HRM & CORPORATE STRATEGIC PLAN

HRM & Corporate Strategic Plan

HRM & Corporate Strategic Plan

Introduction

The Human Resources (HR) department is invaluable to a company when examined in the full spectrum of their duties within the company. Just as important to a company is the human resource philosophy or management culture. The duties within the confines of HR are immense, and the word confines is applied loosely, due to the fact that HR's realm lies within every facet of a business, in fact, there are no particular "areas" in which HR does not (or should not), have at least some input. (Akteruzzaman 2005 1024-1030)

The focus of human resource management (HRM) is to manage people within the employer-employee relationship. However, such a broad definition is unable to distinguish HRM from its' predecessor' - Personnel Management. Some say that HRM "involves the productive utilisation of people", and is therefore more proactive than Personnel Management. Others say that HRM is unique in that it seeks to strategically integrate the human resource (HR) function within the overall corporate strategy. Furthermore, HRM can be described as having a 'hard' and a 'soft' version. Such elasticity in the use of the term HRM makes the development of a general theory for HRM seemingly impossible.

Why Managers fail?

Strategic management seeks to coordinate and integrate the activities of the various functional areas of a business in order to achieve long-term organizational objectives. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards objectives... Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the field of Organization Studies.

Strategic planning and management are more than a set of managerial tools. They constitute a mind-set, an approach to looking at the changes in the internal and external environment that confront the manager. Using planning and management tools strategically, then, involves essentially a way of thinking, a mental framework or approach, as well as a set of analytic tools. For strategic management to be effectively used the manager must develop a strategic mentality. (Brown 2005 209-214)

Organizations are working towards an outward-focused view of the way services should be provided - a fundamental shift from the traditional focus on internal concerns. At the same time, major opportunities for improvement may arise from developments such as new information and communications technologies, and the availability of additional financial resources such as the Invest to Save Budget. In many cases the response to the problem or opportunity will:

require the continuous attention of senior management

affect most or all of the organization

have long term implications

require substantial resources

Be interconnected with other issues and developments. (Christensen 2005 15-19)

The strategic human resource choices involved in  low cost of production strategy include:

Train some of the employees in the area of time management, material handling at work etc.

Retrenchment of surplus employees caused due to superior speed

Pay for performance

Promotions based on efficiency

High quality work environment at the production place. (Kase & Zupan 239-262)

These human resource issues are also known as functional strategies of  ...