Strategic Human Resource Management and Training at Australian Holden Limited - Example

Strategic Human Resource Management Name Course Tutor Date Named after its founder James Alexander Holden, Holden is an Australian car company that has been dominating the market for quite a long period since its inception in 1856. The company has been dominant in its production especially during the World War II. It has been producing improved vehicles after every decade (Holden, 2007). The company strives to create lasting relationships with customers, dealers, communities, employees, union partners, and suppliers to drive their operations to success. Australian Holden came into operation in 1856 as a saddler shop. In 1908, it became an automotive industry. In the year 1931, it became a subsidiary of General Motors, a vehicle manufacturing company in the US. The company’s previous name was GM Holden Limited but the current name is Holden Limited adopted in 2005. The company has diversified its production by engaging in production of much range of vehicles. Toyota, Suzuki, Nissan, badge engineered Chevrolet, and Vauxhall motors are under production with sharing arrangements of Holden Limited Company. It is also reported that Holden is responsible for distribution of Opel brand in Australia. Holden managing director Mike Devereux agrees that the company has never been operating under such stiff competition locally hence its desire to intensify diversification. (Holden, 2007) A business strategy is generally a deployment of a business entity from its formulation stage, to implementation and finally follow-ups. It involves a process in tiers; subsequent in nature, and that relates an environment to an existing organizational variables. Therefore the company is aiming to maintain its 1 million annual sales but the managing director agrees that it is a stiff race with almost 62 companies chasing the spot. The company also expects to increase its shares in the stock market. The company has managed to forecast the demographic, economic, and environmental challenges like population and urban peak oil demands not forgetting alternative fuel transitions. Human resource management is a key factor in ensuring success of any business organization. HRM’s activities mainly entails; staffing and performance appraisals. The department in most organizations is always aiming at employing qualified staff, training them to be maximum producers, rewarding their efforts while building good economic and social relationships. The main aim and roles of human resource management in any business is to search for new and recent ways of working and bringing changes to the companies. In Australia, human resource management has developed through the following four stages (Alan Mankervis, 2010); Stage 1 which started in 1900-1940 involved the evolution of welfare management and administration Stage 2 occurred during 1940-1970 and it involved welfare, administration, staffing and training personnel management in industrial relations. Stage 3 occurred during 1970-1990 and it involved human resource management and strategic human resource management. Stage 4 is the current model of strategic human resource management, which began in the year 2000 to date. The most important function of human resource department at Australian Holden limited is to ensure that workers are happy with effective rewards in order to deliver. Motivation of workers involves training and constant evaluation and rewarding them. According to Peter (Purcell, 2000), two dominant normative models are used in human resource management. They include the model of best fit and model of best practice. The performance of individual value is a means of punishing or retaining employees within this organization. It is important for an organization to constantly keep stock of its workforce and evaluate its performance for the following three important reasons. First, is to improve organizational performance through individual contribution. This should be an automatic process of the HR management. Secondly is by identifying various potentials and existing talents, empowering them and transferring individuals into job places where they can better be suited and perform better. The managers should provide equitable method of linking payment and assessment and this will help in reducing negative competition within the company. (JF, 2002). The HR should also familiarize their employees on the various stages of evaluation to be carried out. They should also bring to attention the various rewards attained by achieving the companies goals after the evaluation process. The evaluation process should win the confidence of the employees in order to attain good performance. Employment Relationship The Australian Holden Limited does not offer training for support staff. The younger workers are tasked with the duty of learning how the company works within a short time so as to be able to contribute to the goals and aims of the industry. One must have attained a degree from the university; one has to undergo rigorous training within the year, which should be both internal and external. Employee training is essential in ensuring that the employees are familiar with the organization’s goals, mission, and values. Many employers do not encourage external training for fear of competition and extra costs on their companies. It is therefore important that organizations provide their own systematic training within their own given timeline. Within the organization, the support staff is not offered any training. They are supposed to understand the valuation process in and out by watching their counterparts transact the business. However, formal training takes place for the support staff. OTEN (Open Training and Education Network) runs the valuation training in Australia. This mainly aims at ensuring that the organization attains the best-qualified staff with the right qualifications. In some cases, they offer internship for university students then later employing them after advertising the courses. According to research the younger workers value right of self-governance and reinforcement in their working environments, they also prefer informal working environments, these workers usually look at salaries, benefits and opportunity for professional growth before any other aspects. Holden Limited has been able to achieve some of the requirements of generation Ys, first of all it has an informal setting whereby people do not sit on desks the whole day but move about manufacturing vehicles, secondly it is hands on experience for the workers, allowing them to constantly train and perfect their role in the production section. (Legal, 2008) It is essential to provide diversity training to the employees. Diversity is important since the current world brings different intercultural people together through interaction and socialization while conducting businesses within organizations. Provision of human relations within the workstations in the organization has helped many managers minimize conflicts and misunderstandings within the organization (Abu-Duleh, 2007). Safety training within the organization is also an essential tool that most employees should be possessing. Safety regulation, first aid, and quick responses to emergencies skills are important for employees within the organization. Sexual harassment training provides safety and security for many employees. Training of sexual harassment follows the guidelines of the company and the state laws that govern the work ethics and code of conduct in work places. When the above theoretical paradigms are properly understood and effectively held by the management team, then a multi approach dimension to leadership will be achieved. Holden Company is trying to follow the success of foreign sales by Toyota Company through development of exports. However, the industry is still facing strong competitions from the export markets. Domestic manufactures must brace themselves for tighter competition from overseas companies who are enjoying lower operation costs. In the next five years, the exports are expected to decline by 2.1%. On the other hand, imports will rise and will take a larger share index in the country. Importers will be reaping the benefits when the tariffs fall before the domestic manufacturers have adapted to the new products. A 2.0% increase is the projected increase in imports over the next five years beginning from now. Competition is an external factor that Holden limited has critically looked at and sought ways of being a key player in the market, this is more crucial in the part of HRM in improving employee welfare through relationships, wages and salaries. Most of the large companies and multinationals have cultures within their organizations. Culture helps in maintaining certain traditions, procedures, processes, and structures of most companies. Organizational culture helps in averting most competitors. For Holden Company, strict observations of rules and regulations must be observed. For the last five years, the prices of fuel and oil have been increasing. For this reason, many motorists have opted alternative sources of transport. This has greatly affected the supply of motor vehicles in the country. Analysts suggest that motor vehicle production is likely to fall by 7.6% annually (Shannak, 2009). Holden employees derive their knowledge of management from the regular meetings. Strict rules and regulations also help in maintaining high productivity in Holden Company. An employee who is motivated to work will realize what is at stake for the company and will work hard at helping the industry to stay in the market. With the current economic status, Holden was forced to lay off some of its employees retaining the best, this was a strategic move that could not be prevented at any cost, and therefore HRM has to first of all ensure that employees are well aware of the new culture, and assure them that their job is secure and there should be no fear of losing it. When a large number of employees are laid off, most of the newly employed retained employees become scared of being sacked at any time especially the younger workers since they know that they have less experience compared to the older workers and this reduces their work performance, it is important for management to tap this young talents and ensure maximum the duty of HRM to assure the employees that they have security of tenure to work without any fear of losing their jobs. When the above theoretical paradigms are properly understood and effectively be held by the management team, then a multi approach dimension to leadership will be achieved. This approach will carry an integrated set of postulates that will be able to define an organization’s leadership competences. In as much as the organization shall have understood the fundamentals upon which the leadership modules are founded on, it would be most critical to be able to understand various models that can be employed to get the best out of any organization (DuBrin, 2004). This will be able to assist the managers in the event of executing their duties and in duty delegation. In specific, the models observed by HRM constitute: The AstraZeneca Capabilities of leadership: This model has been used often in the management based on performance. Moreover, managers use it in developmental and management planning. This is because they are viewed as key concerns of any leadership developmental programs. Therefore to fully arrive at a sound understanding of this model, the organization observes the following criteria; first it should clarify about a definite direction of strategy, be committed to the set tasks, and base their concerns on delivery. Secondly, they should establish proper relationships, forerun capacity building through the development of personnel, show a clear demonstration of individualized conviction and articulate through action based strategy, and finally building of self-awareness (Bolden et al., 2003). Performance based leadership is a model that an organization uses to be able to enhance business performance through set ideals of behaviors that relate. On this fact, the organization can be able to use the related behavior sets to recognize peer, pinpointing of developmental opportunities and establishing a survey based on the opinions of the employees. The core competences involved here include; achievement of top performances, a customer-based focus, capacity building, continual progressive build-up of individuals and integrated approach of executing duty (Arvonen & Ekvall, 1999). Organizational performance, has not only been used in productivity and effectiveness, it has also been used as a subject of study by social scientists. Labour productivity has been a concern for many economists, efforts have been made to link HRM to performance, the studies on HRM and organizational performance are mostly quantitative and there is lack of unity in the theories formulated each theorist has come up with different activities for HRM. We have suggested that most HRM policies are difficult to implement and they may lead to negative outcomes for various reasons, many firms have been unable to adopt these policies, but the question is, are they unable to implement the policies outlined by scholars? Or have they seen that these policies will not work, why have they not been convinced to such an extent as to adopt the policies? The activities of HRM usually perform according to the policies adopted by the firm, in an economic system such as the Australian economy, whereby the competitive strategy is mostly not based on high standard HRM and quality enhancement in which industries operate in proportion to long-term limits, an essential approach may be to assume that HRM activities and organizational performance are linked together. With such an approach in mind, our group agreed that Holden Limited should adopt the outlined HRM activities. Staffing is generally important in any organization; it ensures the right man for the right job. Staffing is the process of acquiring, position and retain workers of sufficient quality and quantity to create positive impact on the organization’s effectiveness. Acquisition of staff entails the recruitment that leads to employment of staff. This is where HRM identifies what the organization requires in order to effectively meet the job requirements, at Holden Limited they mostly require automotive experts who know how to build and put together a motor vehicle, therefore recruitment will be done pertaining to the line of production where more employees are needed. The company managed to invest so much in staff motivation in order to increase production at the company. It is important for an organization to constantly keep stock of its workforce and evaluate its performance for the following three important reasons. First, is to improve organizational performance through individual contribution. This should be an automatic process of the HR management. Secondly is by identifying various potentials and existing talents, empowering them and transferring individuals into job places where they can better be suited and perform better. The managers should provide equitable method of linking payment and assessment and this will help in reducing negative competition within the company. (JF, 2002). The HR should also familiarize their employees on the various stages of evaluation to be carried place. They should also bring to attention the various rewards attained by achieving the companies goals after the evaluation process. The organizational structure of an organization can be organized in a process-based manner. The process-based manner ensures that the organization is viewed horizontally regardless of the departmental boundaries. In addition, intangible (making of decisions, leadership, and innovation) and tangible should be spread equally within the organization fraternity. All the information regarding the intangibles and tangibles should be properly analyzed and catalogued. The point of strategic critical processes identification and evaluation should be emphasized especially those affecting the development of these characteristics. Adoption of a balanced and objective-oriented way of identifying and implementing SCAs can lead to decreased risks and increased results in an organization. The particular organization can begin with ensuring there is a proper organization of information (DeNiSi, 2006). In conclusion, the good HR management system has played a big role in ensuring that Holden Company improves its production especially by producing environmentally friendly vehicles. Employees have been made to feel like a part of the company through motivation and taking part in the company’s decision making. The paper was aimed at discussing strategic human resource management and training at Australian Holden Limited. It has discussed performance of employees and promotion with regard to human resource management. The company produced their first vehicle, which is able to operate using ethanol. The Flex fuel VE series II Commodore is the most fuel-efficient car capable of operating with high blended ethanol fuel. The vehicle is efficient in the sense that it returns the consumption of diesel by 5.6 liters in ever 100km (Gerami, 2010). Bibliography Gerami, M., 2010. Knowledge Management:. International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, pp. 7(2), 234-237. Holden, G., 2007. Holden Facts. [Online] Available at: www.holden.com.au [Accessed 2012]. Legal, R. H., 2008. Future Law Office:The Changing Face of the Legal Industry, New York: Oxford University Press. Alan Mankervis, R. C. (2010). Strategy and Practices. Human Reosurce Management, vol 10 issue No 2 9-10. Arvonen, J. & Ekvall, G. (1999). Effective Leadership Style: Both Universal and Contingent? . Creativity and Innovation Management , 242-250. Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Marturano, A. & Dennison, P. (2003). A Review Of Leadership Theory And Competency Frameworks. Dunford Hill: Centre for Leadership Studies. DeNiSi, P. (2006). Performance Appraisal;Perfromance management and improving individual performance. Management organizational reviews, Vol 2 Issue 2 253-277. Dierdorff, E. (2008). If you Pay for skills will they learn. Journal of management, Vol 34 Issue No 4 721-743. DuBrin, A. J. (2004). Leadership: Research findings, Practice, and Skills (Fourth ed.). New York: Houghton Mifflin. JF, M. E. (2002). Moderators of Relationship between work-family conflit and career satisfaction. Academy of Mangement Review, Vol 45 Issue No 2 399-409. Read More