Strategic Human Resource Management in Qantas Airlines

Running head: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Strategic Human Resource Management
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1STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to explore the most important issues related to strategic
human resource management. This has been regarded as one of the most important issues in the
shaping of the organizations in the best ways. Qantas Airlines has been chosen as the company to
be focused on. They have spent a lot of time in developing their corporate strategies. The various
ways in which the Qantas Airways is trying to gain the competitive advantage over their
competitors will be discussed in this essay (McGrath, 2013). They have to set the new targets in
front of them so they can achieve them and be the unparallel one. They have to focus on the
workplace culture as well. The HR strategies of this organization will be highlighted in this essay
in order to find out the challenges they have been facing. As the HT strategies are very
important, they will have to be discussed and the ways they can achieve the organizational
success would be discussed here as well.
Strategic plan for the organization
It is very important to incorporate the HR strategies in the strategic plan of the
organization. Qantas Airlines has always catered for the benefits and advantages of the
customers in all the ways. They have adopted some of the strategic approaches by which they
can achieve the organizational objectives in the best ways (Briscoe, Tarique & Schuler, 2012).
This organization is considered to be the largest airline in Australia. The Human Resource
Department of the organization looks after all the major issues in the organization like the
employee recruitment and selection, employee remuneration, employee development and the
other important issues (Kehoe & Wright, 2013). The HR managers also adopt the certain
strategies by which the organizations can develop themselves and compete with their rivals.
They work in a very competitive industry so they need to provide their employees with the best

2STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
kind of training and provisions for achieving the objectives of the organization (Briscoe, Tarique
& Schuler, 2012).
The strategic plans that Qantas had taken in terms of their HR policies are to cut the costs
of different segments in the organization. They have also focused themselves on decreasing the
labor costs that could help the better productivity in the organizations (Briscoe, Tarique &
Schuler, 2012). The HR management looks after the moderating policies of the wages to cut
down the costs. They wanted to build up a flexible and highly motivated workforce that could be
essential to meet the requirements of their customers. The organizational structures should also
be made flexible as well for the benefit of the organizations. Some of the ways in which the labor
costs could be decreased are the reduction of the salaries and wages and strike off the costly
practices within the organization (Briscoe, Tarique & Schuler, 2012). The experts have said that
these types of problems for the organization have been very much recurrent. This will ruin the
reputation of the organization (Qantas.com.au, 2018).
The Qantas airlines have faced many challenges in their internal and external business
environments. This is why they had to make several challenges in the entire system so they could
eliminate all the challenges (Van De Voorde, Paauwe & Van Veldhoven, 2012). The factors that
propagated these changes were the need for gaining more profit. The company had to maintain
the hierarchical structure that it followed along with the autocratic leadership (Bhatti et al.,
2012). Sometimes the employees have been deprived of several facilities. The organization has
posed some strict rules that have been very problematic for the organization (Van De Voorde,
Paauwe & Van Veldhoven, 2012). The training process of the organization went through a
thorough change in the year 2003. The HR management of Qantas had expanded the
apprenticeship program of the company. The learning and training process had to be reinvented