Introduction
Background
Designing a viable human resource (HR) strategy and promoting sustainable human resource management (HRM) is an essential requirement that any company operating in the realm of the global market must comply with.
Goals
The paper is aimed at evaluating the HRM approach adopted by the H manager of Company X. By identifying the current trends and addressing the benefits and the drawbacks of the policy implemented by the organization, one is likely to locate the patterns in the contemporary HR tools development, the problem areas that need to be addressed, and the possible solutions for the emergent problems.
Questions
The interview will incorporate three questions, which the HR manager will be invited to respond to:
- What tools do you use to measure strategic HRM for its effectiveness?
- What inconsistencies between theory and practice can you define?
- How do you define value measurement tools and evaluate the overall performance rates?
Strategic HRM Approach
RBV as the Key Tool
When defining the course of the contemporary HRM progress, one must mention the RBV theory as the foundation for the existing assessment practices. According to the existing definition, the RBV framework implies that the competitive advantage of the entrepreneurship should rise after investing in its human resources. The interview indicated that the HR executive has been using the RBV theory as the key to developing a coherent evaluation system for years.
However, according to the executive, the theory under analysis has been failing the organization for quite a while, triggering a string of unsuccessful project outcomes. Seeing that the reasons for the issue to occur varied from the lack of control over the team and the processes in it to the members misunderstanding their roles and responsibilities, it can be assumed that the RBV theory has nearly worn out its welcome in the environment of the 2016 global economy. The issues faced by the executive are, in fact not as singular as they might seem – studies show that there has been a surge in the number of HRM measurement tools (Lussier & Handon, 2014).
Nevertheless, the company managed to locate the HRM measurement strategy that works quite well in the target environment. As the respondent explained in the interview, choosing the tool that would help evaluate the effects of the HRM approach on different domains of the firm’s performance was the most challenging task. Indeed, it is essential to make sure that the tool in question could help address the emergent issues such as the lack of motivation among the staff members, their acquisition of new skills, etc. (Malik & Rowley, 2015).
Current Dents in the Theoretical Framework
As it has been stressed above, the abundance of theories concerning the creation of the specified value makes the process of determining the latter very complicated. However, the emergent theories do not address all the issues currently raised in economics fully, thus, causing even greater confusion. The interviewed manager states that the Universal Approach theory has been used successfully as the basic tool (Miller & Gordon, 2014).
Performance Effectiveness
As the respondent explained, the measurement of the performance process demands that the rates of the staff’s performance in the previous year should be compared to those of the current year. The approach described by the interviewee has gained impressive popularity due to its simplicity, yet it also provides a rather commonplace report. Instead of identifying problems in the design of the organizations, it makes the HR personnel glance over the possible reasons for concern. Thus, the introduction of a more feasible strategy is required.
Value Measurement
The process of determining value also seems to be rather complicated for the HR manager, especially since the organization entered the environment of the global economy. According to the responses provided during the interview, the current need for the experts in the designated domain was considered an essential external value, whereas the significance of the above expert for the company was viewed as the crucial internal value. Although the test requires a combined analysis of both indices, it is the internal value that defines the final decision made by the HR managers. The reasons for the given choice are rather evident; the company needs to invest in its staff so that the employees could become loyal to the organization and strive for its well-being.
Another parameter that will have to be incorporated into the process of job evaluation, the pay survey rates should be mentioned. To be more exact, the statistics related to the pay survey rates and the information about the market pay line will have to be incorporated into the analysis (Armstrong, 2015). To carry out the latter, one will have to create a scatter plot that will display the tendency for the position in question to be either in or out of demand in the designated market (Mathis, Jackson, & Valentine, 2013).
Employee Satisfaction
Evaluating the metrics designed for the performance evaluation in the context of the organization in question, one must give the HR managers credit for not overlooking the issues that typically pass unnoticed in other specimens of global entrepreneurship. To be more exact, the emphasis on promoting the change in the organizational behavior of the employees deserves to be brought up as a crucial part of the metrics. Studies show that assessment should not be viewed as a tedious procedure or a threat to the career promotion by the staff members (Bukhalter, 2015). Quite on the contrary, it is important to inform the employees about the significance of change as a crucial step forward in their personal and professional development.
Measuring Effectiveness
The effectiveness of each staff member can be measured with the help of an assessment system. A set of tests will have to be designed to evaluate the progress of the members of the entrepreneurship. The tests in question will have to address the quality of the services provided and the professional qualities of the staff, such as the negotiation skills, the conflict-solving techniques, etc.
Reward System
In the course of the interview, the HR manager pointed to an essential detail that defined the success of the entire project. To make sure that the staff members will accept the changes to the company’s HR strategy design positively and should be willing to improve the quality of their performance, one will also have to consider the introduction of incentives, including both financial rewards and public acknowledgment of the staff’s progress.
While most companies realize that the former has a very high significance for the employees, the latter is given ridiculously little attention. The importance of the reward system can hardly be overrated in the given scenario, as the HR manager explained. Serving as the boost for the employees’ confidence and enthusiasm, it is bound to contribute to faster acquisition of the necessary behavioral patterns (Bukhalter, 2015).
Corporate Social Responsibility
The strategy chosen for reinforcing the quality of the staff’s performance was, in fact, the first step toward planting the principles of CSR into its HR strategy design. One might argue that the principles of CSR have not been yet incorporated into the framework of the HR strategy. While the specified statement is technically true, the premises for the development of CSR in the workplace have already been created.
Seeing that the HR manager is currently promoting a different set of values that the staff members should comply with and an entirely new management approach based on the transformative leadership theory, it can be assumed that the behavioral patterns of the staff members can be changed. Particularly, the specified leadership model will provide the staff members with a proper behavioral model that they can follow so that their behavioral patterns could be changed. The decision-making framework, in its turn, will also be altered once a new set of values is introduced to the employees. With a positive image promoted by the company in mind, the employees, will the ability to accept new values and ethics, thus, considering the basic postulates of CSR to be their guidelines for a successful performance. Thus, the significance of corporate social responsibility is very high for the further development of the organization, as the HR manager admitted in the interview.
Conclusion
The outcomes of the interview point clearly to the fact that the company under analysis has made a big leap in its attempts to enhance the staff’s performance and introduce a more coherent HRM approach. More importantly, the firm’s HR manager has put a very strong emphasis on the concept of employee satisfaction, therefore, creating premises for the promotion of the concept of CSR into the existing set of HR strategies. Although there is still a long way to go, the interview has shown that entrepreneurship and its HR managers are on the right track in their endeavors at improving the performance of the firm.
Reference List
Armstrong, M. (2015). Armstrong’s handbook of reward management practice: Improving performance through reward. London, UK: Kogan Page Publishers.
Bukhalter, J. N. (2015). Maximizing commerce and marketing strategies through micro-blogging. New York, NY: IGI Global.
Lussier, R. N., & Handon, L. R. (2014). Human resource management: Functions, applications, and skill development. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Malik, A., & Rowley, C. (2015). Business models and people management in the Indian IT industry: From people to profits. New York, NY: Routledge.
Mathis, R. J., Jackson, J. H., & Valentine, S. R. (2013). Human resource management. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
Miller, V. D., & Gordon, M. E. (2014). Meeting the challenge of human resource management: A communication perspective. New York, NY: Routledge.