Human Resource Management: Strategies and Practices for Competitive Advantage

This article explores various HRM strategies and practices for achieving competitive advantage. It covers the impact of national and corporate culture on staff management, job design strategies, and the organizational levers available to manage human resources. The article also provides examples of good HR practices from local and transnational firms, including ASDA.

Human resource
management

Table of Contents
INTRDOUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION
(a) Strategic HRM models and concepts, differences between HRM and personnel management
and the ways in which chosen organisation’s HR strategies should align with the demands
of labour market.
Strategic human resource management
It is process of creating a link between the activities of the human resources or employees
with the goals of an organisation to improve the performance(Hamid, Muzamil and Shah, 2022).
It is the active management of the labour which provide value to the employees by meeting their
needs while attaining the goal of the business.
Strategic human resource management model
It is model that provides a framework for the analysis of the management system by
linking the management of employees and adopting practices for attaining the goals of an
organisation. Here are some model in human resource management which are as below:
The Fombrun Model: This model focuses only four function of the human resource
management that are selection, assessment, improvement and rewards and dismiss all
environmental and contingency factors that impact HR function. In this model employees are
considered as source which help the company in gaining the competitive advantage while
reducing costs(Riccucci, Naff and Hamidullah, 2019). An organisation implements this model to
provide training to the employees to enhance the productivity of employees which encourage the
administration for human resource management.
The Harvard Model: It is a HR strategy model comprises of six elements that includes
stakeholders involvement that recognises the importance of trade offs between the interest of
owner and the employees; situational factors which impact the quality of HR plan of action;
HRM policy choices which rely on the determination and activity of an administration; HR
outcomes that act on the commitments rather than compliance to achieve the control on the
organisation and long term consequences.
The Guest Model: This model stresses on the six elements that includes HR strategy,
HR practices, HR outcomes, behavioural outcomes, performance results and financial
consequences.
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The Warwick Model: This model identifies ans categorise the important environment that
influences HRM. It maps the connection between the internal and external factors of the
environment that explore changes in this regard.
Difference between HR Management and personnel management
Basis HR management Personnel management
Scope It has wider scope because employees
are considered assets of an
organisation.
It has limited scope because it treats
employees as a tool or machines of a
business entity.
Work assigned In HRM, the employees are divided
into the groups or teams to perform the
work or task of the business.
The work or task is divided among
the all employees of a business
concern.
Decision making There is fast decision-making in HR
management as it is the advance
representation of personnel
management.
There is slow decision making in the
personnel management as it is old
interpretation of the HR
management(Oehlhorn, 2020).
Negotiation There is no need of collective
bargaining because the contract exist
with each individual.
But, there is need of corporate
bargaining with a group leader.
focuses It stresses on the ordinary activities
such as hiring, remunerating, training
and harmony.
It emphasises on the treatment of
employees so that they are valued,
used or preserved.
HR strategies which align with the demand of labour market
The changing culture has significant impact on the organisation for which HR department
is especially appointed to inform plan of action and help the employees to represent
consequences of changes. It is very important for HR to align with the demand of labour market
to secure the right talent(Liu, 2018). Tesco has been considered in relation to the HR strategies.
So, here are some strategies which are describe as under:
Motivational strategies: It is an strategy that drives the behaviour of a person toward the
achievement of the goal of an organisation. With reference to Tesco, it has adopted strategy to
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motivate the employees is to pay more attention to hygiene factors, empower or delegate
responsibility to them or communicate timely and involving them in decision making.
Retaining strategies: An organisation can retain its employees by providing them several
benefits and understanding their problem with better solution. In relation to Tesco, it retain its
employees by provide them adequate salary with other benefits.
Training and development strategies: The company provides training to its employees
to enhance their skills and make their development for the growth of the business. In context to
tesco, it provides both on the job and off the job training to its employees after analysing the
needs for training to improve their skills.
(b) Impact of national and corporate culture on the management of staff
Each business has its own organisational culture using the system of values and performance
standards. Culture organises programmes into mental programmes and the behaviour of an
employees with in an entity. The corporate culture guides the employees to act feel or think
where by it expresses the core values, ethics, behaviour of an organisation. A great corporate
culture not only attract the new candidates for an entity but also enhance the performance of an
existing employees. When employees are in a supportive environment so they are more
productive and give better performance or attempt to reach the goal of the company. National
culture affect the staff of management in many ways such as in making decisions, leadership
styles and human resource management practices. An organisational culture affects all aspects of
a business because when the workplace culture align with the employees so they become more
comfortable, supported and valued(Peretz, Fried and Levi, 2018). Culture is basic set of
understanding that are shared by the members of an organisation their influence decision making.
Culture values are important for trust, teamwork and other role ate the work place.
Organisational culture is all about the collective beliefs, ethics and behaviour of the members of
the staff where feelings are given importance than specific programmes. A strong corporate
culture that is compatible with the environment can drive better financial results compared with
the weak corporate culture. A weak corporate culture may create hindrances in the environment
of an organisation. So an organisation needs to place special emphasis on the brand of an
employer because it help in retaining and engaging existing employees of a company. It should
also focuses on the employee engagement so that it can drive productivity, increase profits and
stay competitive. A company needs to invest time and money in providing training to their
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employees to enhance their skills and make professional development. This will result in better
trained employees with clear objective of an organisation. A great culture provides an employee
freedom and authority to be more creative, initiative and innovative. This allows employees to
bring more ideas to reach the goal of the business. An organisation shares information , resources
and power which enable an employee to make decisions and solve problems in a business
concern.
(c) The organizational levers available to manage human resources ,Human resource strategies
to contribute competitive advantage
There are four organisational levers to improve human resource which are described as under:
Personnel quality: An HR must assures that an organisation has the right number of
employees that should be placed in right role under the right employment conditions. HR
department should analyse or understand the need of workforce and make strategies
accordingly(Adla, Gallego-Roquelaure and Calamel, 2019). This HR function plan to set the
imbalances between supply and demand for hiring of right talent from external sources.
Personnel costs: This lever considers the financial implication of the workforce where
HR is able to give detailed accounting of the employment cost of a business concern. It includes
wages, compensation and the budget that is forecasted for the future personnel cost. It includes
overall value that is offered to the potential employees understanding the current market labour
and management and compensation to recruit and retain talent.
Personnel quality: This lever considers the skills and competencies of an employees
where HR asses and improve the skills of the workforce and enhance their competencies to
perform better. HR defines the objectives to be achieved and determine how to develop the skills
of employees to attain the defined goals. It execute the strong training and development
programmes with priorities for allocating the resources and generate pay-off subject to the new
skills, capabilities and certification.
Transformation and management: This forth lever define the process of change across
the entire company. This is very essential lever where HR has to play more innovative and
strategic role to support the alteration, reorganisation and efficiency programme of a company.
The company establishes the processes and rules by which HR plans for the workforce using the
objective criteria. The people in an organisation change the way of working with their roles,d
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responsibilities and objectives. So the HR department that can improve the performance of the
personnel management also can strengthen the overall performance of an organisation.
There are many strategies where an HR have to contribute to achieve the competitive advantage
and maximise the profits of a company. The strategy which permits an organisation to produce
goods and services better or cheap to overcome its rivals is known as competitive advantage.
This assist a company to get superior margin and generate value for the business as compared to
its competitors. The intention behind this competitive advantage is to differentiate a company
from its competitors by offering different and superior quality products and services. It helps an
organisation to increase their profit margins and market share by maintaining its brand
loyalty(Turulja and Bajgoric, 2018).
Here are the strategies that help the company to achieve a competitive advantage which are
described as under:
Cost leadership strategy: It is an strategy where an organisation manufactures goods at
low cost to become a lower cost producer in order to exploit the economies of scale. This help
the company to establish selling prices that is low from its competitors where the customers can
easily buy the products and services. This also increases the level of production of production by
using latest technology that can help in decreasing waste. Thus, a company adopts a cost
leadership strategy which enable an entity to get higher profits due to its cost advantage over its
competitors.
Differentiation strategy: This strategy assists a company to offer varieties of products
and services to the customer that are of higher quality and unique from its competitors. An
organisation become superior by adopting this strategy and able to charge premium prices from
the customers for their brand quality, unique features or designs.
Cost focus strategy: In this strategy, a company focuses or targets only a particular
segment in the market where it offerers the goods and services at lowest prices. This strategy
enables the company to satisfy the wants of the customers by proving them products to fulfil
their needs. This help the company to create brand awareness among the customers through
focusing on a specific market area.
Differentiation focus strategy: This strategy is similar to the cost focus strategy but it
focuses only on unique value or lower prices. Whereas differentiation focus strategy not only
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focuses on the particular segment but also improve their products and services with unique
features.
With reference to Tesco, it considers Cost leadership strategy where it gain the competitive
advantage which help the company in growing profits. By adopting this strategy company
reduces its costs and prices because these are the most important thing for the company which
help it in making brand image. Tesco provides it products at the lowest prices in the market
because it has an ability to control the prices or operating costs of their products which aid in
gaining the co competitive advantage. Tesco has created brand loyalty for their offerings which
make it enables to generate the high profit margin.
(d) The job design strategies
Job design is a process of determining the role of the job and includes duties or
responsibilities of the job holder or the way of doing the job and resources that is needed by a job
holder(Popaitoon, 2019). The main purpose of designing the job is to ensure the high
productivity with high quality of work and provide high job satisfaction with lower absenteeism
or turnover. The following are the strategies of job designing which are depicted as under:
Job rotation: It is a practice of moving employees between jobs in an organisation which
help in increasing the varieties of skills and motivation to employees. It helps the employees in
learning new roles which enhance their experiences. Employees with wide range of skills give
the management more flexibilities in scheduling work, adaptability to change and filling
vacancies.
Job enlargement: It involves adding additional activities to an existing role at the same
level. In this job number of different tasks is performed by an employee which increases the
varieties of skills. It enables an employee to do more or similar activities of responsibilities with
their accountability. An enlarge job can motivate an individual for some reasons that area as
under:
 Task varieties: An employee has to perform number of task which help in reducing the
the level of boredom.
 Meaningful work: A worker is able to complete the major portion of the job assigned
through this enlargement which increase the satisfaction by allowing the worker to
contribute in the entire project.
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 Ability utilisation: An employee utilise their physical or mental skills and abilities which
derive greater satisfaction.
Job enrichment: It focuses on adding motivators to an existing roles to make it more
rewarding. A job is enriched when the nature of the job is challenging and creative or provides
the job holder an opportunity of decision making, planning and controlling. It includes various
benefits to an employee that are direct feedback is given on evaluation of the performance of the
workers by a supervisor(Zuberi and Khattak, 2021). An enriched job allows an employee new
learning which increases its intellectual power and provide unique experiences to the workers.\
(e) Corporate examples of local and transnational firms to illustrate good HR practices
There are many firms who has different HR practices in order to overcome the competitors or
gain competitive advantage and help in growing their profit margin which are depicted as under:
ASDA
It has different HR practices which help the company on providing good management includes
the following:
Employment security: It enables the employees to go home after completion of work and
also provides their families. It also assist an organisation in retaining their employees so that
they do not leave the company.
Select right people: The best HR practices help in hiring the right people for the right job
with great abilities and skills for better performance in an organisation.
Morrisons
HR practices in Morrisons ate as under:
Effective teams: The HR practices helps in making effective team and self managed
because team provide value as they consist of people who work differently towards the goal of
the business.
Fair compensation: It provides performance based compensation to the employees
where are fairly paid according to their presentation of work(Raharjo, 2018).
Training: The management also provide training to the employees when the
shortcomings occurs while performing the work. So the employees are provided training for
better performance in an organisation.
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Recommendation
HRM practices plays an important role in an organisation to maintain good performance, helps in
building the capabilities of an employees in an entity with enhancement of satisfaction and
improve customer satisfaction. The HR practices do make a difference in working efficiency of
an organisation. It increase the abilities if the business to deal with the challenge that are face by
a business concern. These practices normally develop in an integrated manner and are consistent
with e business strategies in order to attain the objective of the company. It ensure that
employees are satisfied, skilled and productive so that they further contribute toward the growth
of the company. These practices leads to enhancement in the commitment of employees which
turn in has a positive influence on the organisation performance. It helps in collaborative team
work to support the team to reach the goal of the business. So it has been recommended that an
organisation should adopt HR practices for better management by aligning business strategies
with external and internal factors, ensure talent strategy also align with the company' overall
plan. The business should go ahead by being proactive to overcome its competitors and should
evaluate what training is essential for the worker and execute it well.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Hamid, Z., Muzamil, M. and Shah, S.A., 2022. Strategic human resource management.
In Research Anthology on Human Resource Practices for the Modern Workforce (pp. 1-
16). IGI Global.
McClean, E. and Collins, C.J., 2019. Expanding the concept of fit in strategic human resource
management: An examination of the relationship between human resource practices and
charismatic leadership on organizational outcomes. Human Resource Management, 58(2).
pp.187-202.
Riccucci, N.M., Naff, K.C. and Hamidullah, M.F., 2019. Personnel management in government:
Politics and process. Routledge.
Oehlhorn, 2020. Human resource management and its impact on strategic business-IT alignment:
A literature review and avenues for future research. The Journal of Strategic Information
Systems, 29(4).p.101641.
Liu, 2018. Unpacking knowledge management practices in China: do institution, national and
organizational culture matter?. Journal of Knowledge Management.
Peretz, H., Fried, Y. and Levi, A., 2018. Flexible work arrangements, national culture,
organisational characteristics, and organisational outcomes: A study across 21
countries. Human Resource Management Journal, 28(1).pp.182-200.
Popaitoon, S., 2019, July. Job design, Human Capital Resources and NPD performance:
Evidence from High-Technology MNCs. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol.
2019, No. 1, p. 11692). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
Zuberi, M.A. and Khattak, A., 2021. Impact of proactive personality and leader member
exchange on innovative work behavior: a job design perspective. International Journal of
Innovation Science.
Raharjo, 2018. The influence of organizational culture and job design on job commitment and
human resource performance. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Turulja, L. and Bajgoric, N., 2018. Information technology, knowledge management and human
resource management: Investigating mutual interactions towards better organizational
performance. VINE Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems.
Adla, L., Gallego-Roquelaure, V. and Calamel, L., 2019. Human resource management and
innovation in SMEs. Personnel Review.
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