Strategic Human Tool Management is a modern day business theory that has been now been widely used the business; the crux of the concept is that all the human reference activities of the firms should be aligned with the organizational corporate objectives. On this assignment we are required to select a business of our own choice and then analyze their strategic human resource routines, we must see that the way the methods and strategies of human resources department are aligned with the business's objective. What exactly are the areas that are doing well and what the areas that need the improvement are? For this I have preferred leading telecom company of UK. Vodafone has been the market leader using their continued progress in UK and other areas of the world.
This paper will examine two dimensions, an example may be their approaches for recruitment, selection, learning, development and training and I shall make clear how these strategies are increasing staff performance and are linked with corporate strategies. The second part of the paper will show the performance management processes of the organization we shall how this business handles the performance of their employees and how individuals resource team is taking care of the employee relations.
Introduction to the Company
Vodafone is a leading telecom player in the UK and other areas of the world including India. The products and services they offer are of high quality and high benchmarks and the market they are functioning is highly competitive. The nature of competition requires the management of the company to truly have a strategic clarity and all the business functions should be employed in same direction. Their service collection includes cellular phone connection including 2G and 3G networks, broadband internet in homes and on mobiles (www. vodafone. com, 2011).
In order to comprehend the strategic human source activities of the business is vital to understand that what company all about is. Their eye-sight values and business orientation will be the key individuals that are traveling the human source management office (www. vodafone. com, 2011).
Company Vision
They see their future in excellent data services and products - supported by the best customer experience available. Their journey has recently begun, with things like Mobile Internet and Mobile Broadband. And their Vodafone at home fixed broadband service. And their focuses on are big, which means millions of customers utilizing their data services every day (www. vodafone. com, 2011).
Company Values
Speed
They are centered on speed to advertise, they relentlessly priorities and pursue the outcomes that matter to our business.
Simplicity
They make things simple for his or her customers, partners and acquaintances.
Trust
They are reliable and clear to deal with. They deliver for others, and trust others to do likewise
Literature Review of Strategic HRM:
Strategic Human Reference Management is a modern day business theory that is currently being used in many of the organizations, its acceptability and practice is increasing with enough time as group have realized that this management philosophy is actually adding value to business profitability in many indirect ways.
As we know that recruiting are one of the most important resources of that a company can have, their capacity to participate in development of companies ecological competitive advantages is unquestionable, in at night human source management has been a separate department with no influence and involvement in strategic management of the business. Whatever have been the organization strategies companies were not linking the recruiting management with it. The result of which was the disintegration of company's goal and human source management, this situation made the individuals resource contribution in sustainable competitive advantages limited. (Appleby & Mavin, 2000).
With the advancement of modern business age, that has started from 1980s, the management professionals and commentators has been feeling the necessity of taking the companies to one path, and they also have became aware that it very important that real human resource office should be produced part of the strategy formulation process and their individuals resource strategies should be made while keeping in mind the business strategy of the business. Therefore the analysts developed the concept which is called the Strategic People Tool Management, that permits the HR department to derive their techniques from the corporate strategy and they are also made part while making the business enterprise strategy (Armstrong, 2006).
Strategic Human Resource Management requires the dept being proactive rather than being reactive, they are required to adjust themselves based on the human source of information need of the company. They are also necessary to foresee the forthcoming needs of the company and then plan beforehand consequently (McMahan et al. , 1998).
Vodafone is market head in their category, they have a competitive edge for their diversification in products, services and marketing strategies, therefore their corporate target is to maintain their marketing head position by making use of their diversification. Below is the snapshot of HR approaches for various HR functions of the business that says us the business is linking their business strategy with the human reference strategy:
Vodafone's recruitment and selection process is aligned with the business strategy, because they are available of providing services and their market position is a innovator with differentiations, therefore when they recruit individuals on different seating, they have set of core competencies that are required for every single position plus they check these while hiring someone(Armstrong, 2006).
Their selection process makes certain that the right person with right set of capacities and attitude is selected, for example if they are hiring for the position of customer service they would ensure that person being hired has the tender skills, the empathic attitude and it is not aggressive in nature. They have devised a set of such delicate skills that are assessed on each one of the hiring and these skills change from position to put. For managerial level position they make sure they work with someone with good analytical skill along with flare of management in them. So in Vodafone the complete selection process is associated with the corporate objectives (Armstrong, 2006).
Vodafone's entire compensation and benefits are also associated with business strategy, their remuneration systems and twelve-monthly appraisal systems derive from corporate and business strategy. Since our case company is employed in highly competitive environment plus they have to keep their market leadership position therefore they have got designed their reimbursement system that encourages the quality individuation to work in this firm. They offer they employees with advanced facilities and salary plans so that the best on the market are drawn to work in the business and they play their part to make the organization market head (Armstrong, 2006).
His gross annual appraisal system is also monitored strategically, in Vodafone, every team has their quarterly and twelve-monthly objectives, and these goals are then used to make the individual and team's quarterly and annual targets. Now when performance appraisal is done, Vodafone's human tool department makes the objective achievement the area of the appraisal system and everything the increments in salary and bonus products are associated with the objective achievements in teams and people. For their objective achievement calculation they ensure that performance target are time destined, quantifiable and measureable (Armstrong, 2006).
Training and Development is an important element of their human source strategy. They keep on adding value in their human resources by training them on hard skill and tender skill whatever is necessary by the type and role of the job. The processes start from indentifying working out needs of every of the division. They after understanding the objective of the each of the section for the coming year, asks the relevant managers to recognize and measure the individuals in their groups that require working out and development using areas of their job. These training needs can be of very soft skill and can also be of hard skills that are directly related to the work (McMahan et al. , 1998).
Once the training needs are indentified then individuals resource department manages the training calendar of the entire year, in which all the required training are mentioned and employees are sent for on job and off job training. Individual resource department also have the attention on the approaching expansions and technological developments in the market so the relevant employees can be trained before the time and they are ready to work when there is any technological progression and change in the business.
Learning
Human resource team of the organization put special focus on developing the training culture within the organization. Employees should share their experience and learning with each other so that associates can have a learning culture in the organization. Since Vodafone is working in several geographical regions of the state, therefore they ensure that employees are urged the learning's regarding complex and marketing knowledge with one another, so that worker of 1 region can study from the experience of the other region (Armstrong, 2006).
As talked about above they also send staff on training, they also send different employees of different team to their different geographical marketplaces so that they can have working out of various situations and also have the understanding of various market segments, that rotation also helps employees and raise the learning within the organization.
Career Building
Since getting and retaining the product quality employee is obstacle for the organizations employed in today's competitive market, therefore Vodafone possess the policy of having an obvious and well identified career path for each and every of their employee. This clarity of career way makes it clear for staff that where they need to see themselves after spending different number of years in the business. The department also makes sure that all the a better job of the employees are based on their performance and every top doing employee must have the growth in their profession, this policy really helps to control the employee turnover and encourage employees to work hard and perform as they might have the chance to develop (Armstrong, 2006).
Empowerment
Vodafone is working in competitive environment and stay before competition it is very important for organizations to really have the fast and appropriate decision making. Therefore the human resource section position the special emphasis on empowering the staff for well-timed decision making.
For this purpose they have worked in devolution of electric power, decentralization of decision making and flatter organizational culture. They have been focusing on the dimensions on giving the employee the energy of earning the less critical decisions and top management should only be making decision that are or critical aspect are of proper importance. This empowerment of employees offers them sense of responsibility, boosts their dedication towards the business and save the treasured business time that is required to take your choice from top management (Armstrong, 2006).
Retention
As it is very important for organizations employed in competitive business environment, Vodafone's individual resource routines also work just as, they try to preserve their quality employees to go to the competition. Their retention strategies revolve around the nice settlement and benefits, pay per performance, rewards and increments on good performance and then having the well identified promotional system that gives the opportunity to every employee to execute and build their opportunities and then develop. Their retention plan is derived from the strategic purpose of the organization to be diversified in their business, and same is the situation in their human being source of information management (Armstrong, 2006).
Below we shall see that performance management is performed in Vodafone, these lines will presented the several methodologies and routines that are being modified in the performance management section of strategic HRM of company.
Determination of Performance Targets
The first step in strategic performance management of the organization is to determine the required performance focuses on of the business for the entire year. These targets are derived by combining volume of activities, first of all market analysis is done; the management examine the exterior environment so that market growth trends and rivals market share can be understand.
Once this task is done management have the backdrop information for dominating the organizational performance for next calendar year, then the next step is to choose and agree upon the performance targets, once the commercial level targets are chosen then these focuses on are split into department level targets. These section level goals are then reflected in individual level goals and aims. (Wall structure, 2007).
Encouraged Specific Commitment
Vodafone has noticed the importance of encouraging the employee commitment towards organizational target, as without this determination employees will never be in a position to achieve the performance that firm is expecting them to achieve.
Once organization can make the organizational goals the mark of the individual then we can see the success rate of attaining this target is high. Therefore Vodafone increases the employee dedication to the organizational targets by concerning them in the objective making process (Rheem, 1996). It's been the practice in the Vodafone that managers and teams make a decision their performance targets themselves as soon as they are approved by the management their personal dedication to these focuses on is high. They strive and struggle more to attain the targets that is made in assessment with them (Wall membrane, 2007).
Delegation, Mentoring and Coaching
There are some other activities that play their role in proper management of the performance of the business, Vodafone on the also using the three of the activities that are delegation of ability with responsibility, proper mentoring and responses system, and instruction (Wall structure, 2007).
Vodafone thinks in delegation of power to the employees that are accountable for achieving certain goals, as responsibility comes with expert, same is the philosophy that is applied throughout the Vodafone. Their culture is devolution of vitality so de-centralization, they make an effort to give maximum power to their employees so that they can achieve their duties with given specialist.
Vodafone also feels in mentoring and training of employees, managers should act as mentor for their associates, this also requires on job training for the clubs, this systems promotes learning environment in the business(Armstrong, 2006).
Monitoring and Feedback
Monitoring and opinions system can be an important area of the organizational performance management; same is the situation with Vodafone. They may have proper monitoring and feedback system that helps us monitoring the performance and people and teams. They have a quarterly performance management system that relates the performance of the employees using their objectives of that quarter. Following the evaluation and monitoring of the performance of groups then feedback is provided to them. That system helps the organizational performance on the keep tabs on and helps the organization to stay on the performance objectives throughout the year (Wall, 2007).
Handling Under-Performance
Vodafone grips the underperformance of their workers by having a proper monitoring system, they first evaluates the performance of the employees, then if associates are found to be underperforming then they see that if there is any training needs. If there are training needs then employees are sent on training, following the trainings their performance is again checked. If performance is found reasonable then it is ok, if again performance is not found adequate then employees are changed to other jobs.
Employee Relations
Vodafone places special emphasis on managing good relationships with their workers; they believe their employees are their more important property, their human resource policies are definitely more focused towards handling their employee's relations with the business. Their performance evaluation, benefits and settlement system is targeted towards keeping their workers and retaining their determination with the business.
Conclusion
Strategic human resource management is the modern concept that is in practice by different by different organizations, in this newspaper we have witnessed the strategic individuals resource management methods by one of the leading business in UK. We've observed their organizational targets with relation to their human learning resource management activities. The emphasis of the paper has been on the recruitment & selection, training and development and learning functions and their relationship with organizational strategy. It has also been detected that how performance management system is focusing on strategic suggestions provided by the organization and exactly how it is playing role in competitive gain.
