Strategic human resource management is designed for employees which ultimately helps the organisation in providing value to the people in the organisation. Proactive management helps the design of strategies that help companies meet the needs of their employees while at the same time promoting company goals (Ahammad et al., 2018). The following essay will analyse the difference between strategic human resource management and personal management of the company named Amazon during the Covid-19 pandemic resembling national and cultural impact and providing proper justifications and examining HR practices and strategies of the company.
The first strategic model is the Harvard model of SHRM and the model is consisting of six components. The dimensions include in the model represent stakeholders’ interest, situational factors, HRM Policies, HR outcomes, and long-term consequences. The stakeholder’s interests recognize the importance of the relationship between owner and employees. The dimension shows the balance of HR in maintaining the interest of the stakeholders (Armstrong and Taylor, 2020). The Situational factors influence the choice of management in HR strategy. The factors include labour market, philosophy, task, and technology. The third dimension represents the HR policy choices which emphasize decisions and actions of HRs which can be obtained through interactions between constraints and choices. The four HR policy areas that the model outline is Employee influence resembling the power and responsibility, HR flows which show the recruitment and selection process as well as promotion and appraisal, a reward system for example motivation and work system which represent the design of work and implementation. The HR outcomes and Long-term consequences indicate the commitment and competence and the consequences include individual wellbeing and organisational effectiveness gathered from the Outcomes (Paauwe and Boon, 2018).
The new model based on the hard approach of the Fombrun model is the matching model used in Strategic Human Resource management. The model has suggested that the Hr system and the organisation structure should be managed and can be used to equally justify the organisational strategy. The model is used to facilitate the objectives achievements of the organisation in terms of efficiency and productivity. In this model employees are the key resources to enable the business to help companies in completing their goals and targets. The model has followed universalism which means employees should work together and collaborate to achieve the same goal. The model has depicted various factors including political, economic, and cultural factors that help the firm in identifying its mission and strategy interconnected with organisational structure and human resource management. The model depicts that employee performance leads to a better appraisal which helps in bringing the better performance of the company (Wood, 2018).
The concept of strategic human resource management is to focus on the organisation’s human resources ( people) as the primary source of gaining competitive advantage. The concept of SHRM depicts that HR policies and programs and strategies should be implemented in such a way that value generation can be gained by both organisation and employees. The Strategic Human Resource management depicts both internal and external environment to provide a proper plan through implementing decision-making process which can provide a competitive advantage to the organisation. The main objectives of strategic human resource management are to emphasize company human resources and maintain the skill, knowledge, experience, and intelligence of the employees (Aguinis, Villamor and Gabriel, 2020). The strategic human resource management also recognizes the needs and customizes different market segments and with proper utilization try to fulfil the demand of the market. the main difference between personal management and HRM is personal management has a traditional approach where workers are viewed as a tool and in personal management, employees can be manipulated through the core competencies of the organisation and can be replaced by the organisation. Whereas HRM has a broad approach where employees are treated as the assets of the organisation. It promotes goals, responsibility, and rewards. It also builds a relationship with employees to create an environment that benefitted both the organisation and the people. The HRM also helps in developing the economic performance of the company. Human resource management has evolved its broad sectors of activities including Employment, Recruitment, Training and development, employee service, working condition, and Appraisal and Assessment (Renkema, Meijerink and Bondarouk, 2016).
Amazon has always been a company that looks after employee wellbeing. The company has also been an employee-centric organisation. Recently Amazon has revamped its HR strategies under the name called Pivot. Before the pandemic, the company has launched this restraining program, especially for underperforming employees to provide the chance to improve their performance. The strategic human management approach for the company has provided employees with specialized training and development to enhance their skills rather than terminating the employees. Pivot provides opportunities to Amazon’s existing performance improvement plan and has been assigned to Amazon staffers who are struggling for improvement to show them guidance and support. The benefits amazon in providing through virtual hiring and opening new job opportunities in a pandemic situation. The rise of the e-commerce industry has helped amazon in opening new warehouses in US and Canada. The company has decided to hire 100000 more employees due to the massive growth of the e-commerce market despite being hit by the lockdown (Amazon, 2022). The company has also decided to provide employees with better growth opportunities by building new space in automation and cloud computing. The company Hr policies classify that the company is including entry-level and frontline employees with great pay and a health care system which will be helpful to overcome the labour crisis (Amazon, 2022).
The national culture consists of beliefs and traditions of different countries towards the organisation in order to help the companies in getting sustainability in the market. it is important for the companies to maintain the culture of the nation and to look after the expectation of the individuals. Amazon has been successful in many countries and has established its global presence. The company is recruiting and selecting employees from every nation to meet its demands of employees due to the rise of market industry post covid. The company has valued the belief of culture providing local benefits to the employees also employing the local workers and people (Aust, Muller-Camen and Poutsma, 2018) The company has been provided safety measures and standards and also helping workers to get in touch with through virtual hiring and training expanding the brand loyalty among citizens. On the other hand, corporate culture refers to beliefs and behaviours of the existing employees’ interaction and handling outside business transactions. The company corporate culture of amazon helps the employees to go beyond the limit of the traditional way and develop bright ideas and solutions. The company has continuously sought fresh talent for maintaining a capable workforce. The hr policies of amazon are constantly motivating amazon workers and delivery partners to cater goods all around the world. The way the company has shown the vision to its employees has led the employees of Amazon to stay motivated through health programs and appraisals and mental-stress-free sessions. The demand market for online services has made amazon apply various policies such as recruiting more workers and enhancing their skills to maintain customer satisfaction (Chen, Podolski and Veeraraghavan, 2017). Helping to employ many workers as possible. The company has also used algorithms to monitor the performance of the employees and also help in increasing the efficiency of the performance of the employees (Cheng and Hackett, 2021).
The four levers to manage human resources to contribute competitive advantage are Personal quality, Personal Costs, Personal Quantity, and Transformation and management. Addressing personal quality, the main function of HR is to identify the core competencies of the employees. The main function of HR is to access and develop workforce skills and competencies. The personal quality defines the approach of an organisation in defining its tasks and determining the employees’ participation in developing the skills to meet the goals of the organisation. The top management HR function has well-built talent -management and training and development programme which indicates the proper ways of relocating resources and generating the largest payoff in terms of building new capabilities, skills , and all-round certifications. The HR strategy also looks for proper implementation of recruiting and diversification initiatives to fit in the long-term strategy of the company (Nah and Siau, 2020). the company Amazon has decided to invest $1.2 billion by 2025 to provide free education and training opportunities to its employees to help them secure high-growth jobs (Amazon, 2022). The company is also investing hundreds of millions of dollars in providing free cloud computing skills to 29 million around the globe as an HR policy to enhance the future capabilities of the upcoming generation. The company Hr policy dedicated to upskilling the capabilities of its employees is providing full college tuition fees for front-line workers including every cost to help the employees in generating new opportunities in the future providing new ideas and competitive advantage to the organisation (Rees and Smith, 2021).
The Second important lever is personal costs. The personal costs determine the financial costs of the workforce. The second lever has elaborated that HR functions in top management should ensure to provide a highly detailed accounting and financing of the company’s current employment costs. The company should map budget targets and also accurately forecast the future scenarios of the personnel costs regardless of market shifts and should rectify the planning of strategic development. The personal cost lever also should consist of the compensation strategy which includes the benefits presentation in the overall value creation and offering to the potential employees and workers which means understanding the current market of labour and management and the potential degree to which the company is going to recruit and retain fresh talents within the organisation. The company in a covid pandemic is using certain strategies to get new talents such as partnering with organisations like Grasshopper Celebration, AnitaB.org AISES, and many more. The company is also organizing career enrich summits such as Represent the Future Success is Inclusive in order to partner with underrepresented partners all around the globe. The company is also committing to follow the AARP employee Pledge for the building of high-performance teams with the contribution of employees of all ages (Amazon, 2022). The company is providing compensation benefits as a part of SHRM that allows employees to gather comprehensive health benefits and up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave. The company is also included a career choice program for the employees in the Covid situation to upskill the opportunities of employees in high-demand fields like IT programming. Amazon is also bearing the cost of the mental health of employees from day one and also providing confidential counselling service to the employees. This has made the brand in getting loyalty from employees as employees are stated to work with Amazon for a long period (Wingard, 2022).
The third lever is Personal quality. HR must ensure that the company has the right number of candidates for the right role under the conditions of the proper employment system such as full-time or part-time. The best Hr strategy forecast the need of the workforce in the current scenario to gain ahead of its competitors. The HR functions also determine the current business strategy that will translate the specific workforce needs. The HR should identify the external factors that might shape the supply of talent, for example, changes in the current labour market, market shifts of labour management, education landscape, demographic shifts, and many more. The third lever personal quality also emphasizes a balance between the demand and supply, including finding the perfect balance in developing internal talent and hiring from external sources through recruitment. The company Amazon has a unique method of hiring and selection process. The company judges the quality of the employees through transparency (Zhu, Y., 2021). Jeff Bezos has claimed that the company believes in anti-pitch of the candidates to identify reasons not to take the job. The company process a bias-free selection process and also fulfils the requirement of various departments within the company. the company is also established a screening process to evaluate the employees’ physical and mental presence through automation helping the company is getting better-talented individuals fit for maintaining the standards of the company (Wingard, 2022).
Transformation and management are the fourth lever of Human resource management which is used to manage the process of change both, within the HR organisation and more broadly across the entire country. This level is very much essential if the HR of the organisation is decided to take on an innovative and supportive role which helps in bringing company-wide transformations for the company, efficiency programs, and reorganizations. Companies have to first establish criteria that can be linked with the business strategy and the objectives of the company (Wingard, J., 2022). The criteria should be easily communicated to all managers and should be accepted. This transformation will help the company to change the way of work through new roles and responsibilities, different objectives, and using different metrics to identify performance. Leadership is also very much important in developing competitive advantage, as the right leadership approach will motivate workers to transform work culture providing employees with a new vision to achieve its targets. Amazon has taken a new route in HR processes through automation. The new HR automation of Amazon will help the company in getting new talents through Artificial intelligence. The company-new HR processes have helped the company in providing smooth processing of interviews and also helped to provide proper feedback. Amazon has established innovation in Strategic Human resource management to get ahead of the competitors through improving their position in employees’ minds and meeting the demands of the customers through a large talented workforce (McCausland, 2020).
The job design platform of amazon is very flexible and transparent. The company offers employees to have job rotation which indicates the employees can pursue new talents through amazon and can learn new experiences. The company also focuses on employees’ enrichment in jobs. This helps the employees in amazon to get motivated through performance and appraisal. The company has also added opportunities for the employees like receiving feedback, establishing client relationships to increase the significance of tasks. The company formed teams to collaborate and work to increase the task identity. The company is providing more flexibility to its employees due to the covid 19 pandemic (Butterick and Charlwood, 2021). The HR policies implement that the teams will decide whether to work from office or remote based on the circumstances of the employees. The company’s main value is to provide dedicated service to the customers but at the same time company is remarkably looking after the health of the employees as employees are the main assets of the company. the new innovative HR strategy of implementing pivot the new system which indicated underperforming candidates will not be terminated in these difficult times rather than they will be provided guidance and motivation through industry experts so that efficiency can be brought to these employees at the same time supporting the employees financially in critical times. The company has also represented all the front-line workers in providing them with health benefits and compensation including leave and free check-ups as a part of the company’s wellbeing for the employees (Business Insider, 2022). The company also from Day 1 provide training and development to the employees in enriching relationships with customers and also provide appraisals to the employees based on the performance of the employees. The company has also listed two programs to help employees such as User Experience Design and Research Apprenticeship to provide technical skills to the employees (Wittig and Wittig, 2018).
The WFH policy that was implemented by almost most of the firms has now gradually been removed due to recovery plans executed by most of the organizations. For example, Goldman Sachs is focusing on providing a safe and secure environment for their employees while returning to the office in order to provide the employee’s comfortability. Companies like Deloitte and EY are using AI and machine learning in strategic human resource management to map the performance of employees and also offering permanent work for a home to maintain the mental health of employees (Pashchenko, 2021). Deloitte has made an HR delivery service framework in order to meet the organisation’s needs and objectives effectively and to properly maintain the infrastructure and processes of the organisation (Orlando and Bank, 2016). Walmart the competitor of Amazon in the e-commerce segment has continuously evolved the compensation program for the employees together with employee-relations management for the career development of the employees and also retaining more employees (Sulaiman, Ahmed and Shabbir, 2020). The following HR practices by different firms in helping existing employees and gathering new employees through implementing strategic moves such as AI and compensation is due to the fact that companies are looking for future generation business where the demand of the market is changing drastically and new HR policies have to implemented to get fresh talents and retaining experts to gain experienced workforce to compete with the upcoming market (Kantor and Streitfeld, 2015).
Amazon in order to maintain organisational performance must first design its training program through proper evaluation and implementation. Due to pandemic most training program has to be conducted online to ensure the health and safety of the workers. Therefore, the company should use its cloud service software called AWS to implement new training modules to enhance the capacity of the workforce and also constantly verify and monitor the behaviour of the employees to provide proper guidance. The company should also provide consistent training to existing employees to enhance the workload holding capabilities of the workers.
Firms such as Delliote are helping brands in implementing future technology and automation to be used in HR to grow the pace of processes and planning and also helping in generating new ideas through the implementation of frameworks. Amazon should partner with one of these firms to enrich its HR qualities to a high level as Amazon is already in innovation for a long period these partnerships will help the firm in gaining new skilled talents and will also help in meeting the workforce demand of the company.
The final recommendations for the company are to implement new strategies to protect the front-line workers especially delivery persons through monitoring of health services. The frontline workers are working for Amazon to cater to its customers through on-time delivery. A special program should be implemented for this person providing them better compensation and benefits as they are risking their lives for the company. The company should get social with workers consistently to build closer relationships to get them engaged and provide them with a more comfortable environment. The use of Data analytics can help the company in monitoring the recommended skills of the employees and can also help the company identify the best candidate for the open positions. Due to the massive hiring of talented people, amazon should search for people looking for jobs desperately in this market and should upskill the performance of these candidates as these people can be effective for the organisation through performance and loyalty at low cost.
Conclusion
Strategic human resource management is the new future of utilizing and implementing the human resources of the organization. Amazon has been using both technical and physical methods to get new talents and also at the same time retain the old ones. The company has been constantly implementing new strategies in its standards and policies to help employees survive in Covid-19. The company-new programmes and investments show that the company is looking for sustainability in the market through acquiring a workforce that can meet the demand of the future market of e-commerce. Amazon’s creative and technical capabilities are providing its HR to enhance its capabilities of developing processes helping both organisation and people in getting new opportunities in this global marketplace.
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