Strategic Human Resource Management Editing Services

Answer 1

Planned indicates deciding and making arrangements for any action in advance for the benefit of an organization. Future indicates time period coming ahead. Competitive advantage refers to the strategic edge, based on resources or capabilities that a firm achieves when other competitors cannot imitate that. Changing environment refers to the dynamic situations in which an organization operates. The conditions or situations are internal and external, which influences the actions and performances of an organization, and these are extremely dynamic. The configuration of resources and competencies means an adaptation of the capabilities of the organization based on the available resources and the environment. This is done to meet the organizational behaviour goals and objectives according to the resources and competencies. Stakeholders are those who have interest in the organization and its growth. Stakeholder expectation refers to the hope of meeting their needs by the organization. All these concepts imply that a business has stakeholders, whose needs must be fulfilled by planning and taking actions with the available resources and capabilities in a dynamic working situation.

Answer 2

Amazon is the world’s biggest e-commerce retail giant. External environment includes overall industry trend, industry structure, similar business, competitors and customers. Analysis of external environment leads to the information on the opportunities and threats for the firm. Opportunities of amazon are product differentiation, global expansion, acquisitions and opening of physical stores like Amazon Go. The threats are the low barriers to entry in e-commerce business, government regulations in different countries and local competition from other e-commerce sites.

Internal environment includes resource, capabilities and core competencies, value chain, and 7S framework, that is, strategy, structure, systems, styles, skills, staff and shared values. This analysis results in the information on strengths and weakness. Strengths of Amazon are cost leadership, efficient delivery system, customer centric approach. The weaknesses are very small profit margin, leading to unprofitable business in some location, failure of innovations, like the Fire TV and Fire phone, and thus negative reputations for its product innovations.

Answer 3

HR functions have been existing in the business world since long but in different forms and perspectives. These functions evolved overtime to meet the demands of the technology and business environment. Up to 1940s, HR functions were present in the form of labor welfare. The environment involved minimum government intervention, owner’s attitudes and beliefs played a major role in labor exploitation, and the functions were passive and reactive. During 1950s to 1960s, there was a continuous economic and job growth, and employee motivation and ethics, job classification, growth of the trade unions and development of the job categories occurred, focusing on personnel admin or industrial relations. In 1970s to 1980s, the concept of HRM was developed. During this time, labor legislations developed and professionalism emerged, leading to the development of framework for the HR functions. Between 1990s and 2000s, growing globalization, competitiveness, outsourcing, cost reduction and technological advancement required strategic HR activities and management functions. Since 2010, smart or digital HRM is in practice that involves innovation, creativity, agility, ambidexterity, sustainability, labor mobility and diverse workforce.

Answer 4

The seven key themes of Strategic HRM (SHRM) as proposed by Lengnick-Hall et al., 2009 are:

1. Contingency perspectives & fit:HR strategies are dependent and aligned with business strategies, settings like manufacturing, public, private, service, small and large act as contingencies and the competing frameworks through universal and contingency perspectives.

2. Shift in focus from managing people to creating strategic contributions:this focuses on the resources of the firm, strategic contribution of the HR practices, and strategic importance of the human and social capital

3. HR System Components & Structure:This focuses on organisational performance as a whole and not on individual performance and includes high performance system.

4. Expanding the Scope of SHRM:This explores multiple stakeholder perspectives and international context

5. Achieving HR Implementation & Execution:Translation of rhetoric into practice

6. Measuring the Outcomes of SHRM:Balanced scorecard approach, metrics and analytics are applied

7. Research Methodological Issues:This is evidence based and examines reliability of the research approach, research instruments and interpretation; and includes quantitative and qualitative data.

Answer 5

Psychological contracting refers to a set of unrecorded reciprocal or mutual expectations between the individual employees and the organisations. The needs of the employee and the organization should be coordinated in this contracting and it assumes that there would be long term commitment between the employees and the organization even though the employees change over the lifetime. The moral traits included in this contracting are equity, reciprocity and fairness. These traits increase employee motivation. Employees believe or expect that their efforts will be successful, that will be recognized and rewarded, and those rewards would be worth of their efforts. Psychological contracting allows the employer to reciprocate to the employee’s expectations. If they follow equity in work culture and maintains fairness in recognizing the efforts of the employee and give him justified rewards, then that would increase the motivation of the employee. If the employer does not reciprocate to match the needs and expectation of the employee, then he gets demotivated.

Answer 6

High-involvement work system refers to the system in which employees are empowered and given more responsibilities to increase their power of decision making. High-commitment work system refers to system in which employees are highly committed to perform and accomplish the goals and take responsibilities to improve their skills and efforts. High-performance work practicesare those, which are aimed at enhancing the skills and performance of the employees , such as, incentives, training, remunerations, performance appraisal, flexible working condition, grievance address, information sharing, job security, promotion, etc. All these systems are highly valued as these are integrated and have the broad objective of improving the individual as well as organizational performance. The employers empower the employee benefits to motivate them and in turn, they put effort through their commitment towards the organization. During this process, the employees go through high performance work systems, which enhance their skills and improve performances.

Answer 7

The critical roles of HR functions are to develop and manage the human resources or human capital of the organization by applying various strategies and techniques. It should do correct selection and recruitment, arrange relevant training to enhance their skills, ensure a supportive work environment, facilitate strategy creation and implementation, establish communication, ensure work-life balance to increase productivity, develop HR metrics, and plan and implement ethics and CSR activities.

The HR practitioners should have the following competencies to fulfill the above mentioned functions. They should be strategic positioner to understand the business goals and objectives and plan the HRM accordingly. They must be credible activist, building interpersonal relationships, capacity builder, HR innovator and integrator, and should have the ability to implement required changes, and differentiate between the strategic and administrative work to increase effectiveness and efficiency among the human resources.

Answer 8

HR outsourcing is a fastest growing trend. It helps in achieving operational efficiencies, access to expert individuals, greater control in process, risk reduction, and it enables a major factor, that is, international mobility of labor. However, it faces the challenges of long term impact on the costs, lack and loss of organizational knowledge during labor mobility. On the other hand, devolution of HR to the line managers is another new trend, in which the line managers are delegated with the task of HR management. These integrations are beneficial for strengthening the capabilities of the HR professionals. The reasons are that, in this devolution and outsourcing process, the HR managers can focus on specific segments of the organization. The line managers can look after the strategic functions along with the human resource development in specific teams, which reduces cost and effort from the HR department. At the same time, the HR professionals can look after the overall HR development and labor mobility by aligning with the line managers. Thus, these functions are beneficial.

Answer 9

Technological advancement sweeping all the industries and the HR activities are also no exception. In the digital world, the need for strategic management of the human resources is more crucial. Hence, digital HRM deals with emerging technologies, such as, SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) and other technologies to deliver efficient and effective HR services. Technology covers the operational or transactional HR activities, that includes the activities of payroll, record keeping, policy updation, internal reports generation and dissemination, benefits administration and labor contracts and legislation; relational HR activities involving HR planning, recruitment and selection, training and development, remuneration, performance and reward management; and lastly it covers transformational HR activities, which focus on strategic changes, leadership development, organisatioanl cultural changes, and knowledge management. Thus, technology covers all types of HR activities that helps in strategic aspects like predictive analytics, managerial insights and information security required for organizational functions.

Answer 10

HR scorecard includes the aspects of HR practices, HR system and HR workforce competencies. These aspects effectively link the people, strategy and performance in the organization. Benchmarking of the HR practices helps in establishing a comparison of productivity between their employees and other competitors, external recognition from the industry and focus on the system than on individual performance. It assesses the HR competencies like administrative efficiency, employee advocacy, strategy execution and change agency. These covers competencies of growth rate and retention of employees under employee advocacy, perception of business strategy and alignment with line management under execution of strategy, processing benefits and costs and response rte under administrative efficiency and under change agency, the infusion of new recruits with the existing employees successfully is considered as competency assessment. Lastly, the HR systems are incorporated through alignment of operational excellence, product leadership through innovations, customer intimacy and value propositions, communication, integration of the HR functions and differentiation in terms of value or competitive advantage and unique characteristics of human capital. In the end, it measures the workforce success.

Answer 11

As the business environment is dynamic and changing rapidly, along with the technological transformation, demographics, and employee expectation, the strategic HRM also needs to adapt to the changes and innovations. The future trends in the business comprise of increasing rate of globalization and new technologies in connectivity, cloud, artificial intelligence, innovations. There is sustainability issue. The demographic changes comprise of longevity of people, work-life balance, generational cohesion and rapid urbanization, and employee expectations include more benefits, rewards, career growth opportunities, fair working conditions and efficient leadership. Thus, for future, the competencies of SHRM professionals must include strong sense of business acumen, technological expertise, efficient marketing communication and consultation ability, ethical practice, strong and effective interpersonal relationships, integration of global culture, and critical decision making power, along with expertise in HR practices. The professionals should also be able to apply the HR metrics and scorecards efficiently for effective performance management in the organization.