Strategic Roles of Human Resource Development.
Introduction.
The report explains the role of strategic human resource management and challenges of human resource management in managing human resources in a business scenario. Human resources management is a very critical in an organization. The future success of the organization fully depends on the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic roles and policies of the human resources management. By definition, strategic management refers to constantly monitoring, assessment, testing and analyzing human resources tools to achieve the set objectives (Grundy, 2015). The research paper is, therefore, aims to establish facts or argument about the role of strategic human resources in business scenario results to business success and the possible challenges that may be experienced in managing human resources. In addition, the report also explains in details to establish the fact that human resource management is very dynamic and forms an integral part of business success.
Human resource management is a department in the business organization that deals with recruitment, designing job description, training, formulating remuneration policies and procedure of staffing in an organization. The main aim of a business is to maximize profit at the least cost possible. This requires the correct match of the skills available and the job performed so that the output can be maximized. To ensure successful business, the organization has to incur costs such as training, advertising the vacancy and assigning of contracts (Thomson, 2013). This explains why the human resources management plays a critical role in the success of the many organizations. According to (David,2012), strategic planning forms the basis of the role of human resources in ensuring the business success, and he further argued that strategic planning should not be confused by strategic formulation since both are totally different and are being applied at different stages. The organization can realize the following benefit if the strategic planning tools are put in place. First, with strategic planning, the organization is assured sustained competitive advantage over its competitors. For instance, competitive advantage is what set organizations apart regarding market control and ownership. Great organizations continue to lead due to intensive investment in strategic planning. An organization with competitive advantage usually performs financially better than other organizations in the same industry or performs above the industry average. The school55 whose objective is to dominate the market should school55 evaluate analysis, monitor and implement the human resources practices to ensure that the company remains competitive even in the long run.
Second, strategic planning enables the human resources to view things and opportunities in a broader perspective. Strategic planning enables the managers to bring on board the culture of the organization, the environment, mission and vision of the organization and customize it with the job description that eventually leads to a proper selection of staffing and definition of roles (Albert, 2011). Strategic planning ensures that the organization awareness of both internal and external environment is enhanced.
Collaboration is key in strategic human resource management. (Rathaermel, 2012), argued that teamwork in an organization not only saves time but it also ensures progress. Human resource management should, therefore, create a culture of teamwork, the division of labor and specialization to improve the marginal productivity.
(Ansoff, 2014), in his work argued that strategic selection and placement of personnel in an organization can never be ignored in result oriented business. Proper selection and placement should be strategic in that it should be in line with the Company’s goals, vision, and mission. The recruitment procedures should be simple to understand and free from bias so that the right person for the right job is offered the job. To achieve transparency and integrity within the organization, the human resource management should design a culture of honesty, obedience, and integrity in performance. Realizing this objective requires that human resources manager to come up with incentives that enable employees to exercise these virtues even without compelled to do so.
Strategic training and compensation of employees are key, and the human resources management should take into consideration. The business environment is dynamic which keeps on changing. Coase on his work argued that failure to properly reward employees can have a negative impact on the business. The supportive argument was, a successful business is that business that satisfies its customers. The positive feedback from customers is the strength of successful organizations.Continuous production ensures that goods and services are also always available for the customers and this requires that there is no lag or gap simply because an employee has left the organization. According to Coase, businesses should invest in their employee’s development by training and offer incentives such as performance allowance, medical care and leave allowance and other motivations so that they may encourage employees (Medema, 2011).Keeping great talents in an organization demand actions from human resource management to identify, recruit and retain. The following are some reasons why human resources management should emphasize in employee development (Burkholder, 2014).Employees are one of the assets that the organization has. Moreover, human capital is the only asset that the organization can neither control nor own and therefore, the only way to limit the mobility of these assets is through strategic training. Training helps attract and retain great employees. Training also encourages loyalty among employees and loyalty is the greatest asset since it creates goodwill. Training and development of employees also ensure that the organization reputation and brand is very high and this results in higher profit and benefit. Coase further stress on the importance of increasing cost on employees as continues hiring is very expensive and do not give the management time to focus on the future. Talent segregation and segmentation with an appraisal are very vital to a good team of employees or workers. The current job market involves job-hopping and requires that the human resources to up their game ensure they keep production on course.
However, recruitment and selection is still a challenge of human resources management in managing human resources. For instance, in the current economic world, there is a high level of unemployment that a vacancy can attract even 20,000 applicants or more (Machado, 2015). Selecting the right candidate from the mass of applicants is always a challenge, and this hinders the human resource ability to select the most talented candidate. Due to mass applicant received by the human resources in every job vacancy, they do change the recruitment procedures from time to time which may violate the policy of the organization in the long run.
Another challenge is balancing between management and employees. Factors that motivate employees and managers pull in opposite directions. For example, managers are motivated by factors such as high-profit margins, cooperation, commitment, and loyalty. Employees, on the other hand, are motivated by better wages and salaries, career development, healthy working conditions, security, and safety. These conflicting interests between management and employees still post a challenge to human resources management.
Nonetheless, performance appraisal is not serving its purpose in most organizations. Performance appraisal should not be a routine task, but it should be strategic (Research Society, 2011). For instance, if the performance appraisal is carried out more often and employees constantly get negative feedback, this can affect the performance of the business in future. Scientific performance appraisal should be applied to enhance the quality of work in an organization.
Dealing with trade unions has also posed a challenge in human resource management. Pigou, a classical economist, argued that due to the presence of trade unions, wages and prices cannot be flexible.He further argued that employees are bound by the contract, and the wage cut is not practical due to contracts and trade unions. This has been a challenge to the human resources management for years since the organization cannot reduce the wage of an employee asset or specified in the contract. Minimum wage laws were also identified as setbacks for the human resources in the global businesses (Kumekawa, 2017). Setting a price floor regarding minimum wage affects the business performance since the business world keeps on changing and the minimum wage bill keeps on rising every financial year. It is therefore recommended that there should be flexible minimum wage which reflects the prevailing economic situation which keeps on changing from time to time.
In conclusion, it is vivid that human resource management plays a critical role in the strategic management of human resources in an organization. The organization should, therefore, invest more in human resource development to ensure that recruitment, training, and placement of staff follow the laid down procedures. It is also worth appreciating the strategies firms put in place to human management resources. However, there are still many challenges that human resource management is facing. The proper mitigation procedure is therefore required to solve these complex problems around performance appraisal, trade union and selection and placement.
References.
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Albert, K. J. (2011). The Strategic management handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill.
David, F.R. (2012). Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases. 12th ed. FT Prentice Hall.
Rothaermel, F. T. (2012) Human Resource Management.: Concepts and Cases. McGraw-Hill/Irwin, p. 5
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Human Resource Management Academic Research Society. (2011). International journal of human resource studies. Las Vegas Nev: Macrothink.
Kumekawa, I. (2017). The first serious optimist: A.C. Pigou and the birth of welfare economics.
Machado, C. (2015). International Human Resources Management: Challenges and Changes. (International human resources management.) Cham: Springer.
Medema, S. G., & the University of Colorado at Denver. (2011). The Coase theorem. Denver, Colo: CRISP, Center for Research on Economic and Social Policy, the University of Colorado at Denver.
Thomson Gale.(2013). Psychosociological issues in human resource management. Woodside, NY: Addleton Academic Publishers.