Managing People for Competitive Advantage - Essay Example

HRM is a complex interlinked process amongst activities that are significantly affected by external factors like legal, economic, political, geographical, social, technological, and global environment, and these activities are managed, designed, and changed accordingly. The most important HR activities are Strategic HRM, equal employment opportunity, staffing, talent supervision, and progress, determining total incentives, risk management, workers’ protection, and employee-labor relationship.

Core competency offers an organization a competitive edge by creating differentiation and generating high value from their competitors. Some of the renowned global organizations like FedEx, Dell, and Nordstrom focus on HR. Special focus on HR helped them attain special strategic values. Administrative, operational, employee advocate, and strategic roles are performed by the HR department. The high degree of alteration in the role is observed in the process of traditional HRM and new forms of HRM. This new form, SHRM (Strategic HRM) creates value for the organization. If we cast light on the two different processes, HRM and SHRM, it is evident that in traditional HRM, the administrative role constitutes 50%, whereas the operational role comprises 30% and the strategic role comprises 20% of the processes involved. While in SHRM, the main stress is on the strategic role which constitutes 60%, operational role 30%, and the administrative role a mere 10% of the work. The priority is observable in figure 1. The changes that occurred in the HR roles contributed vastly to mergers and acquisitions, structural changes, and staffing needs. It also helps in anticipation of the retirement of employees, workforce expansion, and total reward system which includes compensation, incentives, and appraisal of employees. In this way, HRM generates value for the organization.

Many large nationwide banks have automated helplines to provide customer support for banking problems. In contrast, many small and medium-sized community banks are still providing humanitarian assistance to their customers and their HRM policy is helping to develop strong personal relationship management. Working in such a mid-size firm, I experienced management which has been able to build a strong relationship by addressing employees’ problems individually. I received assistance from the HRM whenever I faced any technical problem. Despite some strictness about absenteeism, flexibility in work timings was present which enabled an employee to adjust his schedule accordingly and at times attend personal problems.

From my viewpoint, each and every manager is an HR manager within an organization. It can be a sales manager, drafting supervisor, chief nurse of a hospital, dean of a college, and an accounting manager. Organizational success depends on its effectiveness. The reason is that all the positions mentioned above have some staff working under them and the performance of their subordinates fall on their shoulder. An organization depends on its skills in managing its subordinates. It is an unrealistic expectation that they will have knowledge about the finer nuances of a strategic role, equal employment opportunity regulation, or how to design compensation, appraisal, and benefits systems. This is the reason for the existence of the HR department, as it is specialized in the above activities which sales managers, drafting supervisors, head nurses, college deans, and accounting supervisors cannot perform independently.

Human capital is the most important aspect of an organization and it requires a balance between the treatment of the people and long-term effect on the bottom line of the company. So, the HRM course provides a very fast-growing career option with lucrative opportunities. The number and prospects of HR management jobs are expected to increase in the future. It also provides vast scope for jobs in recruitment, learning and development, performance evaluation, industrial relations, and consulting arena of the HR field.

Not only quality knowledge base, but real-life situation handling skills, personal grooming, case study solving, and soft skill development is also expected from this course to incorporate professional qualities within a future HR manager. My contribution to the learning class will be related to my individual experiences in my workplace. Sharing them with the class shall bring up new aspects to be considered and new solution measures to be implemented by the future Human Resource Managers. The most important thing in HRM is effective communication skills. As an HR Executive or HR Manager, the main part of the communication should be that of a listener in order to perceive the situation clearly and investigate the problem for arriving at the solution. He needs to be empathic towards the grievances of the employees so that an acceptable solution can be provided to them.