WHAT IS THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN BOOTS (WATERLOO)?
WHAT IS HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (HRM)
It is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of and providing direction for the people who work in the organization is called Human Resource Management (HRM). Line managers also can perform human resource management.
Administration and training, employee motivation, benefits, communication, wellness, organizational development, safety, performance management, hiring, compensation, these all issues are related to people and dealt by organizational function named human resource management (HRM).
William R. Tracy, in the Human Resource Glossary defines human resource management as: ‘‘the people that staff and operate an organization…………….as contrasted with the financial and material resources of an organization. The organizational function that deals with the people……”.
HR POLICY
Every members of an organization must follows a format statement of a principle or rule, is called policy. And how to carry out or implement a policy by the members is called procedure. There are differences between policy and procedure. Policies are written statements or rules and procedures are written instructions.
Source: How to identify your organization training needs
By John Mc Connel ‘2004′ (page 15-50)
An organization establishes a system of codified decision which is HR policies. Performance management, employee relations, administrative functions, resource planning are supported by the HR policies. Acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, nature of an organization, procedure of work in the organization, etc are explained and described by HR policies. Management is making decisions about people and then the policies act as the reference points.
Source: A handbook of Human Resource practice, 9th Edition
By Michael Armstrong, 2003. (Page 15)
LITTERATURE REVIEW
WHAT IS STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (SHRM)
There are some branches of human resource management (HRM) and strategic human resource management is one of the branches. Among the present discipline of HRM it is a new branch. People-centred values of HR and corporate strategies are belonged to that SHRM territory.
Source: Int. J. of Human Resource Management 16:5 May 2005 633-659
By Trichy, Fombrun andDevanna (1982), Fombrun, Tichy and Devanna (1984),Miles and Snow (1984),Walton (1985), Schuler and Jackson (1987a,b), Delery and Shaw (2001),Wright et al. (2001).
The SHRM can also be defined in different way. In order to improve business performance and develop organizational culture, competitive advantage, human resource and strategic goals are very important. SHRM of an organization means to take all the decisions according to the strategic view and implement the decisions through recruiting, selecting, training and rewarding.
Source: Int. J. Of Human Resource Management (page 633-659)
How SHRM differs from HRM
HR functions were having increasing awareness for softer people-centred values and hard world of real business in the last two decades. So that to understand how the business is running day to day the HR policies are acting very closely. For those reason standard practices of traditional management of people is preferred less than the strategic management of people by many writers in the late 1980s. Long-term objectives with human resource programmes are focused on by the strategic human resource management (SHRM). In the long run people management programmes are affected by focusing on addressing and solving problems, instead of focusing on internal human resource issues. By giving more priority on business obstacles of outside the human resources we can increase employee productivity if we implement the primary goal of strategic human resources.
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To improve the employee productivity, performance and motivation for the long run the strategic human resource managers need to identify the HR areas where strategies can be implemented primarily. For that human resource management and the top management of a company always need to communicate to be the best strategic human resource management (SHRM).
Wright and Mc Mahan defined strategic human resource management (SHRM) as ‘‘the pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals (1992: 298). Delery and Shaw (2001) think that there are two main differences. By following the SHRM policies now a day the business the businesses are performing highly and this is the reason for the employees becoming the source of sustainable competitive advantage (Lawler, 1992, 1996; Levin, 1995; Pfeiffer, 1998).
Source: Academy of Management Journal 2005, Vol.48, no.1, 135-145
KEY FEATURE OF STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Between organizational strategic aims & the environment and HR policy and practices there is a very important relation.
There are some specific areas where strategic human resource management can be focused:
- Human resource accounting, which attempts to assign value to human resources in an effort to quantify this organizational capacity (Flamholtz, 1971; Frantzreib, Lanau, & Lundberg, 1977),
- Human resource planning (Baird, Meshoulam, & Degive, 1983; Galosy, 1983; Olian & Rynes, 1984; Russ,1982; Stumpf & Hanrahan, 1984),
- Response to a strategic change in the environment (Ellis, 1982)
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?What-is-Strategic-Human-Resource-Management?&id=549585
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Hoofer & Schendel (1978) said, ‘‘competitive advantage encompasses those capabilities, resources, relationships and decisions that permit a firm to capitalize on opportunities and avoid threats within its industry”. But Porter (1985) did not agreed with them, he said, ‘‘by lowering costs, by increasing sources of products a firm can achieved competitive advantage with the help of human resource management. And to achieve the competitive advantage, human resource has to do some activities. And those activities are called strategic human resource management (SHRM).
THE GOALS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF SHRM RESEARCH AIM AND OBJECTIVES
Using the word ‘‘strategic” is very important and different thing for the researchers. Training programmes, selection methods, etc are elaborated in some researches how human resource practices and affect in organization’s performance. International competition became tough for the pressure of human resource and other corporate staffing in 1980s (Dyer & Reeves, 1995). So that organizational activities got much more importance for total quality management (TQM) and reengineering. And all these happened only for implementation of strategic human resource management (SHRM). SHRM always try to discuss about interlinked HR policies than the single HR policies or practices.
Measuring the performance of human resource management (HRM) with the traditional approach, we can achieve only costs and benefits of a single functional area. And adopting the strategic approach of human resource management (HRM) we can get more than about costs and benefits of a single functional area (e.g. Koch & McGrath, 1996). That’s why the managers use the SHRM process and use some different human resource practices. Again the term ‘‘strategic” in SHRM tries to see how the companies are affected by using human resource management.
Source: http://cba.uah.edu/chadwick/Alternatives%20to%20Generic%20Typologies%20Chadwick%20Cappelli.pdf
STRATEGIC HRM IN MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES
When any company becomes international for expanding their business, they also become very important in the global market. And they play important role in the global market as well. Day by day the strategic human resource management is becoming more recognized and getting more priority in the business environment. And slowly failure and success in international business (Stroh and Caligiuri, 1998: Schuler. et al., 2002) are explored in between human resource management a strategic human resource management for the multinational companies. It got emphasise on growth of research on strategic human resource management and the rate of getting attention of researchers becoming higher (Schuler, 2000; Evans et al, 2002). Besides these we need to know about international human resource management (IHRM). If we know about IHRM and SHRM then easily we can distinguish between them.
Tailor et al (1996), Schuler et al. (1993) & Lado and Wilson (1994) said between IHRM and HRM of a multinational company have some differences. Functions and process, attracting, maintaining, developing all these are the set of a multinational company’s HRM system.
Source: International Human Resource Management—A critical Text.
By Hugh Schullion & Maryaret Linehan (page 22-23)
THE IMPACT ON STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ON ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCESS
Any organization’s success depends on how much efforts have been given for the organization. So it is important how the company is taking actions on their mission.
Source: http://www2.enap.gov.br/mesa_redonda/downloads/daley_vasu.mpsa02_PPM.pdf
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
In this proposal we had some approaches, like contingency, configurationally and contextual. If we can make a balance among the approaches and how and what they contributed and had limitations, and overlook the minor differences then we can come to the bottom line. In the depth of strategic human resource management the universalistic framework is laid. Through the strategic human resource management is already tested and trusted in many organizations and became successful except some limitations. For understanding SHRM deeply researchers are using more sophisticated techniques for going to the deep sea level depth of SHRM. But it’s not that this proposal can consider how HRM is structured. The function, defining the main elements and how they are organized are analysed by the SHRM. So that the researchers will get encourage to practice SHRM in the business as like as Cluster analysis. And then we can see there is a barrier between contextual variables of this proposal is not just a contingency factor and we can consider that for that reason how the management system can influence their environments. So that the researchers who are following contextual adapted are inductive logic. And all these complement the deductive and mainly quantitative focus of the previous streams.
Source: Int. J. of Human Resource Management 16:5 May 2005 633-659
ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
Alliance Boots is the world’s largest pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer. Boots’ The Chemist UK retail business is the most trusted brand on the high street. It is undergoing major growth that will see 2,300 stores by the end of 2009.
The Boot family began trading in 1849, selling herbal remedies from a small store in Goose Gate, Nottingham. The first overseas store also opened – in New Zealand in 1936.More recent decades have seen the introduction of brands such as 17 cosmetics and new business ventures such as Boots Opticians. Today, Boots is the UK’s leading health and beauty retailer, with the largest share of the OTC market, and it also sells Boots brand products through an international business, which currently operates in 14 countries.
Source: http://www.gomadthinking.com/business/managing_change
a) What are the products/services are offered
There are a lots of products/services are offered by Boots. We can divide them into:
Pharmacy, Opticians, Insurance, Photo processing, Quick shop, Beauty, Fragrance, Mother & baby, Everyday essentials, Electrical, Toys, etc.
- Pharmacy: In pharmacy there are different types of services. Such as cervical cancer vaccination service, weight loss programme, Chlamydia screening service, erectile dysfunction service, medical check-up service, midnight pharmacy, Boots health insurance, etc.
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Insurance: In insurance there are also different services like travel insurance, health insurance, dental insurance, child trust fund, etc.
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Photo processing : In processing there are also some services like photo prints, photo books, calendars & diaries, cards & stationery, wall decor, home gifts, fun stuff, gifts for the kids, etc.
- Beauty: Premium beauty, the beauty boutique, make up, skin care, body care, sun care, hair, etc.
b) In which international markets are they offered
Today, Boots is the UK’s leading health and beauty retailer, which currently operates in 14 countries. We can divide the continents into four parts.
- Thailand from Asia,
- USA & Canada from north America,
- Kuwait & UAE from middle east,
- Norway, Romania, Russia from Europe
Source: http://www.gomadthinking.com/business/managing_change
QUESTIONARY
1) Question to the Store manager (Waterloo St): In which purposes Human Resource strategic plans serve?
Answer: Approximately half of the organizations we talked to have developed separate Human Resources strategic plans. These plans generally serve one of two purposes. Either they provide direction for those agencies that have not integrated HRM into the organizations strategic plan, or they are used as implementation plans which support organization wide HRM goals, strategies, and measures. These plans are particularly important to those organizations that do not integrate HRM into the organizations wide plan because it helps them map out where they want the HR program to go. They seem less important to many of the organizations that have thoroughly integrated HRM into the organizations plan. For example, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has not developed a specific HR strategic plan because HR’s goals and measures are part of the organization wide approach. Then, there are some organizations that integrate HR extensively into the organizations plan, but still prefer to have a separate HR operational plan supporting the organizations wide plan, as is often done by other corporate functions such as information technology and financial management.
2) Question to the Store manager (Waterloo St): What are HR’s contributions toward mission accomplishment?
Answer: HR’s most valued contributions are the areas need the most improvement: recruitment and staffing, employee development, and employee relations. It would be extremely difficult to get the jobs done without the help of HR provides.
3) Question to the Team manager (Waterloo St): What is important to increasing organizations’ overall ability to achieve their missions?
Answer: In this time of budget cuts, downsizing, and an aging Federal workforce, workforce planning becomes extremely important to increasing organizations’ overall ability to achieve their missions. Although few organizations have strong workforce planning systems in place, some are beginning to take steps in this direction.
4) Question to the Team manager (Waterloo St): Which information can make the improvements to solve the problems?
Answer: HR staffs find that measures from HR strategic plans tend to be more useful than those in the organization’s strategic or annual plans, at least at the functional level. HR strategic plan measures tend to focus on internal HR programs, policies, and processes, and can therefore point to deficiencies in these areas. HR officials can then use this information to make improvements to the problem areas. From an organizational perspective, however, the measures are generally not very helpful in determining achievement of HR goals because they are process rather than outcome oriented.
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