Building an HR Strategy - Report Example

Building an HR Strategy Human Resource (HR) strategy process turns business goals into HR priorities to a very significant extent. This chapter talks about this important HR and business process based on the case study of Motorola Company. . This chapter begins by acknowledging that HR strategy should be very dynamic to be in tandem with the dynamic business environment. This is important in helping a business survive and maintain or exceed its profitability targets, as well as helping the business keep up with competition. It further points out that effective and dynamic HR strategy is critical in promoting operational efficiencies and meeting customers’ expectations. More importantly, HR strategy helps to give a business brand identity in the market place and enhances coordination within an organization. The chapter has provided an illustration of how a HR strategy can be built based on the logic and process of developing such a strategy. The HR strategy for Motorola was build on the best practices and concepts taking into account the interests of the investors, customers, employees, and management. What is emerging out from this chapter is the realization that in order for a business to meet the demands of ever-changing business environment, it ought to take initiatives such as reducing bureaucracy, enhancing employee commitment and involvement, and reduce low-value added work. HR strategy of an organization should be built within the framework for culture capability that focuses on business strategy, HR practices, processes, and policies, and trends in business environment. Apart from the culture capability framework, the chapter has highlighted the aspect of HR Strategy Development Process. In this respect, the chapter points out that a two-day workshop is near enough in developing this process which consists of six steps: Organizing the workshop and identifying the organizational unit; trends prioritization in the business environment; specifying competitive advantage sources and the measurements for each competitive advantage source; defining the desired cultural capabilities together with these capabilities’ behavioral expressions; identifying the HR practices with greatest influence on creation and sustainability of the desired culture; and developing an overall implementation plan. In these six steps, the chapter has emphasized the need for the following: identifying the sources of the business trends; organization of workshop processes in a manner that facilitates effective HR Strategy Development Process; identifying and measuring the sources of competitive advantages. The chapter has provided the sample measures of competitive advantage to aid in understanding how to measure these advantages in a business. In addition, this chapter emphasizes the need to define culture within the HR Strategy Development Process. It has provided examples of how several companies such as Deutsche Bank and Unilever have defined their cultural attributes in more competitive and rigorous ways. The chapter has highlighted that defining culture in the workshop process includes: culture specification and scenario building. The chapter notes that Motorola came up with its list of cultural capabilities and the behaviors that accompany them, namely: High performance accountability which involves people debating alternatives actively and getting feedback regarding their performance, as well as getting coached regularly and candidly on improvements in order to meet their targets. Fast innovation and execution which entails identifying and removing bureaucratic obstacles and stating clear targets that have already been agreed upon. Passionate collaboration which involves people moving freely across the organizational boundaries and creation of cross- business unit teams based on strategic business needs. The chapter advocates for adherence to business culture because it is very critical in enabling the business not only to achieve its goals, but also win various business battles. When focusing on cultural capabilities it is very important to take note of the observable behaviors of the employees such as what they do. This is because the organizational culture management has two core components, namely: the specification of how people should behave within the organization and description of the required culture. This explains why this chapter puts more emphasis on observing what people do rather than what they value or think. The chapter also acknowledges that building an HR strategy involves identification of key HR practices to provide clear idea of what a business want to accomplish and why, thereby maximizing the likelihood of its success. HR practices fall into four main categories: flow of people which involves promotions, training, transfers, and leadership development; flow of information which involves keeping in touch with external realities and designing of business’ information technology infrastructure; flow of performance management which involves rewards and measurements; and flow of work which involves physical arrangements, work process design, and organization structure. In the chapter, there are criteria that have been laid down on ways of identifying HR practices that need improvement in line with the targeted cultural capability. Questions should be raised regarding a particular capability. The questions should relate to: promotion; recruitment; training; physical setting; process and work design; leadership; training; internal communications; external connectivity; organization structure; transfers; rewards; and information system design. According to this chapter, Motorola identified five HR practices relating to creation and modification so as to build its desired culture: leadership development; promotions; performance management; work and organization design; and external reality check. Finally, the chapter provides guidelines on how to develop an implementation plan for HR strategy. This process should entail asking the questions such as: who takes the lead? Who has final approval: what will we do? Who else needs to be involved; when is the report due? And when are the interim reports due? After the initial stage of implementation, the next one is workshop process where the plenary group can move on to identify the target HR practices in order to decide how to deal with them. The last stage after the action planning form has been filled; the chapter indicates that the outcomes of the process should be presented to the senior line leadership of the company. Thereafter, after a considerable discussion and some modifications, the results should be approved and implementation teams begin their work. This is exactly how Motorola built its HR strategy and provides an ideal way of building HR strategy for a business. Read More