Strategic Human Resource Management: A Case Study of Rio Tinto

Running Head: Strategic Human resource Management
Strategic Human Resource Management
A case study of Rio Tinto
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Running Head: Strategic Human resource Management
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Body......................................................................................................................................................3
Unsatisfied workers...........................................................................................................................3
Workforce planning and management...............................................................................................3
High labour absenteeism and turnover...............................................................................................5
Labour unrest.....................................................................................................................................6
Work condition..................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................9
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Running Head: Strategic Human resource Management
Introduction
Rio Tinto is a multinational mining firm based in Australia. The firm is engaged in the
production of iron ore, copper, metal, diamonds, uranium and coal, and aluminum. This essay
is going to discuss some challenges like labor absenteeism, inadequate workforce planning
and management, unsatisfied workers, labor unrest and unfavorable working conditions.
Applicability of SHRM framework has been discussed to curb the challenges in the context
of the firm.
Body
Unsatisfied workers
Dissatisfaction among workers, in relation to the firm Rio Tinto, causes poor productivity in
the company. This is a challenge to strategic HRM of the firm. The cause behind this may be
poor working conditions for the employees during underground work where smoke and smell
of poisonous gas causes harm to the health of workers. This problem could be solved by the
firm concentrating on making better working conditions. SHRM has a popular theoretical
model which considers the behavioral perspective. This suggests that there is an intermediary
effect on the relationship strategy of business and performance. Jackson, Schuler, and Jiang,
(2014), argued about the efficiency of the model on another if to optimize the performance.
Kramar, (2014), stated about the resource-based view as a most important perspective which
will enable the firm to focus on its resources for using to its advantage for improving working
conditions and environment for the sake of the workers. Possibly this could assist in
controlling the unsatisfied workers. Employees no matter how much talented if not assured of
their health and safety then cannot perform to their full potential and remain unsatisfied and
cannot perform better and the firm suffers from low productivity in the industry leading to
loss of reputation (Budhwar and Debrah, 2013).
Workforce planning and management
Inadequate workforce planning and management have crippled the efficiency of Rio Tinto.
Even mass recruitment drive by the firm could not ensure the firm of its ability to meet the
additional demand. This made the firm believe that productivity among staffs was not
adequate to produce the required volume of supply for customers. The firm also thought of
going for additional recruitment. Since the low productivity is reflected here, it is easy to
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