Analyzing Australian Hardware's Strategic Human Resource Plan

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the strategic human resource plan for Australian Hardware Business. It begins with an introduction outlining the report's objectives, which include analyzing the company's strategic business plan, determining human resource strategic directions, and identifying the target market. The report then offers a company overview, detailing Australian Hardware's history, operations, and ownership. Key aspects of the company's strategic plans are examined, including product/service strategies, target market segmentation, and market strategies. The core of the report focuses on the human resource strategies employed by Australian Hardware, such as recruitment, training, skills retention, and operational processes. An environmental analysis is conducted using a PESTEL framework to identify emerging trends and practices impacting human resource management. The report further explores future labor needs and required skills, addressing the impact of new technologies on job roles and designs. Finally, it reviews recent and potential changes to legal and industrial requirements, concluding with a summary of the findings and recommendations.

Running head : STRATGIC HUMAN RESOURCE PLAN
STRATGIC HUMAN RESOURCE PLAN
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The aim of the business report is to analyze the strategic business plan of Australian
Hardware Business and determine the human resources strategic directions, objectives and target
market. The paper will also undertake additional environmental analysis which will identify the
emerging practices and trends in the Australian market which impacts the human resources
management in the organization. Further after analyzing the strategic plans of the business it will
be able to identify the future labor needs and skills which are required for sourcing labor supply.
The report will conclude its research work with considering the new technologies and its
impacts in the new job roles and job designs. It will then recommend and review the recent and
potential changes to the industry.
Company overview
The Australian Hardware Business Ltd is a public company which was established in the
year 1982. The company is located and is headquartered in Sydney. The company owns and
operates in more than 138 stores throughout Australia. The company is owned by the
Greenwright Family, which is known to retain and control the interest of the Australian
Hardwarev. It has almost more than 10,000 staffs all across the country. The Australian
Hardware Business Ltd is one of the Australia’s largest hardware retailers (Seering and Wallace
2018)
Strategic plans to determine the human resources strategic direction, objectives and target

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Products / Service strategies – The Australian Hardware business is known to supply a variety of
products which includes the hardware and home improvement products and also provides
expertise support to the building and constructors and building institutions.
The Target Market – The target market which is chosen by the Australain Hardware Business are
divided into three parts namely the home improvers which consists of many home improvement
institutions and home re-innovative projects which works for all kinds of minor repair and
alteration. The company undertakes almost more than 5.8 million home owners in Australia. The
second target market of the company is the Décor Home Ideas (DHI) and the tradespersons.
Market Strategy – The Australian Hardware business takes two of the best strategic approaches
which is characterized by the product and service differentiation from the other companies.
Human Resource Strategies – The human resource strategies mainly includes the recruitment
options, training programs and objectives, skills retention strategies, locating proper business in
various areas of Australia and various other process which includes the warehouse looks and
feel, marketing mix, identifying the policies and preferred suppliers. The Australian Hardware
deploys its targeted advertising in the trade magazines and online recruitments through
organizations like the Seeeks.com and Monster.com. It also undertakes various types of
investigations in dealing with the wages and salaries which are provided by the competitor
brands to match with the company. This will help the company to get a knowledge of the pay
scale of the competitors employees. The Hardware business company can increase the pay scale
and attract more employees which increase their production.
The training programs offers a variety of ongoing training programs which aims to meet the
business requirements and develops the staffs in various criteria like the sales trainees, technical

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training in the product areas. Managerial and leadership training programs. It also helps the
trainees in environmental training. The trainings which are conducted by the human resource
serves as a community sensitivity training.
The skills retention strategies of the human resource focuses on the training and development
opportunities for the existing staffs. Te main aim of the performance management is to focus on
individually tailored development goals aligned with the expectations of the business.
The various process and objectives of the Human Resource in Australian Hardware Business
company’s human resource is to implement new ideas in the marketing campaigns, warehouse
looks and feelings, checking the marketing mix, HR policies and preferred suppliers and
strategic decisions. Each Australian Hardware store is made to run in the most operational
respect just like an individual business. Each of the stores present buys stock from the chosen
suppliers and which are thought to be appropriate by the general managers of the store.
Environmental analysis to identify the emerging practices and trends which might impact the
human resource
Political Factors
The licensing policies of the
company needs to be favorable.
The company should also not
limit its trading practices and
policies.
Economic Factors
The business should have a
favorable terms of trade.
It should also mitigate risks
which are associated with the
unfavorable balance of payment
Socio-cultural factors
The business should also
incorporate the local
communities in its operations.
This will help the company to
acquire a large customer base.
Technological Factors Environmental Factors Legal Factors

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Various new technological up
gradations should be used and
applied in the process of product
innovation.
The firms needs to report their
harmful air emission from the
factories under the NGER
reporting Act.
The company is also facing
various legal disputes with their
division in the Australian
Insurance Group.
Fig 1. Represents the PESTEL analysis of Australian Hardware Business
(Source : Self – made)
The trading hours can impact the human resource of the company by creating a barrier in
trading. With the change in the lifestyle and patterns of work the trading hours imposes the cost
to get increased which can also impact the cost of the products manufactured. It will also lead the
organization with higher operational cost and capital cost.
The Firm also needs to report its harmful emission of gas which is known to exceed more than
threshold emission which is to be kept under control. According to Pearce (2017) the scope 1 and
scope 2 gas emission factories are required to be registered under the NGER act. This will help
the organization to improve the hardware plant to boost the manufacturing process.
Under the economical factor the firm has a low growth rate in the hardware industry when
compared with the other industries in the country. The high wage cost of the company should be
reduced by the human resource, which will help the company to compete globally. The increase
in the strength of the Australian dollar and New Zealand dollar is a los a great opportunity for the
company to market its product globally in the surrounding countries.
The company should also increase the participation of women workers in their company which
will increase the social performance of the company. There is an increase in the average

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educational qualification of the population in Australia. Therefore the company should increase
its productivity by employees newer employees or pass outs from the universities.
Future labor needs and skills requirement
Due to the expansion of the goods to person automation improvement in the hardware business
there is a lack of skilled labor and employees in the company. The digital transformation in the
company has brought many benefits in the economy which has lead to the shortage of skilled
labor force in the company. This policy is also impacting the overall performance of the
business. The company is also following the panel discussion with the human resource and top
level managers of the company where they are discussing about the series of specific industry
break out discussions and debates which follows the challenges and possible solutions to skills
shortages. The attendees there discuss the barriers to recruit the skilled employees and will also
explore the emerging skills which are required in working in Australian Hardware Business Ltd.
The information and business solutions which are proposed in the business meetings are directly
taken over into the Skills Forecast where the industry takes advices from the Government of
Australia about the skills need in the industry.
New technology and its impact on job roles and job designs
The implementation of the new and latest technologies in the company is increasing the
productivity of the company which also increases the innovation and quality of the products of
the company. Whereas the machine substitute for the human work force is also diminishing the
role of the routine jobs in the company. The pace at which the machineries in the company are
gaining benefit has increased the ability to perform cognitive task in the company. This has also
reduced the adaptation of the workers. The technological innovations have made the company

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recruit the middle skilled labors which lowers the labor motivation, fewer the task and skills.
This also decreases the concentration of the employees (Rubin, Aas and Stead 2015.).
Review of the recent and potential changes to the legal and industrial requirements
According the authors Pai and Gore (2015) there are several changes which are made keeping in
mind the Fair Work Act which was effective from the year 2013. The other work act laws have
been legislated to take effect from the year 2019. This has resulted the workers to keep up their
statutory obligations and is looking to request flexibility in work arrangements.
Conclusion
In order to conclude the above paper it can be sad that the Australian Hardware company
is implementing new and latest technologies in order to increase their productivity and market its
products and business globally. The paper was aligned in providing an overview of the company
to the readers. The paper has discussed the human resource objective and strategic decisions and
business targets. Thereafter the paper has also discussed how the company has undertaken the
additional environmental analysis to identify the emerging practices and trends in the market.
Therefore it has identified the technological improvements which has its impacts sin the job roles
and job titles.

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References
Pai, S. and Gore, V., 2015. Australia and New Zealand.
Pearce, J.M., 2017. Emerging business models for open source hardware. Journal of Open
Hardware, 1(1), p.2.
Li, Z., Seering, W. and Wallace, D., 2018, March. Understanding Value Propositions and
Revenue Models in Open Source Hardware Companies. In ICIE 2018 6th International
Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship: ICIE 2018 (p. 214). Academic Conferences
and publishing limited.
Rubin, T.H., Aas, T.H. and Stead, A., 2015. Knowledge flow in technological business
incubators: evidence from Australia and Israel. Technovation, 41, pp.11-24.