The New Resource-Based View of Organizations and Strategies for Personnel-Related Issues - Essay Example

People Plan Place Introduction It became important for the companies in the past decades to think over new keys in developing and implementing strategies responding the unprecedented pressure as a result of demands of market competition. Human resource management became more encouraged by the scholars’ and practitioners’ arguments that tighten the connection between HRM and organizational strategies, which are essential to competitive practicability. These connections encourage are made for the purpose to plan the strategic process in HR sphere with the creation of a strategic partnership with organizational line managers. Such partnership will enable HR in its efforts to become more agreed with the overall companies’ strategic objectives (Lam & Schaubroeck, 1998). It is also proved that HRM plays an essential role on the developing of competitive advantage within organizations, integrating its practices into overall organization initiatives that ensure the successful developing and implementation as companies’ strategic plans. Such HR practices as staffing, developing, appraising and rewarding of employees, as well as organizing and communicating with staff are compliant with the organization’s objectives. The following paper will identify how such HR functions as sourcing and recruiting strategically influence strategic growth. It will also provide competency descriptions for certain jobs identified as strategic to growth, including strategies for personnel-related issues. There will be prepared a summary and analysis of current trends in HR related to sourcing and recruitment along with incorporation them with the best practices for managing multinational HR and international recruitment. HR for strategic growth Human resource planning ensures organizations to have the correct number and well qualified people that are at the right places and in the right time. Whether such process is carried out accurately, the organization obtains long-term benefits to itself and its employees. However, the enhancement of instability in the business environment, along with the demographic changes and changes in technology and as a result of international and global competition there have been created an inevitable role for human resource planners, who are responsible for recruitment and selection processes that became more complex difficult in the present days. Since HR planning deals with the systematic and continuing process of analyzing an organization’s needs in human resource, it should also take into account the changing conditions and develop workforce policies that should be suitable for a longer-term perspective of the certain organization. These procedures worked out by the HR specialists are the important parts of corporate planning and ensure proper budgeting procedures. HR costs and forecasts also affect longer term corporate plans. Employees here are seen as part of the primary internal market that is focused on the bundle of people who are connected with the organization by human resource practices. These procedures are able to bring increased motivation, the acceptance of employees’ responsibility and dependent skills and greater commitment to the assignments, to gain objectives and goals. The most passionate employees become part of an organization’s core workforce while recruitment and selection process represent the entry point of their activities. Such entry process is comprised of approaches that place candidates’ skills at first place, subjecting the recruitment and selection processes to less screening. The employees can be recruited and selected using cheaper methods however, they should be comply with the organizational strategy through specification of required competencies. In the recent years, more positive outcome in terms of organizational commitment and motivation was noticed as a formation of a positive psychological contract with employees. Recruitment and selection are here important processes during which the employees have certain expectations from such contract and the organization provides or not with these expectations. Employees select an organization that offers better working conditions to them and the one that gives more hopes for long- term career. Connecting human resources planning to business planning interprets such expectations regarding people requirements. However it may have impact on business strategy by paying attention on the ways in which employees can be developed and encouraged in order to act effectively and increase their achievements in business according to the organizational goals (Anyim, Ekwoaba & Aanthony, 2012). Numerous researches regarding the role of driving long-term performance of employees within organization showed that HR does indeed have a vital role, despite the stage of the organization growth or whether or not it has a dedicated HR function. In any way, HR should have an understanding whether a business is headed and here the HR specialists should be deeply familiar with the strategy, vision and values of the organization so they could realize key stages of growth and plan for any necessary changes in HR manner.  Human resources play an important role in preserving the vision of the founder of all aspects that reflect management of people.  Until recently, HR functions were less vital in the small and medium-sized enterprises where managers saw them as something they had to do instead of having such strategic tool whose aim would be to support business growth.  However, in the present days HR should work hard to represent that well-thought out people processes can play an important part in building the high performance in business. Moreover, well-trained employees and those who are highly motivated are able to contribute in terms of long-term organizational business growth (Lucas, 2013). Growth companies are essential contributors to the economic prosperity and thus much of thier contribution comes from the very bottom, their employees and managers who are aware enough to contribute the overall well- being of organization. In addition, these organizations should also provide their workforce with the constant growth as well so to ensure continuous performing. HR consultants are aimed to focus on how to enhance the value of growing organizations; the media at the same time works at increasing of the reputation of those top growth companies; and academics are fully engaged in the process of realizing what drives companies’ growth and how organizations can grow in a sustainable way. On the way to such understanding, there are two approaches which highlight the importance of HR and effective HR management. One of such approaches is based on modeling of organizational lifecycle and managing the challenges, which appear in the transitions between different stages of the organization’s lifecycle. What one should pay attention at is that at different stages of the company’s development, different HR management issues will be primary and need to be overcome if such transition is successful. For instance, researchers state that at the start-up stage of every organization or company, the key HRM problem is placed around recruitment, the aim of which is in hiring the right people, while growth lays special emphasis on implementing systems, dividing on departments and building functions. Thus, the emphasis is put on changes that ensure the right employees are retained and HR management is focused on staff development, compensation and reward processes. The new resource-based view of organizations The other approach highlights the role of HRM in contributing to growth that uses the work in terms of the resource based view of the certain organization. Resource based view considers physical, organizational and human resources of an organization to be a source of competitive advantage if they meet conditions. For human resources, the organization’s stock of staff and their skills and knowledge, should be valuable to the company and rare in order to place the certain organization in better condition that its competitor. In addition, such set of employees’ skills and availabilities will be complicated for company’s competitors to imitate and the organization of the particular resource will be harder to achieve. Many scholars use the resource based view to realize the role of HRM in obtaining better organizational performance by adding value by means of attraction, retention and deployment of employees’ skills. It also should be known that sustained competitive advantage is not the main purpose of HRM and thus it is developed and integrated to meet the need of the organization and achieve necessary strategic objectives. In turn, organizational management is able to configure HRM in order to fit it with its business strategy in firm-specific ways that are rare and inimitable. Such strategy will lead to competitive advantage of the organization. There i still much to realize about how growth oriented organizations are able to have benefit from investing in their personnel resources and what kind of HRM practices should be most likely to be important for the success. It is obvious that recruitment and selection processes are the most important in terms of organization’s early stage of its development. A study involved more than two thousand small to medium size companies identified that fast-growth organizations were more likely to have problems with training of their staff. They state that the owner-manager or the entrepreneur was unable to oversee the training of all employees and as a result they needed to rethink formalizing processes and develop additional operational and managerial systems for reducing dependence on the owner-manager or the entrepreneur and free them from making. Instead it is more efficient to give them time for strategic thinking (Giuca & Barrett, n.d.). It is also know that through staffing and training each company is able to achieve its excellent performance. Besides through acquiring and developing of its human capital resources, organizations are able to retain most talented employees for further creation of well trained staff. However, there are little research done that would examine any influence of staffing and training on companies’ financial performance and thus profit growth due to numerous environmental or economic conditions. However, for many organizations, which have realized the role of staffing and training as vital HR functions, it became possible to make a positive influence on acquisition and development of employees’ knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics. There are still relatively few data about clear relation between staffing and training and financial performance growth within companies. Productivity, this is what an important internal determinant of business profit, however it is also affected by environmental factors. While production ehnances without corresponding increases in human capital inputs, such as hiring of more staff, costs are decreased and profits are raised, increasing weak spot of financial resources. These slack resources can then be used to develop additional functions, promote new product innovations or reach new customers (Kim & Ployhart, 2013). Recruitment efforts, however, will be most effective if the company emphasizes fit information, gives details about the job and organization and selects and trains HR managers. It is also essential to treat applicants with fairness and respect and use job-related procedures to explain the purpose of the selection process. Such activities will allow the right employer to coordinate one’s brand image and create unified and consistent recruiting campaigns (Ployhart, 2011). Competencies and job analysis Collaboration with managers The effective work of HR is well observed if all the activities of organization are used to influence the competences, behaviors and the motivations of its stakeholders, whether these are the employees or managers. Since competencies, behaviors and motivations of employees make a considerable impact on business profitability, customer satisfaction and other important measures of organizational effectiveness, managing human resources is a key strategic challenge for each organization. There are many different approaches to managing HR. For proper collaboration with managers, different HR policies and daily practices are closely aligned. Many of them need to be understood and created, including HR planning for alignment and change, job analysis and competency modeling and recruiting, retaining qualified employees, etc. While most organizations divide their activities to be done into jobs, they are comprised of a set of tasks and role responsibilities. Effective HRM system are able to give all parties involved into the organization to understand the way work is allocated among jobs, the competencies that are needed for employees to perform certain work and a long term view what changes can possibly occur in the future (Jackson, Schuler, Werner, 2008). Competency descriptions A definition of competencies is typical and defines a combination of knowledge, skills, abilities and other individual characteristics of the employee that are important for the employer. They include motives, personality traits, self-concepts, attitudes, beliefs, values, and interests of the person and can be measured and shown to differentiate one’s performance. When the employer needs to understand what is good for the certain job position, the knowledge and skills, abilities and other characteristics, one gathers all the data conducting the job analysis involving collecting of such data about observable job behaviors (Mitchell, T. n.d.). The job analysis enables the employer to align staffing and business strategy , helps to develop accurate job description, reveal the best talent selection methods, it empowers candidates to be more self-selective and provides an objective framework for assessing candidates. However, any effective system will give the same results to the same job without paying attention who uses it and whet it is used. That is why it is difficult to design a job analysis in a reliable and replicable manner. Because of the differences in each company’s strategy, competencies will vary greatly, therefore there is no standard set of skills that provides organization with success. Thus, for such job position as Manager of Innovation Strategy certain skills and experience are required. A person should be dynamic, creative, and have the unconventional approach to innovation and problem solving, should possess excellent written, verbal and presentation skills, should be able to adapt and adjust quickly to change, demonstrate ability to develop new ideas from conception to implementation, should have superior communication and leadership skills, able to motivate and inspire teams to strong results, feel comfort in presenting and pitching to senior executives, should also have analytical skills and judgment to deal with ambiguity and solve problems with limited information. Specialist of Growth, Payer Strategy and Operations will lead a team responsible for development of health plan product strategy and marketing strategy by client, including targeted products, geographies, and consumer segments for commercial, individual and government programs. Should meet the requirements of being ane expert in understanding of plan performance drivers and financial metrics and operational requirements, should also have experience in leading teams in matrixed organization structure and have advanced written and verbal communication skills with the ability to be persuasive. Strategies for personnel-related issues In order to attract talented employees and retain them as long as it is possible, organizations should consider about the strategies connected with the personnel-related issues. Companies that are proactive and implement effective measures are more successful at identifying potential problems before they appear and spread through the work area or even more- negatively impact employees’ work levels. Proactive measures help avoid creation and establishing of a hostile working environment that damages good order and respect for all employees. Thus, a professionally managed company will have to establish benefits and compensation policy to provide specific guidance regarding compensation matters such as overtime pay, for example. The devolving of HR to line managers In order to cut the costs of business activities, many organizations have had to make critical decisions, including passing to line managers the duties of human resources. However, even with the minimal level of operation, there are many disadvantages for the companies that work without HR department or team. Whether line managers obtain more responsibility for such a complex of HR duties, it requires certain evaluation (Reynolds, 2014). As a line manager with HR functions, one should be competent enough to perform such work that coucerns recruiting, interviewing, hiring and training of employees. Besids, tasks such as monitoring of employees’ working progress and providing them with the opportunities for growth requires certain guidance and coaching, which is not always given in time due to the simple overload of working time. Moreover, knowing how to lead people and how to manage them are the two different processes, especially when it comes to the knowing of current employment laws. There are many legal pitfalls that managers could step can face with and moreover which can be costly for the organization. Strategies for building an engaged workforce With the paying more attention to the HR, more attention has been given to the examining of the question of engagement of employees, whose better performing is more noticeable when staff is engaged in different ways. In addition, high levels of engagement are result such important business outcomes as customer satisfaction, productivity, company profit, the level of employee turnover and occurrence of safety incidents. That is why companies that ignore employee engagement have higher risk in putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage over their competitors. Employees can be engaged in different ways. Thus, there are physical ways or when they display high levels of energy to accomplish work assignments. Emotional put employees heart into their job, while staff have a strong involvement in its work and a sense of importance, inspiration and when they are challenged. Cognitive way of engagement is seen whet employees forget about everything else and are dedicated with the work they perform. If employees are engaged on each of such levels, they are able to invest a considerable contribution to complete their work and achieve positive organizational results. Moreover, engaged employees have not only high levels of personal investment but also feel a strong psychological connection with the kind of work they perform. It depends on the organization how it can implement or whether it develop the engagement strategy at all. However, with the well implemented engagement strategy, it becomes possible t identify high-performing individuals and see how these employees can apply their skills, knowledge and abilities in the organization. It is vital to work with one’s business leader to develop and implement an action plan that will be aimed to identify the priority issues and develop steps for addressing these problems. Whenever possible, it is for the company’s good to involve employees in finding solutions in order to give them the opportunity to make suggestions (Developing an employee engagement strategy, n.d). Global Sourcing The results of the 2013 HR Trends Survey showed that there are many similarities in the results on the previous years, which demonstrate continued expectations for steady and increasing return. These results also show a need to be flexible in order to operate in an environment of reorganization, restructuring and change and a need to access employees that are able to manage these changes. Moreover, survey results indicated that organizations will take steps to better realize their present and future needs in talented employees. In addition, they will work to close critical skills and leadership gaps. Organizations will manage change more effectively. The results of the survey show that the overall perspectives remained more or less consistent since 2010. In 2013 twenty-four percent of organizations wait for no changes in revenue and another fifty-two percent expect a lisstle to significant increase (Stiles, Trevor, Paauwe et al, 2006). For the HR the main priorities in 2013 were the added organizational restructuring to their portfolios in the last twelve months. For the fifth year in a row It made it the most commonly added area of responsibility. Such factor as responsibility for strategic workforce planning is also added to the HR’s scope. This shows that organizations realize the need to change, reorganize and plan prioritization and managing of top talent staff in order to provide them a success in the business environment. Best practices for managing multinational human resources Planning and staff succession grew to twenty-one percent, managing employees’ performance in twenty- five percent. While organizations change and reorganize their activities, they expect for challenges that would be related to organizational growth and contractions as well as gaps between required and existing skills of employees and leadership capabilities. Such areas of human resources as managing change and maintaining the engaged employees and also having the leadership skills to lead the organization forward are the most important in the present time. Besides, there is a need to have the most dedicated to business people whose right roles will create competitive advantage for the organization. In addition, more concerns are rising because of the aging of workforce, which make a certain sense for HR to prioritize attracting, recruiting and retaining of employees for achieving their succession in staff planning. Such concern have raised as a result of eighteen percent of retirement volumes, which are the area of challenge for organizations (HR Trends Survey 2013: Key Results, 2013). Managing international recruitment Beside the issues that companies can have involving themselves in the recruitment sand selection processes, there are also many other people-related expenses, such as training needs and cultural issues that are not examined properly. It is not surprise that eighty- eight percent of companies evaluate their labor costs and conduct analysis of potential returns on investment thanks to human capital. However, four in ten made analysis of the local economic and political climate and only one-third examined the impact of global sourcing initiatives on their activities and the community preferences. In addition to all the facts, global sourcing decisions are made mainly by finance with HR performing usually as after the fact. However, organizations should not underestimate the hidden costs of managing employees and maximize return by enabling human resources to have their functions to be fully engaged into the organizational matters. With the engagement of HR specialists the organization will be able to address personnel-related issues, such as skill and language requirements, labor costs by market, alternative talent pools, workforce training, etc. Finance executives state that managing change or transition is the biggest global sourcing challenge which is followed by maintaining corporate culture and talent and people management. HR specialists have the same considerations having their focus on legal and regulatory challenges. Cultural barriers and labor pool quality are also the key issues. As the long term vision, HR leaders are able to predict hidden human capital costs and constraints will limit profitability and growth of the companies (Companies greatest concerns over global sourcing, n.d.). The transfer of HRM policies and practices, such as knowledge transfer between employees covers several stages beginning from determining of the knowledge to the actual process of transferring those knowledge to the final use. From the country of origin perspective, the data is characteristics of institution and culture and the differences of national HRM models, and the dominance effect of the native system. From the host country perspective, there are host countries that affect the shaping and implementation of HRM policies and practices. The differences consist of the nature of the host business system and its cultural characteristics (Caligiuri & Stroh, 1995). At organizational level there are international business strategy, administrative heritage and subsidiary’s nature. International business strategy is a basic source of HR possibilities, whose strategy shape the strategic HRM practices of the organization (Cox, 2014). Each company has an administrative heritage that shapes how things are done within this organization. It is changed by many factors, such as its founder or norms and values. Subsidiary’s nature with its function, age, size and ownership types contribute to identify the HRM policies. HRM practices have tendencies to be standardized and formalized time. The bigger is the company, the more likely it will develop a formal HRM function and will be less dependable upon the external labor market (Thoo & Kaliannan, 2013). Personal and professional development plan A professional development plan reflects goals, required skills and development of competencies and objectives that employees need to accomplish to achieve career and personal development. Thus, for HR consultant whose aim is to work for an organisation that needs to increase its competitive advantage by becoming more global and diverse, the PPDP can include the following: Life area Goal Deadline Action plan Comments Professional -continuing process of analyzing an organization’s needs in human resource; 29.07.2015 -develop and implement procedures on HR needs; -communicate procedures with the entire organization; -track awareness of employees of the procedure adhering Professional -create more mentally supportive workplace By the end of the year -arrange meetings and discussion clubs with the involvement of employees and the management of organization Professional - revise formalizing processes and develop additional operational and managerial systems 01.09.2015 -discuss with the line managers the need of changes in the operational documents; -make improvements; -communicate the revised versions of managerial systems with the organization Professional -to embed leadership and strategic capacities through management activities By the end of the year -attend professional development programs and other professional providers to build generic capabilities Professional -develop into a senior role 01.08.2015 -visit trainings and pass additional education in HR for promoting career Personal -develop and design the working schedule for the upcoming year and set clear goals 01.02.2015 -visit training in Time Management Personal -to work toward obtaining a promotion 01.08.2015 -learn the appropriate literature; -participate in the appropriate meetings References Anyim, F., Ekwoaba, J. & Aanthony, I. 2012, The role of human resource planning in recruitment and selection process, British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6 Caligiuri, P. & Stroh, L. 1995, Multinational corporation management strategies and international human resources pracrices:bringingIHRM to thebottom line, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 6:3 Cox, A. 2014. Human resource management in multinational companies, University of Wollongong, Available from http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1432&context=buspapers Developing an employee engagement strategy, n.d., SHRM Foundation, Executive Briefing, Available from http://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/Documents/2013%20Engagement%20Strategy-FINAL.pdf Mitchell, T. n.d., Competency Modeling & Job Analysis, University of Baltimore, Available from https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/651/competency%20modeling%20trends.pdf Giuca, V. & Barrett, R. n.d., Growth and HRM, Enterprising matters e-magazine, Available from http://www.isbe.org.uk/HRM HR Trends Survey 2013: Key Results, 2013, HR Voice, Available from http://www.hrvoice.org/hr-trends-survey-2013-key-results/ Jackson, S., Schuler, R. & Werner, S. 2008, Managing Human Resources, Cengage Learning Kim Y & Ployhart, R. 2013, The Effects of Staffing and Training on Firm Productivity and Profit Growth Before, During, and After the Great Recession, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 99, No. 3 Lam, S. & Schaubroeck, J. 1998, Integrating HR planning and organizational strategy, Human Resource Management Journal, Volume 8, Issue 3  Lucas, E. 2013, How HR can support business growth, Available from http://cezannehr.com/hr-blog/2013/06/how-hr-can-support-business-growth/ Ployhart, R. 2006, Staffing in the 21st Century: New Challenges and Strategic Opportunities, Journal of Management, Vol. 32 No. 6, DOI: 10.1177/0149206306293625 Reynolds, M. 2014, The Disadvantages of Devolving HR Function to Line Managers, The Houston Chronicle, Available from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-devolving-hr-function-line-managers-59067.html Stiles, P., Trevor, J., Paauwe, J., Farndale, E., Wright, P., Morris, S., Stahl, G. & Bjorkman, I. 2006, Best practice and key themes in global human resource management: project report, University of Cambridge, Available from http://www.cihrm.jbs.cam.ac.uk/research/downloads/ghrra_report.pdf Thoo, L. & Kaliannan, M. 2013, International HR Assignment in Recruiting and Selecting: Challenges, Failures and Best Practices, International Journal of Human Resource Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4 Read More