Human Resource Activities and Strategies free essay sample

Strategic Human Resource Management can effectively organize the workforce by the specific strategy, which employees performance can help to achieve the planned organizational targets, such as increasing revenue or improving the profit margin. Strategic human resource management is human resource management which conducted in a strategic way. The human resource activities are related to the achievement of the organizations overall objectives. Strategies human resource management compared to personnel management is the new way of managing human resources. Topic 1: Define the concept of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM). Then discuss three activities that a Human Resource (HR) manager will undertake, using relevant example to reinforce your discussion. According to Stone (2006), strategic human resources management is â€Å"focuses on the linking of all HR activities with the organization’s strategic objectives†, â€Å"strategic HRM objectives must accurately reflect the strategic objectives and values of the organization,† and â€Å"HR objectives, policies and plans must be judged by how well they help achieve the organization’s strategic business objectives. We will write a custom essay sample on Human Resource Activities and Strategies or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page As we know a strategy is a step-by-step plan of action prepared by an organization and it aims to achieve its plans so that to make sure its success and survival. Human resources strategies is the step-by-step plan of action to achieve its defined corporate mission and objectives by an organization doing employs, utilizes or manages, develops, and deploys its human resources. Furthermore, HRM strategies must reflect the strategic objectives and values of the organization, be taken into account in organizational strategies (and vice versa), support culture, limate, and organizational process to attract and retain good staff, identify the organization’s competencies and match people to these and sustain and build organizational commitment. (Stone, 2011) HRM strategies is aim to support the organization’s business strategies and focus on what line management sees as the main business issues. Only then can HRM activities be clearly related to the direction of the business. (Stone, 2011) â€Å"HRM involves the acquisition, development, reward and motivation, maintenance and departure of an organization’s human resources. Certain key HRM activities must be undertaken to satisfy there aims: each activity is interrelated and together they represent the core of HRM. † (Stone, 2011) HRM activities including: job analysis, human resource planning, recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, human resource development, career planning and development, managing diversity, health and safety, employee motivation, compensation and benefits and employee relations and industrial relations. (Patrick Gary, 2011) For a human resource manager, all of the human resources management activities are important and should be undertake and consider deeply in SHRM. Each activity plays a different role in strategies human resources management, and the human resource manager will undertake it when faced different situation, now choice job analysis as an example. Job analysis defines â€Å"a job in term of specific tasks and responsibilities and identifies the abilities, skills, knowledge and qualifications needs to perform it successfully. The products of job analysis are job description (describe the job) and job specifications (describe the type of person needed for the job). (Stone, 2011) This HRM activity is really important because it stand for a basis beginning view for other HRM activities, for example, human resources manager can use job analysis to know which duties should grouped together and considered a job, and how to set up a job and help employee enhanced their performance. An example from Woolworths Limited is Woolworths Limited is one of the largest employers in Australasia, with more than 191,000 team members working in stores, support offices and distribution centre across Australia and New Zealand. Retailing is a highly people-focused business which is why recruiting and retaining great mployees is critical to their success. They care passionately about their people and are committed to helping every employee realize their potential. Each year they invest millions of dollars in training and education programs to enable their employees to develop their careers within the company. Despite the large number of employees, but they have a clear distribution of responsibilities. Working at Woolworths is not just about working in stores. Their business is at the cutting edge of IT development, logistics and supply chain management, as well as construction, property management, legal, finance, HR, buying and marketing. Regarding to different job, they have different requirement from ability, skills, knowledge and qualification, in the perspective of job analysis, their HR manager achieve high successful in this part. (Woolworths, 2007) Other human resources management activities that HR manager will undertake can be Human resource development activities. â€Å"Human resource development activities focus on the acquisition of the attitudes, skills and knowledge required for employees to learn how to perform their job, improve their performance, prepare themselves for more senior positions and achieve their career goal. Taken those activities can enhance knowledge, skills competitiveness for employee or organizational, also make capacity to adjust and change. In addition, that is the organization expected in wellbeing of its employees. (Joyce, 2003) An example will be taking from JB Hi-fi Limited. JB hi-fi has developed appropriate policies and guidelines to assist employees in applying the code in practice. They require their employee treating customers, the public and fellow employees with honesty, courtesy and respect, respecting and safeguarding the property of customers, JB Hi-Fi and fellow workers, maintaining confidentiality of all customers, JB Hi-Fi or other parties’ information gained through our work, performing their duties, as best they can, taking into account our skills, experience, qualifications and position, doing our jobs in a safe, responsible and effective manner, respecting personal and sensitive information in accordance with Privacy Legislation, ensuring our personal business and financial interests do not conflict with our duty to JB Hi-Fi, working within JB Hi-Fi’s policies and rules and obeying the law. (JB Hi-Fi, 2007) As we know Australia is one of the most culturally diverse countries around the world. The HRM activities of manage diversity will be undertake by HR manager when this situation happened. â€Å"Learning to manage diversity and suc cessfully integrate Australia’s multicultural population into workforce to maximize the contribution of all employees represents a special challenge to HR managers. † (Stone, 2011) According to research on an online survey, there are near 25 percent of population come from non-English-speaking background in Australia. No doubt it is a great challenge for a HR manager. To fit in with the needs of the multicultural society and the HR manager needs to build up new multicultural HR policies. Also, HR manager should be consider in advance what kind of problems will occur when the process at work with employees, such as did the employees understand clearly what he said, will they make mistake because they misunderstanding, and because poor communication makes industrial accidents and workplace tensions some problems and so on, they should try to fix those problem in advance and reduce risks to ensure do not make trouble for company’s profits. An example of this would be how ANZ approaches diversity management. ANZ creating a diverse and inclusive workplace for their employees. They taking response both for employees and organization, they esteem an individual’s gender, background, age, disability or sexuality as an asset is essential if they are to attract the best people, innovate, identify new business opportunities and grow in their region. In 2008, ANZ increased the number of women in management position, continued to reduce the pay differential between male and female employees, made strong progress in implementing the 26 commitments in their Disability Action Plan to improve the way they value and support people with disabilities, also employed more than 106 indigenous trainees in their Australian branch network and reduced their Lost Time Injury Frequency. They use their manage diversity activities to achieve their strategic objectives and clearly related to the direction of the business. (ANZ, 2008) Conclusion: Overall, HRM strategic is part of human resources management, and it is one of the functional strategies to support the organization’s business strategies, and play essential role in an organization. Strategic HRM focuses on the linking of all HR activities with the organization’s strategic objectives and the HR manager should related all the HRM activities to the strategic HRM, and try best to achieve organization’s objectives. Reference list: ANZ (2008), Shareholder Review, ‘People’, p. 18. John Bratton (2003), Human Resource Management 4th Edition chapter 2 JB Hi-Fi Limited (2007), Appendix 4E Preliminary Final Report . For the Year Ended 30 June 2007. ACN 093 220 136 Joyce, K. E (2003), Lesson for employers from â€Å"Fortune’s 100 best†, Business Horizons, 46(2), pp. 77-84. Patrick M. Wright Gary C. McMahan (2011), Journal of Management: Theoretical Perspectives for Strategic Human Resource Management Journal of Management Raymond J. Stone (2011), Human resource management 7th edition, pp. 11-13. pp. 25. Woolworths Limited http://www. woolworthslimited. com. au/phoenix. zhtml? c=144044p=ww-working Strategic-Human-Resource. com http://www. strategic-human-resource. com/strategic-human-resource-definition. html Stone, R. (2006), Human resource management (5th edition. ). Milton: John Wiley Sons Australia.