Strategic Approach to Human Resource Management - Research Paper Example

? HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ………………………….. College ……………………………… ……………….. Words count: 1280 Introduction Achieving competitive advantage increasingly depends on an organization’s ability to manage human capital which is the economic value of employees’ talent, knowledge, skills and capabilities. The value of these assets may not show up directly in the balance sheet of a company, nevertheless it has greater impact on the success of a business. Since human resources are major determinants of the ultimate business success, managing human resources effectively has been embedded in the practice of management. This research work discusses the relevance, roles and responsibilities of management and relevant theories related to recruiting and hiring, performance management, labor and employee relation, strategic HRM, training and development and organization development. Recruiting and Hiring Recruiting is a process that seeks and attracts a pool of people from which only qualified candidates for job can be chosen (Byars and Rue, 2008, p. 111). Recruiting is a strategic HR planning in which employers come to take appropriate decisions regarding who to be selected in order to meet the requirement (Mathis and Jackson, 2010, p. 208). Hiring, which is the final step involved in recruiting, is bringing on someone new to the firm. An effectively carried out recruiting helps the management find out most appropriate people, improve productivity, reduce labor costs and achieve the high performance working. The major roles and responsibilities of HR management in relation to recruitment and hiring are identifying the personnel requirement in the firm, evaluate their required skills and knowledge, attract a pool of people either from internal or external sources, conducting interviews, hiring and selection procedures and planning for their training and development programs (Searle, 2009, p. 152- 160). Selective hiring is an increasingly important concept in recruiting. Similarly, seeking for more knowledge candidate is gaining more importance in literatures and HR practices since knowledge share and knowledge management practices can be enhanced. Performance Management A strategic managing approach to assessing, evaluating, monitoring and correcting the performance of employees is critical to the function of human resource management. From the analysis of various definitions of performance management, Deb (2006, p. 202) outlined that performance management is a holistic approach to ensure that value is added and a process of integration of performance measures, benchmarks and goals in order to achieve optimal results. As human capital is the most powerful asset in a firm and the performance of people is closely related to achieving the organizational goals, it is an economic imperative that the management must assess, evaluate and correct the performance through an effective management system. In an effective performance management, the management has to function in a systematic way and to play five major roles. They are; 1) Planning the work and setting the expectations, 2) Monitoring the performance in a regular basis, 3) Developing the capacity to perform well, 4) Rating periodically, and 5) Rewarding for the improved and better performance (Deb, 2006, p. 202). Performance appraisal, which is considered as part of performance management, has gained increased importance as an important concept in the area of HRM. High Performance Working which is the best possible fit between the social system and the technical system in a firm (Noe, Hollenbeck and Gerhert, 2003, p. 5) has also gained increased importance in the field of HRM. Labor relation and Collective bargaining Maintaining healthy relation between employers and employees is a key requirement for the HRM since this relation can have significant impact on morale, motivation and ultimately on productivity as well (Mello, 2009, p. 528). Similarly, collective bargaining is also an important requirement for maintaining peace in the firm because it arranges agreements and negotiations for jointly agreeing wages, employment conditions and other relevant matters (Cole, 2002, p. 409). For both labor relation and collective bargaining, the HR management is expected to play pivotal roles in setting policies, arranging agreements and managing relation through strategic and appropriate ways. Deciding on tactics and finalizing negotiation are fundamental two theories that literatures identified as important concepts related to labor relation and collective bargaining. Employee relation In order to maintain improved discipline among employees and to promote collaborative work attitude, it is very important that the HR management must be concerned about the administration of discipline and best way for grievance-handling when there is an issue regarding employee’s violating of a rule (Byars and Rue, 2008, p. 343). Administering organizational discipline, setting grievance procedure and grievance arbitration are the major roles an HR manager should play. In administering discipline, the HR management in recent years has been giving greater importance to privacy policy. Similarly, the HR management gives greater importance to duty of fair representation as an important aspect to set grievance procedure. Strategic Human Resource Management Strategic management has gained the most important stance in management due to that companies today compete with strategies mainly due to that technology advancement, globalization and many other economic factors tremendously impact the way business is carried out. Strategic HRM is an approach to making decisions on the intention and plans of the firm concerning design of work, employment relation, recruitment, selection, training and development, performance management, compensation and supporting organization’s strategy (Armstrong, 2000, p. 41). Strategic HR planning, selecting hiring and recruitment, effective training and development and arranging strategic programs such as compensation, reward, recognition etc with a view to use people most wisely with respect to strategic needs of the organization. The major two theories related to the strategic HRM are organizational culture and strategic fit. Organizational culture is the system of shared beliefs, notions and values that are established in a firm. Organizational culture impacts people’s behavior towards work and attitude. Strategic fit ensures congruence between business and human resource strategy. Training and Development Training and development is one of the most important requirements of the HRM as organizations that spent more on innovative and effective training and developments are found to be successful in achieving competitive advantage and gaining success (Noe, 2002, p. 7). In order to provide training and development in a way to help a firm’s employees improve further, the HR management has to play vital roles in assessing employees’ current strength and weakness, set expected standards, arrange on-the job or off-the job training that is most appropriate to improve employees’ talent and maintain a system of regular assessment to keep on arranging proper training and development programs. Knowledge share and organizational learning are new emerging theories in the HRM with which the management intends to arrange knowledge transfer and organizational learning when more experienced and less experienced workers come together in training and other organizational activities. Organization Development The business contexts change almost every day due to a number of market and economic factors. It is therefore extremely important for all firms to cope with these changes to survive competition and other challenges. Organizational development is a planned and systematic process of change in an organization’s culture through effective utilization behavioural science technology, research and theory (Cummings and Worley, 2009, p. 2). In order to implement a change in the organization, the management is expected to communicate the change with people, manage the resistance in an effective way and implement with support of people. Kurt Lewin’s change model of Unfreezing, movement has gained widespread attention among business experts as it helps managers implement change effectively. Collaborative work model has also found to help implementing the change effectively as people in collaborative work environment becomes part of the change process. Conclusion This piece of research work has briefly outlined the importance of, roles the management is expected to play to implement and certain relevant theories related to Recruiting and hiring, performance management, employee relation, collective bargaining and labour relation, strategic HRM, training and development and organizational development. References Armstrong, M. 2000, Strategic Human Resource Management: A Guide to Action, Kogan Page Publishers Byars, L. L & Rue, L. W, 2008, Human resource management, Ninth edition, The McGraw Hill Companies Cole, G.A. 2002, Personnel and Human Resource Management, Cengage Learning EMEA Cummings, T.G & Worley, C.G. 2009, Organization Development and Change, Cengage Learning Deb, T. 2006, Strategic Approach to Human Resource Management, Atlantic Publishers & Dist Mathis, R.L & Jackson, J.H. 2010, Human resource management, Cengage Learning Mello, J.A, 2009, Strategic Human Resource Management, Second edition, Cengage Learning Noe R.A, 2002, Employee training and Development, McGraw Hill Companies Noe R.A, Hollenbeck, J.R and Gerhert, B, 2003, Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, The McGraw?Hill Companies, Irwin Searle, R. 2009, Recruitment and Selection, ed. Collings, D.G & Wood, G, 2009, Human Resource Management: A Critical Approach, Routledge Read More