Strategic HRM Assignment Help

Ever wondered about the process in the shipment delivery on ecommerce platform? It is from building inventory in the warehouse to placing order to make it ready for the delivery from the nearest selling centre and finally setting the order for the delivery.

Strategic HRM follows a structured and a step by step process for managing and development of human capital. It includes functions like recruitment, releasing the final selects, training the employees, ensure appraisals, design the compensation and the incentive, maintaining employee relations with the company. This is performed within and external to the organization. The aim of the strategic HRM is to effectively retain the workforce that constitutes as a part of employee productivity. 

This usually takes place in a complex and dynamic environment of business. Any organization would not want to hire an employee incapable of meeting the expectations and working in achieving organization goals.

Strategic HRM helps in achieving competitive advantage. This is possible since the human capital works for the organizational effectiveness and the better the talent pool, the better is the organizational effectiveness. It is a fact to notice that the human resource available with a organization is not the same as the competitors. The next factor to ponder is that the imitation is not easy in case of human resource. You may fill the people with the same designation which is not the case with the employee fulfilling the job roles and responsibilities. The human resource built up can be utilised to coordinate business functions and used in combination for leveraging business operations.

This brings us to the question of why achieve strategic HRM for competitive advantage? There are several reasons such as

• SHRM discourages reactive behaviour than a proactive one
• The goals and the goodwill are spread by communicating clear message
• It is a means to the end of achieving the future by bridging the gap between the present and the future.

It gives a sense of ownership and responsibility to the line managers involved in the decision-making process. This is an attraction and a degree of freedom at work  for the employees willing to promote the culture of trusting employees with decision making.

Let us now discuss in detail about the strategic HRM model

This modern approach to human resource management includes

• Critical evaluation of the organization goals and plans
• Helps in the deciding the strategic business roadmap
• Plan and execute the human resource to achieve operational efficiency
• Helps in the continuous development of the HR and develops at each stage from the past
• Implementation of the devised HR strategy to leverage the business operations

Let us dig deeper for developing a deep understanding about the process of SHRM. Let us look at them one by one.

• Assessment of the environment of business. (Internal and external). The internal assessment includes examining the strengths, weakness, the current policies  of the company.
• Understanding the organization mission, the business units and the goals in the long run. 
• Performing the environmental assessment. This involves pondering over the opportunities, realizing the threats, understanding the technological trends and the market sentiments in terms of financials and economics. 

Internal assessments, organizational mission and environmental assessment put together helps to formulate the organizational strategy. Organizational strategy can be designed at three levels of business which are corporate, business and at a business unit. Each one has its own purpose and objectives to serve.

• Post to devising the organizational strategy we can now proceed to getting into the core by formulation of HR strategy. This involves preparing HR goals and objectives, structuring HR process systems and planning around it. Designing the job and performing the analysis, conducting recruitment drives, training and development, performance appraisal etc are all a part of the HR strategy formulation.
• Apart from the HR strategy formulation there goes other strategy formulation which are designing the accounting and management strategy, marketing and operations strategy.
• After formulation what is next in the list is the HR strategy implementation. This involves management of internal and external stakeholders and planning the manpower or the workforce.
• The next process in SHRM is to understand the outcome of all above which are increased competency, a distinct competitive advantage, better financial management and performance, achievement of strategic goals, satisfaction among the stakeholders involved in the business.

The key point to remember is that the HR strategy must align with the business strategy for achieving efficiency. This is the factor that determines the successful strategic human resource management practice. It is important to note that the theory of one size fits all doesn’t follow in the SHRM process design and the nature varies from business to business. The HR practitioners must identify the practices that can leverage the  business strategy achieve strategic goals. 

This involves identifying the HR priorities which is called organizational diagnosis. This is an audit of the organization to determine the strengths and weaknesses. 

In achieving the business strategy, an alignment in the HR professionals and the line managers can channelise the efforts in a successful contribution and achieving organizational effectiveness.

On the other hand in case of mismatched expectations there is a gap  between the line managers and the HR professionals. This result in a one sided satisfaction in business operations which is undesirable. This is mainly due to the over rating of oneself  and a biased opinion when maintaining the objective and key responsibility areas. One should not be surprised by the fact that the individual HR professional is all the competencies of the HR functions. It is a fact that the collective working result in achieving the overall business and HR objectives.

On the other side there are limitations to the theory of SHRM, which are losing the focus on strategic decision making in the long run by involving in structuring SHRM process. The other limitation is the absence of internal strategy due to the emphasis on the centralised SHRM process. The third limitation found is more emphasis on the conceptualization of the role and the control of the managers.

The SHRM process assumes that it is a strategic process which has implications for international potentialities. The international HRM focuses on the economic distribution and production that are owned by private firms in order to make profit. The comparative HRM stress more on the fact of understanding the difference in the HR practices of different nationals.