advance, and train an employee for potential changes in his or her current job position (Berger and Berger 138). Learning. While training deals with probable needs for skills for an employee in the current position, learning entails the acquisition of skills by employees that will enable them to deal with the responsibilities they may hold in future. For instance, many firms invest in management training of employees in order to prepare them for future careers in the firm’s management. The foremost advantage of management training is to enable a firm save on time and other resources during the transition from one management team to the other, mainly because internally trained members of the management already know the company culture and do not need time to adjust to the needs of the firm (Conaty and Charan 246). Development. Learning and training can be measured in terms of an employee’s output and the knowledge one possesses; however, development is much harder to evaluate and firm’s encourage it with the assumption that it always results in positive results. However, this assumption is not always correct since individuals are heterogeneous in their perception of development; develop in different manners; and have varied ways of expressing different levels of development. This means that development may not always result in improved performance, though it may result in overall employee performance. Development is strategic in that it majors on what an employee is capable of achieving at the moment or in future events, mainly as a result of training and learning one has undergone through his or her time in the firm. The foremost form of development is talent development, which focuses on the potential or performance of an employee for purposes of output maximization (Meager 15). Discussion The current world economy is driven by knowledge workers who are rapidly replacing their industrial counterparts due to technological developments; training and development has become an indispensable component in the strategic plan of every firm. It has become clear to the managements of firms that employees are the most valuable asset to every firm and should be nurtured and developed for optimal performance. The two main reasons for training and development as a strategic firm include a firm’s adaptation to change, and advancement in terms of service delivery and quality improvement (Yaeger and Sorensen 97). Change. A firm needs a competitive edge; optimal functionality; and quality and sustainable service delivery in order to survive market changes. The changes in the current market are mainly driven by technological advancements, and human resource management of any firm should endeavor to equip employees with the skills necessary to work with these emerging technologies. Moreover, when a firm practices training and development it does not only acquire the capacity to adapt to changes, but has the capacity to advocate for changes as well (Aguinis and Kraiger 463). Advancement. Employees can only advance their careers in the presence of clear and elaborate means of achieving personal development; in addition, a firm that promotes employee development a stands a high chance of achieving growth. Training and developing employees enables a firm to acquire and sustain a competitive edge despite changing market factors, which are as the result of emerging new firms. Therefore, training and development is one of the functions of human resource management that has strategic value as it enables a firm to advance and expand its business portfolio in line with market requirements (Aguinis and Kraiger 468). Conclusion There are many strategic departments in a firm, and human resource management is one of them, whereby it functions in a strategic approach of anticipating changes in an attempt to give the firm a competitive edge in the face of changing market environment. A major strategic function of the HR is training and development that involves equipping employees with the knowledge and skills necessary for the achievement of a firm’s strategic objectives. Works Cited Aguinis, Herman, and Kurt, Kraiger. “Benefits of Training and Development for Individuals and Teams, Organizations, and Society.” Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009): 451-474. Print. Berger, Lance, and Dorothy R. Berger. The Talent Management Handbook: Creating a Sustainable Competitive Advantage by Selecting, Developing, and Promoting the Best People. McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print. Conaty, Bill, and Ram Charan. The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People before Numbers. Crown Publishing Group, 2011. Print. Connor, Helen, and Sue Shaw. "Graduate training and development: current trends and issues." Education + Training, 50.5(2008): 357 – 365. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. Meager, Nigel. “The role of training and skills development in active labor market policies.” International Journal of Training and Development 13.1 (2009): 1–18. Print. Ulrich, Dave. Human Resource Champions. The next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006. Print. Wick, Calhoun, Roy V. H. Pollock, and Andy Jefferson. The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning: How to Turn Training and Development into Business Results. John Wiley and Sons, 2010. Print. Yaeger, Therese, and Peter F. Sorensen. Strategic organization development: managing change for success. IAP, 2009. Print. Read More