Strategic Human Resource Roadmap for Nike Incorporated Company - Case Study Example

Strategic Human Resource Roadmap for Nike Incorporated Company Executive summary The human resource department plays animportant role in molding the relationship between an organization and its employees. This therefore necessitates the establishment of a comprehensive strategic roadmap for the formulation of a dynamic, result-oriented human resource development plan that is ideal for reputable company such as Nike. The paper has therefore employed the guidelines provided by the Information Resource Management Association (2012) for the creation of an honest, equitable, employee satisfaction oriented HR development plan. To this end, the paper explores the importance of sourcing for input, integrating learning into the plan and adopting effecting communication strategies for reaching employees and stakeholders is integral to the process. Further, this paper has also elaborated on an ideal performance appraisal plan that incorporates performance assessment procedures capable of eliminating subjectivity in the appraisal criterion. To this end, a scorecard model of assessment proved to be better qualified to handle the diversity of employees at Nike Inc., by delivering a rationally acceptable performance evaluation criterion. The scorecard model entails financial, customer, internal and learning and growth assessment criteria that can be weighted accordingly to cater for the disparities in departmental functionalities. The weighting, as will be seen later, enhances employee commitment to better performance and delivery of their respective duties. Introduction Nike, Inc. is a company with unlimited opportunities for profitable growth and for establishing and maintaining sustainable competitive advantage. Since the potential of a company lies on the input of every worker, Nike, Inc. inspires each of its numerous workers to realize their full potential. Given this objective, a strategic human resource management that that supports the company’s principles, values and mission, provides employees with a stable work environment where each individual has equal opportunity for learning and self-improvement, as well as proactive involvement in all areas that enthusiastically displays the company’s interest in the lives of both its employees and the customers. Strategic roadmap The mission and HR The company has a mission of dedicated service of the highest quality, delivered with a sense of warmth and friendliness in line with the company’s offensive spirit that makes and define the company’s brand. To this end, the human resource department supports the total operation of the company in accomplishing its objectives by investing largely on the available workforce. This investment should therefore: Allow for the development of an excellent teamwork attitude Create an environment where employee knowledge and expertise continually meet challenges that foster individual innovativeness. Enable each individual to seize opportunities that demonstrate commitment and excellent performance Commit the HR department and the company as a whole to openness, equity and consistency in the quest to deliver quality goods and services globally. Establish an honest mode of communication within the organization that foster harmonious co-existence among of the diverse workforce that also forms the strength of the company. Create conscious awareness of the need for an echo-friendly production mode through e.g. waste reduction and improved efficiency of the modes of production. Human Resource Development Approach A human resource development plan provides a comprehensive systematic approach to managing people in a way that maximizes their contribution towards the achievement of the set organization’s objectives. An efficient strategy capable of meeting the needs of any company should thus entail: A development phase in which the organization explores among other thing the necessary HRM working groups, sourcing for input from various quarters including subsidiary companies for large multinationals, collecting, evaluating and evaluating the industry’s best practices, as well as instituting an ideal workshop curriculum content and worker surveys for pilot programs. This, according to Gold et al. (2013) allows the organization to develop a strong human resource management system, efficient means of work force utilization as well as creation of tenable staff-company relationship all for the mutual benefit of the company and the employees. Integrate learning opportunities into the system so that employees can undergo continuous learning and training processes that make them up to date with current information and available technologies for better execution of their duties. This practice serves to improve the return on investment thereby supporting the goal for profitability. According to Stahl, Bjorkman and Morris (2012), the provision of orientation and/or training services to new and existing employees not only helps in identifying individual unique skills but also imparts the employees with relevant up to date knowledge for improved returns. Communicating the strategies to all stakeholders ensures that all employees and any other interest group are fully aware of any changes, current and pending, as well as any available opportunities. This helps build confidence in both the employees and other stakeholders as it relays a sense of responsibility on the side of the management, and of being valued and hence critical to the success of the organization on the side of the stakeholders and employees. Initiate a pilot program with an objective of assessing the feasibility of the set procedures in the relevant setting, while checking for possible inadequacies that may lead to undesirable results if not attended to in the earlier stages. To this end, the management approach adopted for the company must promise to accommodate the diverse workforce, as well as be flexible enough to implement anywhere across the globe in all Nike Inc. subsidiary companies. Implementation of the work force management strategy should allow for synchronization of all units of the company and all relevant strategic contract companies to create a sense of uniformity, and hence inspire teamwork among employees. Upon implementation, the strategy should utilize practice communities to share tacit learning, and which should be leveraged throughout the organization as the basis for adoption and improvement, and blend synergistically all the learning solutions. Performance Appraisal Plan Building a high performance organization requires a result-oriented performance appraisal plan that links accountability to organization’s outcome in a fair, non-discriminatory manner. However, such a plan must be agreement with Human Capital Performance Accountability Assessment Framework and Performance Appraisal Assessment Tools, PAAT. Given the magnitude and scope of operation of Nike Inc., an ideal performance appraisal plan ought to provide the management with a detailed feedback on such criteria as specified under PAAT, a general briefing on emergent modalities as well as, where necessary, direct consultation with the implementers. For better performance evaluation, this paper adopts an employee performance review based on the scorecard approach. The fundamental purpose of this approach is to aid in developing a realistic review of employee contribution in a more objective manner, thereby alleviating the inadequacies associated with subjective evaluation approaches. Further, this method provides concrete metrics applicable to all employees in any given setting. The key components include: a. Financial criteria- here, analysis of employee performance based on rating of steward financial resources and compensation for responsibility level. The former entails evaluating the percentage of the projects completed by the individual within the allocated budget or the proportional duration in which the respective department operated within the allocated budget. The latter, on the other hand entails a comparative analysis of the variance from the company’s past expenditure for comparable position or the variance for the standards in the industry. b. Customer criteria- here, the evaluation is based on the magnitude of successful relationship between the individual and internal customers, i.e. colleagues, both senior and junior and also on the magnitude of successful relationship between the individual and external customers, i.e. clients, business associates, etc. In this case, the relationship with internal customers is based on returns in terms of complaints received of compliments from surveys on employee satisfaction. Concerning external success, the approach is the same to the case with internal success only that it involves clients, vendors, business associates among others. c. Internal processes in relation to which evaluation is with regards to two aspects, effective task completion and efficient resource utilization by the employee. Effective task completion entails the number of projects the employee completes within the stipulated period, or the duration within which the employee operated without failure or any injury whatsoever. Efficient utilization of resources on the other hand assesses the waste-to-production within the respective department or specifically by the assigned projects. d. Learning and growth- here, the approach is also twofold. The first being the level of input by the employee on continual effort to improve skills and knowledge determined by analyzing the number of training opportunities the individual participated in over a given period of time. The other being the ways through which the employee attempts to promote growth of the company measurable through the number of alternative suggestions given to the supervisor. Once the data for each of the above-mentioned areas is obtained, an objective analysis is carried out to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the employee. It is worth noting that each employee will have areas of excellence and areas where improvement initiative is necessary. The method of suggesting initiative that the employee should take in order to improve in the necessary areas is communicated through an objective activity as opposed to personal criticism. This approach improves the chances of the concerned employee making amends as opposed to criticism that may serve to make the employee feel undervalued or worse still have a perception of the supervisor as being hard on him/her (Grote, 2011). Weighting the performance indicator The importance of weighting is that it allows the employer to customize the scorecard to various positions within the company. For instance, positive relationship with customers should be accorded more weight and hence more points when evaluating the success of a sales team as opposed to when evaluating the success of the production team. Similarly, comparatively heavier weight is necessary in timely completion of tasks and without injury cases when evaluating the logistic team as compared to the public relations team evaluation. Application of appropriate weighting procedures in the evaluation scorecard has the potential of encouraging expertise in the respective areas essential to individual work requirements (Gilmore and Williams, 2012). Conclusion A strategic human resource management plan is integral to the successful management of people at the work place, offering the organization a chance to create a harmonious working environment. Complementing the aforementioned plan with an effectual employee assessment and appraisal plan delivers to any organization immeasurable success. As broached earlier, employee appraisal plan should encompass an objective assessment procedure that is immune to external manipulations with the potential of creating biasness. It is with this in mind that the paper adopted a scorecard procedure in evaluating employee performance to be used for effecting appraisal in a more generous and honest way. References Gilmore, S., & Williams, S. (2012). Human resource management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gold, J., Holden, R., Iles, P., Stewart J. & Beardwell, J. (2013). Human Resource Development: Theory and Practice. London, Palgrave Macmillan. Grote, R. C. (2011). How to be good at performance appraisals: Simple, effective, done right. Information Resources Management Association. (2012). Human resources management: Concepts, methodologies, tools and applications. Hershey, PA: Business Science Reference. Stahl, G. K., Björkman, I., & Morris, S. (2012). Handbook of research in international human resource management. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Pub. Read More