Changing Role Of Strategic Human Resource Management

Discussion

What is changing role of strategic human resource management ?

The role of human resource management is changing, as the globalization requires employees’ participation in decision-making and is engaging the employees in implementing the organizations strategy. In this respect, the HR assumes a strategic role in contributing to planning, development and implementation of organizational objectives. The HR has become the strategic partner by understanding the skill required of the employee and arranges training programs for the employees to develop and deploy that skill set. All the HR functions including selection, placement, job designs, and compensation programs play a critical role to build company’s strategy so that the right employee can recruit for the right job at a right time to avoid wastage of time and money and to maximize competitive advantage. It will provide the best optimal solution to fulfill organization’s goal. So SHRM plays an important part in controlling the planning, organizing, leading controlling function. After getting all the components, the HR designs a high-performance work structure to enhance the employee performance by fully utilizing the potential of the employee. To fulfill the changing role of the company the HR has become the strategic partner of the business to achieve the target of the organization. The HR function has gone beyond the payroll management and focusing more on employees contribution to enterprise’s success (Grant, 2015).

The strategic human resource manage resource management is not only related to HR department but all the managers and executive engage themselves in it since everybody works together collaboratively to achieve the competitive advantage. To achieve the goal the organization, it must value its employees and develop them in such a way to meet the requirement of a team, therefore, forwarding the workforce first to achieve success. The SHRM focuses on attrition, improving productivity and the overall financial performance of the company.  A successful organization concentrates on the main key components such as providing job security, uses self-managed team, good pay structure, reduces conflicts, select the right candidate for the right job, give proper training to employees, focuses on decentralization and value on sharing the information (Budhwar & Debrah,2013). When the organization develops the employee competency and motivates them to perform well in the organization to generate the profit for the company and it also increases shareholder’s value in the market. The most successful organization considers HR as a strategic partner and evaluates the HR performance and to get the strategic advantage. The HR needs to gain knowledge and to prepare well to play the changing role in the organization. The HR should judge the competency level of the employee regarding knowledge, skill set, and capabilities to implement the strategy. Whether the company has the right standard to reward the employees and pay incentives to them to align people with the enterprise objectives. The HR should evaluate whether the company has the right structures, proper communication system, policies, and procedures to enhance the performance of the organization. Furthermore, the HR should be discerning enough to understand whether the enterprise has the learning capability and leadership quality to respond to the uncertainties and formulate the strategy to face changes and challenges of future (Bratton & Gold, 2012). 

Selection and Placement

The organization’s human capital comprises of its employees. The human resources in the organization is a series of skill sets that is developed by proper training and development programs that create value in the market. A company’s human capital comprises of some attributes including innovativeness, energy, skill and knowledge as a whole it increases the significance of the organization to get a competitive advantage. Many HR focuses on the technical aspects rather than the strategic aspects though the second point has a deeper significance to get the organizational success (Jiang et al., 2012). Previously the HR managers used to focus on the compliance of law set by the Government. They used to focus on the number of employees hired in the organization and develop training programs for them. But the mew method concentrates on the outcome of the process and not restricted to only numbers and legal compliance. So it is more quantitative and measurable. Therefore, the HR must concern about how the employees are utilizing their skills and training to achieve the objective rather than how many hours they have devoted to training programs. A recent study has revealed that the HR manager should understand the goal and strategy first then impart training programs to develop employee skill. Many HR takes their initiatives without knowing how their decision will affect the organization. Therefore, many HR managers have explained that how they were facing talent management challenges and how they are overcoming the challenges as a part of a strategic business partner of the organization. As a result, they have outsourced contracts, for example, The Bank of America has done the outsourcing of its HR department to Arinso. Arinso will look after the payroll management, for 10,000 employees outside the U.S Europe, in 23rd August in 2006. To reduce outsourcing the HR department has to play a very active role and should ensure accountability regarding measuring the business outcome (Buller & McEvoy, 2012).

Beyond the basic need for compliance with the HR rules and regulation, four key elements need to be discussed to align the different component of HR system with the company goals. These are selection & placement, Job design, reward and compensation system and adopting diversity management in the organization culture (Stone, 2013).

While doing the recruitment, the HR manager must explain the technical competencies required for the job as well as the behavioral skills needed to meet the job requirement. The behavioral attribute focuses on giving value to the customers by the ability to show empathy and support to the client, time management that is an ability to complete the task within time with less error and the ability of the candidate to understand which area needs more training and guidance (Snell et al., 2015). Furthermore, the organization should highlight the culture and values to the employees and state the mission and vision of the business. For example, the company is looking for those candidates who can go an extra mile to bring the smile on customer’s face. They want those candidates who can work hard to develop new code or the capability to build network to reach the chief of the company to increase sale. By sharing, the stories of business heroes with the potential candidates help the enterprise make them understand about the company’s objective. It will also help the candidate to determine whether they will fit in the organization or not (Shields et al., 2015). 

Job Design

According to Armstrong and Taylor (2014), job design includes bringing the various element to form a job keeping in mind that the organization and individual employees requirement are fulfilled with the significance consideration has given on health and safety issue. Proper training should be given to staff to develop a specific skill to perform the job ensuring authority and accountability of the employee. So job design refers to the content of the job, its duties, and responsibilities to perform the task and the method adopted to execute it that is the system, techniques and procedures while carrying out the job. It also focuses on the relationship exists between the superior and subordinate to get the excellent result (Berman et al., 2015).

In this respect, the researcher has identified Motorola and the training programs adopted by it. As a global company, Motorola operates in many countries including China. Therefore, it’s hard to find the right and skilled employee in China. A recent survey conducted by American Chambers Of Commerce in Shanghai has revealed that 37% the US owned company operating in China faces the problem of skilled employees and the production suffers massively due to lack of qualified employees. The reason is that the Chinese universities do not embed the employees with proper training and skill development programs that the multinational companies are looking for (Tyson, 2014).

Consequently, Motorola has developed that its training and development programs to reduce the gap. To keep this in mind Motorola’s Chinese subsidiary developed management programs for local managers. Another program they have developed is Motorola’s Management Foundation programs to train managers to improve their communication skills and develop their problem solving ability. As a result, Motorola has arranged MBA programs partnering with Arizona State University and Tsinghua University so that the working professional can earn an MBA to acquire more skill and knowledge. They have addressed the talent shortage in China and given the solution to utilize Chinese low-skilled and highly motivated employees to increase productivity (“The Changing Role of Strategic Human Resources Management in International Business”, 2016).

Incentives or reward is based on employee performance. When the company gives an award to its employee for high performance which is a result of training, development programs and achieved through teamwork, collaboration and increasing a sense of responsibility, it has some parameters to evaluate the employee.   It helps an employee to identify new skills so that they can get higher pay. Compensation system includes incentives, profit-sharing, reward system based on skills and performance of the employees who learn new things to apply it to the organization to meet success. The employees who have undergone the broad range of training programs and acquired problem solving skills are more likely to grow in the company and get job satisfaction. The intensive training programs have made them one of the valuable assets in the enterprise which in turn helps them to gain rewards and ensure more commitment to the company. When the employee has the access to the information and more authority to act on they feel more involved in the job and bears more commitment while making the decision on behalf of the company to further the organization’s goals. Therefore, rewards need to be associated with the performance so that the employee will be motivated to pursue the outcomes and will help the business to grow (Alfes et al., 2013).

Reward and Compensation System

Another key aspect of SHRM is its focus on diversity management and includes it in its work culture. Diversity refers to reducing discrimination against women employees minorities while recruiting them in the company. Today diversity means the different perspective and ideas that an employee brings to the workplace. Diversity increases the innovation and problem solving skills in the business. The more diverse the team is regarding age, gender; different cultural background the more efficiently the group can solve the organizational problem. A different team helps the company to come up with more innovative and efficient solutions (Renwick et al., 2013). 

Conclusion

Many aspects of international human resource management differ from domestic HRM being a strategic partner the HR should focus on all these things to achieve the objective of the company. The IHRM is more complicated than the local ones because of the wider issues that it has.  In the respect of MNC the international human resource manager has to consider many aspects such as cross-cultural difference, rules and regulations of the company, the pay norms and people’s expectations, the working conditions there, the problems that the expatriate members are facing in terms of meeting the requirement of the projects and the cultural issues that the expat is facing in the host country. The management should ensure all these aspects to ensure a good working relationship with the staff to be able to achieve the performance standard and the best result for the company (Vaiman et al., 2012).

The company’s success depends on how the human resource manager tackles the global stuff to become more successful in future. Minute details can create the considerable impact on the employees from the different cultural background as different cultures have different priorities and requirement. Keeping this in mind multinational companies should standardize the pay and performances standard for the employees. In addition to that when the firm enters into the country having transitional economy by buying local plants or establishing joint ventures creates significant HR challenges and will decrease the performance if not properly handled, So the Global firm needs to develop an appropriate HR strategy to fit with the changing role of the organization and to overcome the challenges (“Changing role of HRM – what is human resource ?”, 2016).

Reference List

Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers.

Budhwar, P. S., & Debrah, Y. A. (Eds.). (2013). Human resource management in developing countries. Routledge.

Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2012). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave Macmillan.

Jiang, K., Lepak, D. P., Hu, J., & Baer, J. C. (2012). How does human resource management influence organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating mechanisms. Academy of management Journal,55(6), 1264-1294.

Buller, P. F., & McEvoy, G. M. (2012). Strategy, human resource management and performance: Sharpening line of sight. Human resource management review, 22(1), 43-56.

Stone, R. J. (2013). Managing human resources. John Wiley and Sons.

Snell, S., Morris, S., & Bohlander, G. (2015). Managing human resources. Nelson Education.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., … & Plimmer, G. (2015). Managing Employee Performance & Reward: Concepts, Practices, Strategies. Cambridge University Press.

Berman, E. M., Bowman, J. S., West, J. P., & Van Wart, M. R. (2015).Human resource management in public service: Paradoxes, processes, and problems. Sage Publications. 

Alfes, K., Shantz, A. D., Truss, C., & Soane, E. C. (2013). The link between perceived human resource management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated mediation model. The international journal of human resource management, 24(2), 330-351.

Renwick, D. W., Redman, T., & Maguire, S. (2013). Green human resource management: a review and research agenda*. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(1), 1-14.

Vaiman, V., Scullion, H., & Collings, D. (2012). Talent management decision making. Management Decision, 50(5), 925-941.

Tyson, S. (2014). Essentials of human resource management. Routledge.

Grant, R. M. (2015). Contemporary Strategy Analysis 9e Text Only. John Wiley & Sons.