HUMAN RESOURCES

Human Resources

Human Resources

Introduction

This study is based on an analysis of a newly acquired company, Red Slash. Red Slash is a 20 year old family run business and has over 100 employees. The owners have had years of family conflicts and family members tended to friends rather than skilled employees. The company is located in Texas and it has a manufacturing facility over the Mexican Border. Its parent company XXYY Corporation recently recognise that to stay ahead of the their competitors and to maintain the status of being number one in their industry, maximising their human capital is the most cost effective and most efficient way to accomplish their goals. Now, in this study I am going to implement a strong and dynamic human resources strategy that can help Red Slash in saving more money.

Discussion

Strategic Human Resource

The significance of environmental and contextual factors has been long acknowledged in shaping human resource strategy, and in the ability of the Red Slash to realise these strategies. The growth of the concept of a strategic approach to managing people can be attributed to rapid environmental changes that have taken place over the last two decades (Baird and Meshoulam 1988). These environmental influences operate at a general level, and at a more specialised level concerned with the Red Slash's own significant environment. The more general influences operate in four main areas: at the societal level, particularly changes in demographics and the shape and education of the workforce; changes in technology, for example the profound impact of information technology on the way in which people work; changes in the structure of the economy, for example changes in the balance between the public and private sector, inflation, or the shift from manufacturing to service industries; and at the political and legal level, changes in employment legislation can also impact on human resource strategies.

Organisational Culture

It is through the mediation of the 'organisational culture', however, that broader environmental changes are made meaningful to individual organisations. It is these 'experienced relevant business conditions' which impact on the formulation and enactment of human resource strategy. These business conditions include 'stakeholders' in the organisation, who can influence the strategy depending on their power. These stakeholders can include the organisation's competitors and suppliers, the government, the media, environmentalists, local community organisations, and consumer advocates (Freeman 1985).

Over the last two decades there has been a profound shift in thinking about the role that people play in the success of the business, with a growing view that the management of people is a key organisational capability and one which should be highly integrated with the strategic aims of the business. A cornerstone of this notion of strategic human resource management (SHRM) is the creation of linkage or integration between the overall strategic aims of the business and the human resource strategy and implementation. In principle, the processes and people within the company are managed in such a way as to foster the aims of the business strategy (Beer and Spector 1985) and create ...