New Year Resolutions of a Manager - National HRD Network

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HR Strategy: Focus and Integration The term Strategy has derived from the Greek word, "strategos", which means the art of general. Strategy is more used in Militaries, the military generalship and process of setting the war objectives and achieving them is called as strategy. Later, Strategy has been adopted by the Industries, Business and Management. The top-level management of a Business organization, will set a long-term objective or a direction for business (which is also called as mission and vision) to direct themselves and their teams through this process they have to follow certain guidelines throughout the organization (Which is also called as Business Policy) and the top-level management will decide on how the available scare resources are utilized properly to achieve the desired objectives (called as resources allocation). Business Strategy includes three important components, Long - term objective (Mission and Vision), Business Policy and Resources allocation, taking of these three decisions, is called as setting the strategy or strategy formulation. Over a period of time, the firm will implement them and execute them through out the organization, which is called as strategy implementation, and the effectiveness of strategy and its success rate is measured, which is called as strategy evaluation. If the desired results are achieved the company will continue to implement the same strategy when the environmental changes, competition, technology, international sphere have no change, else it will modify them and implement a more effective strategy to reach the desired results. Though the Business strategy has gained wide acceptance across the industries, the companies, especially the new-age businesses and knowledge companies have been focusing on functional level strategies like HR strategy, Marketing Strategy and Finance Strategy. This article enlightens the readers to understand what a HR Strategy is and its importance. Can a human resources strategy helps? Human Resources strategy is a new emerging concept in the business world. Though the concept of strategy has successfully applied to various business functions and levels, the application of strategy to Human resources has failed because of ever demanding change. The environmental changes like globalization, technological changes, legal, regulatory, mergers and acquisitions, etc., have not made the consistency of application of strategy concept to human resources. As the corporate strategy aims at two major functions, focus on Business objectives and integration with the business units and functions likewise, Human resources also adopt the focus and integration concepts for developing an HR Strategy. To define on what to focus and with whom to integrate the following four principles strategy development process has to be considered: 1. Framework 2. Statement 3. Analysis and 4. Planning Framework: For developing a HR Strategy the firm should adopt a logical framework for understanding and defining the Strategy. The most often used framework for HR Strategy is strategy formulation framework which is a rationalist's perspectives. The approach for developing HR strategy starts with "What we do must be relevant to our corporate objectives"? This question helps the HR personnel know the purpose of organization and their purpose of existence in the system. In developing any corporate strategy based on the strategic formulation framework addresses three key strategic decisions. 1. Where are we now? 2. Where do we want to be? 3. How do we get there? In formulating an HR Strategy, the following two Human Resources functions should be added to the above framework. 1. What kinds of people skills will be needed to manage and sustain the organization in the future to meet strategic business objectives? 2. What human resources programmes and initiatives will be needed to deal effectively with the external pressures and demands affecting the organization? Eshwar Kumar Mittapalli As focus figures strongly in the strategic process the need to clarify areas of strategic human resources responsibility is broken down into four key dimensions. l Culture l Organization l People and l Systems Considering the above corporate strategy framework, HR functional dimension and strategic human resources responsibilities we can define HR Strategy as "A co-ordinated set of actions aimed at integrating an organization's culture, organization, people and systems". Statement: HR Mission Mission statement is a statement which answers the questions what we are? Where we would like to reach? How we would like to do the business? And how we are going to service our stakeholders. This mission statement is an organization direction. The question how we are going to serve our stakeholders describe what organization is going to give for the financial, man power and mind-power services offered to the company. In majority of the Mission statements the company will add the statements like "we provide the proper work culture and facilities to the employees and take proper safety measures of work". But, is this the just objective for the entire Human Resources or does this serve the purpose of HR policies and objectives and future focus? The human resources function has to be clear as to where the organization is trying to go and then consider the implications for its own activities. In this context, American writer George Ordiorne refers to the driving forces of the business as a means of providing human resource direction. Consequently, if the organization is "technology driven", the need to recruit, develop, compensate and retain appropriately qualified engineers and scientists will be the driving strategy of the human resources function. Alternatively, other organizations see the method of distribution as the driving force. These are frequently sales organizations, Eshwar Kumar Mittapalli, is a Faculty member in ICFAI National College, Warnagal, You can reach him at eshwar.chinna@gmail.com | HRD News Letter | January 2007, Vol.22, Issue:10 10|
and they often rely on door-to-door sales representatives with high levels of motivation, enthusiasm and persistence to achieve success. The recruitment of parttime staff or amateurs is vital, as is the need to train them quickly. Apart from commission-based incentive schemes little provision is made for high staff benefits or for security. So the human resources function in this type of organization is again able to take its lead from the underlying business strategy. The Human Resources Mission statement should answer the simple questions like; l "What is the people contribution of our business?" l "Why does our function exist?" l "Who are our customers?" l "What do our customers buy?" (Not to be confused with what you are selling.) l "What needs to happen in order for our function to be judged effective?" Answering the above questions specifically considering the current and future issues of Organization, Human Resources, Career development and Competences help in defining an appropriate Human Resources Strategy. Analysis: Conducting a rigorous SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) clarifies the current status of the function, the organization and its external operating environment. This is a process that should be undertaken on a regular basis in order to redefine the function's mission statement and to provide a quantitative and qualitative human resource input to the strategic planning process. Like most good techniques, the SWOT analysis is simple to understand, apply and convert into positive action. Given the complexity of forces now affecting organizations, it is particularly important to monitor the external environment. By appointing an individual or a group of managers the HR should monitor the internal and external environment and to research the possible organizational implications. Line managers should be coopted into this process as it helps to generate new issues, understanding, ownership and commitment to any subsequent human resource activities. The need to assess the future demands from the external environment and the organization is vital. However, the process also involves a lot of internal analysis. For example, do you have the right skills? Has your team got management credibility? On what matters does the organization consult you? Having completed this status report the human resources function is then able to engage in the next step of strategy formulation. Planning: The need to generate some strategic human resource options and then to make strategic choices is how the rationalist framework progresses. Yet it poses a structuring issue. How do we develop, shape and order our options and choices? This can be resolved by focusing on our four dimensions: culture, organization, people and systems. Classic personnel activity has tended to cover the areas of people and organization, but even in these areas its actions have often lacked integration so that we tend to alter remuneration structures without reference to organization structure or people capability. The result is often a lack of coordination and direction. Culture is an interesting, and to some people, controversial inclusion. Organization culture - its measurement, monitoring and management - provides the potential to enhance organizational performance. While the difficulties and academic arguments over whether or not culture can be changed remain, the fact is that more and more chief executives are receptive to the concept of corporate culture as a possible source of competitive advantage. Schein has argued that corporate culture is something that needs to be understood and managed as a key aspect of human resources. Legge has termed the use of culture by personnel people to gain power a "deviant innovation". She sees this use of culture as an attempt by the human resources professional to change the basis on which organizational success and the human resources function's contribution to it are evaluated. This requires the human resources professional to act as a link between individual and corporate values. What is also interesting in this area is the traditional suspicion and sometimes hostility displayed by our profession towards diagnostic tools, such as attitude or organization climate surveys. This is puzzling, for such devices provide a major opportunity for the function to make a significant contribution to the functioning of the organization in a quantitative form. On the other hand, many human resources functions have not had very much to say about systems, outside traditional areas such as appraisal or management development. Few human resources functions have an input on systems such as those involving major information technology investments. Typically, the reaction from the IT professional might be: "What would they know about it?" The fact is we probably know a whole lot more than any of the other functions including finance. Surely the real cost of information technology investment is not the hardware but the costs of training people to use it effectively. How many IT systems suffer from serious under capacity because of inadequate training? Yet somehow this kind of debate only ever happens in a small select group of companies. The objective of trying to develop a human resources strategy is to put human resource issues such as this on the boardroom agenda. In examining these four dimensions it is possible to develop a series of strategic continuums which do in fact generate a series of options in terms of human resource activities. This merely provides some of the more obvious options, whereas an individual company analysis, set against the corporate objectives, will generate significantly more. Clearly some key choices have to be made. Once line management and the human resources function have followed through this process it is then possible to set some broad human resources objectives. These broad objectives then need to be broken down into the specialist areas such as remuneration, recruitment, appraisal and training and development. The recruitment choices may be whether the organization promotes only from within whether it goes to the external market. Does the organization have narrow or wide career paths? In the compensation area, does the organization promote high or low base salaries, few incentives or many incentives? Does the organization afford limited or high employment security? By following through this particular approach, each specialist function is required to set operational objectives which are consistent with the human resources mission statement and objectives and ultimately the corporate strategy. It should also ensure that remuneration programmes are consistent with career planning and development activities and so on. Conclusion: One of the major responsibilities of the toplevel management is to highlight the corporate mission, vision, objectives, values, principles and culture throughout the organization. To inculcate this in the teams, the company will orient the new employees through training programmes and to continue the same the companies will circulate internal newsletters throughout the organization. When these teams come to the execution of their roles, responsibilities and duties and taking the decisions (Longterm or short-term) much more gaps will be found between the functional level strategy and the corporate strategy. The HR Strategy is also not exempt from the above. The HR strategy should focus on the Business Objectives and HR Objectives and it should integrate with the Culture, Organization, People and System. u H | HRD News Letter | January 2007, Vol.22, Issue:10 11|
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Page 4 and 5: HRD NEWSLETTER Vol - 22 January 200
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Page 8 and 9: INTRODUCTION HR manager can play a
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Page 14 and 15: Competency Mapping - Catch Word In
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Page 18 and 19: ICTs And Family Life The old order
Page 20 and 21: Appraisals Appraised Annual Apprais
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