Human Resource Strategy, Organizational Vision, Goals - Essay Example

Human Resource Strategy and Organizational Vision and Goals Introduction In the increasingly changing environment of global competitiveness, globalization has given a new perspective to the business which needs to look beyond the local interests and operate business on a wider platform based on common goals and universal value system. Managerial leadership has become imperative to facilitate more accommodating approach to the changing dynamics of the organizational culture and management through integrated approach that promotes collective vision of the organization and provides the necessary impetus to the employees to strive towards it. Since employees are the pillar of the organization, the role of human resource management becomes crucial in the employment of its workforce. In the emerging challenges of the changing business equations, when the labour deployment is undergoing quantitative and qualitative transformations, HR strategy needs to be redefined to create versatility and flexibility of the contemporary work environment. Human resource strategy and organizational vision and goals The rapid globalization and technological advancement of the recent time has greatly revolutionized the labour processes. With the advent of technology, the collective production has become more complex. There is a significant paradigm shift in the technical division of labour from direct to indirect model that is focused on regulation, administration, improvement and innovation to meet the challenges of the changing time. Human resource being central to the organizational visions and goals, HR leadership initiatives become crucial factor for creating and organizing an effective workforce that is able to make valuable contribution of promoting a sense of togetherness and collective responsibility that reflects in the increased output and improved performance outcome of the organizational goals and objectives. Julie Beardwell and Tim Claydon, in their book have asserted that the theoretical concept of human resource management has become ‘fuzzy concept’ with abstract empiricism and needs to be looked from a wider perspective of providing the invaluable human capital that can meet the challenges of the rapid globalization and advancing technology. (Beardwell, Claydon, 2007). With the global competition becoming increasingly stiff, the jobs specifications are becoming less rigid and changing the overall perspective of job criteria and employment. The compulsions of the present times require versatility in the working force. Individuals and firms must embrace the culture of multi skilled professionals that are able to meet the challenges with efficiency and unmatched proficiency. The fundamental HR strategy takes into account the following modules for managing successful organization workforce. HR Strategic paradigms Workforce as a stimulant to organizational goals and objectives The workforce is the backbone of an organization and the HR strategy needs to develop its unique organizational culture with well defined vision and mission statements which are effectively communicated to their employees. The shared vision promotes better understanding among the employees and provides impetus for improved performance and easy changeover. Organizational culture is developed over a period of time with shared learning and becomes an intrinsic part of the work methodology characterized by the stability provided by the system and the integrated approach of the workers. As employees are very important part of organizational culture, their welfare is an intrinsic part of corporate responsibility. In the era of advancing technology and rapid globalization, it is imperative that the workforce is encouraged to share mutual knowledge and ideas but they must also be involved into collective decision making to work towards common goals. Leadership initiatives In an article from Leader to Leader Journal, Frances Hesselbein has said that ‘Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do’ (No. 41, 2006). Hence effective leaders are versatile and are adept at exploiting the potential of their followers or workers as per the demands of the situation. A well developed leadership within the organization would facilitate integration of diverse ideologies and personal conflicts and help inspire and motivate each of them to work together to produce a cohesive output representing the team’s unique objectives and goals. Leaders are not pre defined and molded into certain stature. They are people who may be in the position to influence and motivate others to strive towards common goals with renewed enthusiasm. Leadership qualities and traits are not always inherent but they can be cultivated and polished to achieve exemplary leadership. Few of the important traits that a leader must have are: vision; good communication; adaptability towards change; creativity and initiative; positive attitude and commitment; confidence and belief; integrity and ethics; compassion and caring nature. Need for retention and reward system In the highly cut throat business, the organization needs to create appropriate climate that inculcates confidence and mutual trust building. The encouraging and incentive driven work environment promotes retention of employees and gives the organization better leverage to compete with their rivals. The experienced and motivated workforce is conducive to higher degree of creative inputs and innovative approach which may give a unique positioning to the organizational products and services. HR and Labour market Cultural production signifies construction of collective identities on the basis of cultural diversification and therefore, the platform that promotes this production stresses the importance of technical division of labor that emphasizes the specialized type of labor inputs, required for different level of production. The technical division of labor, therefore, has become more job specific and highly skilled. The cultural production has multidimensional facet that not only contributes towards creating identities and disseminating information and knowledge but it also helps to establish a unique relationship among individual, promoting understanding. Hence, the hierarchal division of labor that needs to conceptualize and produce such cultural production becomes more sophisticated in its approach and complex in production processes. The recent concept of externalization of ‘resources’, through outsourcing has become popular with the organizations that need to concentrate in their core competencies. The contractual workforce serves to decrease the responsibility of the organization towards the people who would be ‘indirectly’ doing their work and at the same time, providing them with the opportunity to improve and improvise their business competencies through state of the art research and development. The strategy helps to provide the company with huge leverage in innovative products and services. Need for new approach in HR Strategy The fast changing global values have necessitated drastic shift in the approach to traditional HR strategy. The increasingly changing pattern of society, which is becoming multicultural in essence, needs to be addressed in the wider application of social imperatives and included in all spheres of public and private business strategy. The businesses must introduce effective strategic goals and managerial controls that are able to address the emerging challenges of the society at large. The new HR strategy, therefore, must take account of the various factors that are intrinsically linked to people. Human resource as proactive human capital The globalization has ushered in a huge database of human capital whose potential needs to be exploited to realize one’s own vision and mission. The contemporary times have redefined the business processes and business houses are becoming less rigid and changing their business and market strategy as per the socio- economic compulsions of the region. The compulsions of the present times require versatility in the work ideology and functioning, thus making it imperative that individuals and firms, embrace the multi-cultural to meet the challenges with efficiency and unmatched proficiency. The workforce must be looked as resource that can be tapped to improve and improvise the performance of the organization in the fiercely competitive business setting. The previous theories of management leadership was rigid in its perspectives and believed in imposing rules and regulation without taking into consideration the factors of human failings and human emotions. The new managerial leadership style is more labor friendly and believes in developing joint goals and objectives that are mutually beneficial, thus fostering mutual beliefs and better understanding of each others value system. Training and development The demands of the present time, has brought the two schools of training and development into sharp focus. ‘The hard model is based on notions of tight strategic control, and an economic model of man according to Theory X, while the soft model is based on control through commitment and Theory Y’ (JMS1, 1997). The ‘hard’ approach relies on the managerial and administrative strategies to effectively deal with the changing business environment. The implementation of strategic control plays major role in deciding job description and person specifications in labor deployment. The soft approach, on the hand is based commitment on the capitalization of human resource with relevant input from the department of training and development. The circumstances, therefore, demand a mix of the two approaches in the labor deployment. Strategic controls with flexible approach are need of the hour. Christensen and Raynor say that companies fail because they tend to follow the theoretical models and assumptions, without making any efforts to alter those models to suit their parameters and value system (2003). The management needs to accept the challenge of creating a cohesive and encouraging atmosphere so that the workers could get effective learning environment. They are provided with a wider scope for professional growth in the area of core competencies. They are also responsible for advocating and nurturing a high standard of ethics and quality work while fostering a good relationship amongst them which includes the administrators, management and entire customer base. Strategies and policies must incorporate the changing nature of the society that is increasingly becoming multicultural and focus more training and development of human resource to meet the challenges of the global competition. The HR department, through judicious approach of employing people and upgrading their skills to suit the changing business environment, becomes critical to creating congenial work atmosphere that motivates and inspires others to improve their performance and achieve organization’s goals with vision and innovation. Diversity The changing values necessitate development of a new social order which would not only embrace multi cultural values but help forge a universal bond that would transcend race and religious boundaries. Managing diversity, thus, has become a crucial issue with the businesses which needs to be addressed urgently if they want to maintain competitive edge over their rivals. According to Macionis ‘Between 1820 (when the government began keeping track of immigration) and 2003, some 69 million people have added their ways of life to the mix of cultures in the United States … we must move beyond shared cultural patterns to consider the importance of cultural diversity’ (The Basics, chapter 2,). It is, therefore, important that HR leaders look beyond the criteria of race, nationality and color of their employees and include diversity in their core strategy so as to exploit their vast potential. Effective communication and conflict resolution Effective communication helps to foster good relationship and even make friends of the enemies. Artful communication helps to build bridges and improvise situations which could move towards dangerous outcomes. The need to effectively communicate a message at crucial time facilitates linkages that have vast scope of building relationships in areas that may otherwise seem futile. Effective communication must make people understand and inspire them to act on the basis of understanding of the issues. Effective communication is a strong tool for workplace conflict resolutions. “If resolution to a conflict is to end properly, it must begin properly – by negotiating a solvable problem. Therefore, the act of successful conflict resolution begins with the way the problem is examined” (Erickson). Empowerment In the contemporary time, empowerment has become one of the most crucial issues among the masses as it directly influences the welfare of the individuals and the society at large. Empowerment facilitates realization of self worth, instilling self confidence in one’s ability to make independent decisions about themselves, especially with relation to their socio-economic and political decisions. Hence, an empowered person has more options and freedom to transform those choices into concrete action plans for the betterment of self and the society at large. Empowering the workforce promotes mutual trust building as it helps the person to act on the informed choices and make decisions that would not only affect the person himself but would also have significant impact on the working of the organization thus encouraging responsible behavior. Relationship building Sjostrand and Tyrstrup, in one of their article, have argued that managerial leadership needs to be approached as a relational, ongoing social construction process rather than as a single clear cut phenomenon (2001). Indeed, for any organization to expand and succeed, it is crucial that its people are recognized as vital part of its strategy and organizational goals and objectives be interpreted in the context of the changing paradigms of the times. Blanchard and Hersey have developed matrix model of leadership, better known as ‘situational leadership’ that analyzes the situation and then appropriate style of leadership is applied (Blanchard and Hersey). Hence effective leaders are versatile and are adept at exploiting the potential of their followers or workers as per the demands of the situation. The empirical relationship of leaders and the emerging changes are critical for a given situation and therefore, good managerial leadership demands a better informed leader who is capable of taking initiative and at the same time, he is also able to inculcate confidence in his people to move forward. Employees’ rights and collective bargaining The socio-political paradigms and the federal legislation with regard to employment and employees’ rights have become extremely important. The organizations need to conform with the state laws of employment and corporate governance gives them an opportunity to promote transparency in their work culture and look after the welfare of their workforce through affirmative actions. The currents times have made it imperative for managerial leadership to promote diversity in their workforce and incorporate dynamic HR strategy that would be able to adapt to the changing equations of the business compulsions and help give the organization a competitive advantage. The concept of ‘unions’ in the 1980s has given a great impetus to the employees to fight for their rights. The capability of unions to generate collective bargaining system through large scale membership within their unions has been a good measure against the monopoly of the big corporate houses. It gives a fair chance to the erred employee and the new HR strategy encourages the union to promote membership so that management can also resolve contentious issues with them. Conclusion It is important to realize that the compulsions of emerging globally competitive business environment is having an effective human resource strategy that creative practices to overcome the challenges of fast changing technologies and dynamics of economy to provide competitive advantage in the global business. The world has shrunk into a global village and one must accept the challenges of developing new strategies and models of HR management that incorporate multi-cultural work environment. The human resource strategy has become the most critical factor that develops the highly indigenous team of human capital that helps to provide the organization with a competitive advantage that is unique. One can therefore conclude that effective HR strategy is an important source of competitive advantage. (2470) Reference Julie, Beardwell and Claydon, Tim (2007). Human Resource Management: A contemporary Approach. 5th Edition. Prentice Hall. Christensen, Clayton M and Ranor, Michael E. (2003). Why hard-nosed executives should care about management theory. Harvard Business Review. September. pp. 67-74. Erickson, Milton H. Available from: http://www.conflictresolutionusa.com/conflict_resolution_process.htm> [18 January, 2009]. Hersey, Blanchard. 12manage.com. Situational Leadership. Available from: [18 January, 2009]. Hesselbein. Frances. (2006). Moving Peter Drucker’s Works and Wisdom Around the World. Leader to Leader Journal, No. 41, summar 2006. Available from: [18 January, 2009]. Soft and Hard Models of Human Resource Management: A Reappraisal. (1997). Journal of Management Studies 34 (1), 53–73. Sjostrand, S and Tyrstrup, M. (2001). Recognized and unrecognized managerial leadership, in invisible management – The social construction of leadership. S Sjostrand, J Sandberg and M Tyrstrup (eds.). Thomson. pp 1-27. Read More