Human resources management

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“Human resources management”

Abstract

People are the most valuable asset and can help organization to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. The current study investigates the relationship among HR practices, empowerment and organizational culture on retention and performance of organizations. Hypotheses testing using structural equation modeling show a positive impact of HR practices, empowerment and organizational culture on employee retention and performance of organizations. The finding of the study reinforces the idea that increasing employee retention improves performance of organizations.

1. Introduction

Over the past two decades individual companies and capital markets have changed the way of doing business with the help of Globalization. Many companies have widened their scope of operations overseas, and because of that many domestic companies are encountered with competition from abroad. In order to compete with globalized business the domestic companies are trying to integrate new technologies, which will help to provide better and cheaper services for their customers. This looks good but it has led to continuous movement of customers and competitors. As if this was not enough, the domestic companies are getting pressure from global capital markets to innovate and reduce costs. All of these actions are pressuring the companies, and in order to survive, those companies need to learn how to manage their assets as efficiently as possible. Human asset is one of the most important assets.

2. Discussion

After almost a century of business success, Wegmans has proven much more than a family owned and profitable grocery retailer. It has also gained recognition as one of the companies employees wish to work for in the US. In 2005 Fortune magazine put the company on first place in the list of the best companies to work for. In 2013 Wegmans had 83 stores with almost 44000 employees with turnover of the whole company of around 7 billion US Dollars. This makes the company one of the biggest privately owned companies in the world. Such achievements means a lot of work was put to hire the right people and take actions to make them satisfied with their job as they are the only business recourses that can leave the organization.

3. How did Wegmans do it?

* Thanks to their great influence and reputation in the industry, the Wegmans were able to recruit and select the finest employees with the right skills that will fit into their family - oriented culture.

* Wegmans have invested heavily in training.

* Wegmans' inner promotion scheme has led to extensive employee tenure and a workforce with a lot of experience and knowledge.

* Comparatively high wages also stimulated the employees to stay with Wegmans for the long run because they thought the company was concerned for them (the company has 5000 employees who worked for the company for more than 15 years)

Wegmans has become a regional supermarket success by using its employees as a competitive advantage. Other supermarkets may stock many of the same national brands, but they do not have the talented workforce that Wegmans has recruited and trained to work with the public and behind the scenes. The company sifts through stacks of resumes, asks employees for referrals, and conducts round after round of interviews until it finds the right candidates for each job. Putting right people on the payroll is only the start. Family-owned Wegmans wants its workforce to share the company's family feeling and feel empowered to do what's right for the customer. Every week, human resources personnel fan out to visit the stores and listen to employees' ideas and concerns.

'The major challenges of profitability, work-life balance and increased global competition have made the strategic HRM more important to business success than ever before.' For this statement, the answer is definitely yes.

In recent days, there are some challenges that impact the organizations perspective to strategic human resource management. These challenges include cost-effectiveness, work-life balance and increased worldwide competition. All the organizations want to be more profitable in the challenging economy with huge competitors, the organizations would like to reduce cost and increase potentials to be profitable. Work-life balance is another challenge of the organization. For those of employees who work for organizations have to mix and match work with everything else that can go on in life, including family, health, hobbies, friendships and considerations. There will be a substantial impact on by reducing absenteeism & turnover, and improving productivity & customer service. Without work-life equilibrium, any career goals or ambitions the employees have set will eventually fall due to the employee's own mind or body's incapability to keep up (Kellye Whitney, 2006). Most companies now are facing the environment of increasing global competition. Because of the fall of trade barriers and the decline of the transaction costs, new global competitors are entering different markets.

In order to overcome the challenges above, the organization, the HR manager need to implement a planned tactic, be part of the management team, be engaged in corporate planning, advance business know-how, focus on bottom-line and develop a idea for HRM(Raymond J.Stone, 2007 P35). So the strategic HRM has become more significant than ever before.

Strategic HRM focuses on the linking of all HR activities with the organization's strategic objectives. Strategic HRM can help businesses to define the best user of human resources to meet organizational goals and can enable the assimilation of HR procedures and practices with each other and with the business strategy(What Is HRM, 2010).

Strategic HRM is one of the means to attain the financial success of the organization. It also affects the change that the organizations go through and the performance. Treatment of employees, their security of employment and even the relationships between the employees are affected by HRM.

According to Davidson 'Strategic Human Resource Management demands HR professionals who have skills at a general management level and who are willing to accept responsibility for organizational performance outside HRM; who are skilful at selling HRM within their organization so that they achieve the required level of influence and participation at executive and strategic management levels; and who thereby are able to bring their specialist HR functions more closely into alignment with corporate objectives and strategies.'(Davidson,p, 1996) Because of the shift from HRM to strategic HRM, more professional approach is needed. The organizations have more demands, so the organization needs more strategic, integrative and accountable approaches to HR practices.

After the development of strategy, it's important to effective implement the strategy. Implementation is the extent to which the practices have been adopted and is reflected in the intensity of their use. Strategy implementation involves designing an organization's structure and control systems and evaluating the selected strategies in achieving the organization's key objectives. For an organization, it's not easy to turn strategies or plans into individual actions to produce a great business performance. The HR manager and HR professionals should understand how a profitable business if run and analysis very seriously about business needs, business culture, and both inner and outer surroundings factors and know how to link HR practices to the organizational business strategy.

Strategic human resource management practices are the way used to concentrate people's mind on the major concerns in the business. In order to overcome the challenges faced by organizations, strategic human resource management practices should be managing people to improve the performance effective during the strategy process. Strategic HRM practices include recruitment and selection, training and employee deployment, performance appraisal and employee remuneration. All the execute of the activities will help the organization achieve its vision, mission and strategic objectives. That means that all the practices should be "strategic" (Michael Armstrong, 2006).

From the surface to understand, managers would feel that they already engage in selective hiring and recruiting, for example, they would hire the best person. In fact, the key factors for successful recruitment are job analysis and job design. The procedure of guessing in advance what types of people and abilities will be needed later is one of the key strategic stages a business can take to successfully recruit management executives, and it should actually take place prior to the need for recruitment for any particular position (Pynes, 1997). The organization should make a strategic HRM planning to forecast its need, through the accurate and objective understand about candidates select the right person to fill the right job in order to make profit for the company

Strategic human resource management provide a system to improve human resource training combine with the personal development plan, and at the same time ensure that transport steady flow of various types of talent to the organization to achieve the rapid development of the organization and the employees' career success.

Outmoded HRM is in charge of teaching the new personnel about the organize discipline, labor safety, quality management after they enter the organization. A small number of managers will establish the training of employees in other parts, so it is hard to create a wide-ranging human resource Training and development method. For example, even the excellent employee might find it difficult to achieve high performance without good preparation well-suited with organizational goals and the work itself, and some ignoring the importance of work-life balance which make the staff have difficulty in dealing with the work and their life. human resource management strategic

Performance appraisal concerned with determining how well employees are doing their job, communicating that information to employees, agreeing on new objectives and establishing a plan for performance improvement.( Raymond J.Stone, 2007 P295) It is to communicate organizational norms or culture so that employees internalize the organization's value. Before the HR manage acted a role of police, only have responsible for finding the mistakes. Strategic human resource management is concerned more on the overall appraisal management, which includes performance plans, assessments, evaluation, feedbacks incentives and so on. Pay more attention to performance feedback and incentives, to ensure that increasing employee performance as well as achieve a better organization performance which make the organization more competitive.

Employee wage is a serious fragment of strategic HRM. A systematic approach to remuneration will lead to reduction of the level of subjectivity and an increase in the likelihood of a company attracting, keeping and inspiring fit employees and gaining a competitive advantage. If the systematic approach to remuneration is not used the business may have trouble in controlling cost - effectiveness, legal compliance, pay equity, the relationship between pay and performance, and whether its remuneration program supports its business strategy.( Raymond J.Stone, 2007 P466)

Finally, in this more and more competitive market, the organization faces many challenges to survive and develop. Those challenges will affect change in organizational strategy. To response those challenges, strategic human resources manager must approach the recruitment and selection process from a strategic perspective. Recruitment and selection strategies and policies must integrate within both strategic HRM and organizational strategies. From the above it's clear that people will continue to play key roles, and strategic HRM is going to play a very important role in business world today. Managing a business human resources in a way that serves the overall benefit of the business well, overcoming challenges and getting huge profit, that's all the strategic human resource management is all about.

Bibliography

1. Researchomatic, Human Recourse Management Function, http://www.researchomatic.com/Hrm-Function-143700.html( Accessed May , 7 , 2014).

2. SHRM, Human recourse strategy https://www.shrm.org/about/foundation/products/Documents/HR%20Strategy%20EPG-%20Final%20Online.pdf (accessed May 7, 2014)

3. Introduction to Business. Pride, Hughes, Kapoor. 11th edition. Pages 313-396.

4. http://intellectualcapitalconsulting.blogspot.co.uk/2008_12_01_archive.html

5. Explaining And Examining Strategic Human Resource Management http://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/examining-strategic-human-resource-management-business-essay.php (Accessed May 8, 2014)

6. Human Resource Management. Raymond J.Stone, 2007 (Page 35) (Page 295) (Page 466). Human resources management for public and nonprofit organizations

7. Pynes Joan. 1st edition. 1997.

8. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. Michael Armstrong. 2006.

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