Essay: Comparative Analysis of Soft and Hard HRM Strategies

This essay delves into the contrasting approaches of Soft and Hard Human Resource Management (HRM). Soft HRM is characterized by prioritizing employee well-being, fostering open communication, and valuing employee input, leading to increased job satisfaction and a positive work environment. Hard HRM, on the other hand, focuses on efficiency and treating employees as resources to be utilized, often resulting in less employee engagement and potential dissatisfaction. The essay uses Amazon as a case study, highlighting how its practices in different regions reflect these HRM approaches, with the UK branch exemplifying soft HRM and the Italy and Germany branches facing challenges associated with hard HRM. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of soft HRM in creating a positive work environment, leading to better employee performance and contributing to organizational success. The essay references several books and journals to support its analysis.

Essay

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Soft HRM.....................................................................................................................................3
Hard HRM...................................................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
Human resource management is the process of managing manpower and other essential
resources effectively and efficiently. It is the effective use of company’s asset on right time and
on right place of requirement (Ivanova, Ryabinina and Tyunin, 2019). The main objective of HR
is to fulfil the requirement of staff and make a obstacle free path for them to perform their best
efforts in completing a task which is assigned to them. Other objectives are easy access of data,
on-time payroll and etc. The main role of HR department is to recruit and select best skilled
employees, focus on providing them best training for their skill development, on boarding, firing
useless employees and many others. Soft HRM is the process where HR managers treat their
employees in a proper and polite way and here managers believe that employees are the most
important asset of organisation. On the other hand, Hard HRM is the process where manager hire
employees on the basis of organisational need and requirements. In this process manager did not
communicate much with their employees and they just communicate for official work. Amazon
is an American multinational technology company which is founded on 1994 by Jeff Bezos. Its
headquartered is located at Seattle, Washington, US. The following report covers Soft and Hard
HRM description and how they are important within an organisation.
Main Body
Soft HRM
Soft HRM is the approach of HRM where employees are considered and treated as essential part
of organisation. In this approach manager focuses on making good relationship with their
employees to know their requirements and needs to fulfil them on time to remove the obstacle
which create delay in completing task (Hutomo and Pudjiarti, 2018). This approach is important
to have well-being working environment in organisation. It follows an open and transparent
communication network between HR manager and their employees. Even sometimes manager
take suggestions from their employees in soft HRM in any decision regarding the organisation
and allow the involvement of employees in decision making process. In context of Amazon, In
UK branch of Amazon there are over 37,000 employees and they are enjoying their job with
minimum wage rate and many other facilities which is provided by company like life insurance,
income protection, company pension plan, private medical insurance and many others. They also
provide career choice programs for their permanent employees who further help their employees

to gain any skill and enhance their knowledge in the field of their own choice. This help both
employee as well as company because employee is benefited by learning additional skills which
help them to perform their job quite well and help them to get promotions and on the other hand
organisation reputation will increase as having most qualified and skilled labours who perform
their best efforts in completing organisational goal on time (Martin, 2019). This is the example
of soft HRM where HR managers not only focus on completing task by employees but they also
focus to provide well-being environment for their employees to perform well. Here, manager
thinks that keeping employee’s physical and mental health fit is the responsibility of manager.
There are many benefits of using soft HRM approach and one of the biggest benefits is that
employee’s satisfaction and when employees are satisfied then they work in an effective manner.
Soft HRM influence the involvement and engagement of employees in many ways like in case of
suggestion is required by HR manager for any decision then their employees help them to
provide sufficient data which is required for that decision. Secondly, a good relationship between
both manager and employees help the company to create good organisational culture to work
(Gambi and et. al., 2021).
Hard HRM
This is the HRM approach where HR manager only hire employees for making job done
effectively and efficiently by skilled employees. Here, there is no good relationship between
managers and employees. Employees work to earn and managers hire them to get things done on
time. Here, change of employees take place very quickly and there is very less business
transparency in hard HRM. Manager did not take suggestions from employees in any decision
making process and most of the decisions are made for only organisational profit and not
considering about employees benefit (Goyal and Patwardhan, 2020). Employees are treated as
machines in hard HRM and nothing more than that. They were not appreciated for their good
performance. Due to this reason employees also did not show their efforts in their job. Hard
HRM did not provide any kind of facilities to their employees neither they focus on their
employees health and here managers ask for extra working hours without paying extra to
employees and in case any employee did not agree or stand against this harsh behaviour then that
employee is fired out from the organisation. In context of Amazon, their Italy and Germany
branch were facing some issues with their Hard HRM and their employees complaint about poor
treatment with workers at workplace especially they increase working hours without consulting

about the health of workers. In Covid 19 pandemic, social distancing guidelines were not
followed at their offices and there were limited availability of protective gear for their
employees. At the starting of pandemic, companies agrees to pay extra $2 for every hour to their
employees as hazard pay but later on after few days they stop paying this amount. This is also
the reason of conflict between management team and employees. Hard HRM results in
dissatisfaction of employees and create unhappy environment to work (Choi, Yow and Jeon,
2019).
Conclusion
From the above information it is concluded that HR department is considered as most important
department of any company to manage their employees and resources effectively. A Soft HRM
approach instead of a Hard HRM approach will improve employee engagement at workplace
because Soft HRM approach consist employees as an important asset for their companies and
Hard HRM consist their employees as an machine to work. They did not focus on health and
extra facilities of their employees. Whereas Soft HRM provide many facilities to employees and
focus on physical and mental health of employees. Due to this reason a good working
environment is created in soft HRM and employees get more satisfied and satisfied employees
always perform better and contribute in achieving organisational goal on time.

References
Books and Journals
Choi, H., Yow, K.C. and Jeon, M., 2019. Training approach using the shallow model and hard
triplet mining for person re-identification. IET Image Processing. 14(2). pp.256-266.
Gambi, L.D.N. and et. al., 2021. The effects of HRM approach on quality management
techniques and performance. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, pp.1-
29.
Goyal, C. and Patwardhan, M., 2020. Identification of factors of Hard and Soft Human Resource
Management Practices. Journal of Information Technology Applications and
Management. 27(6). pp.75-87.
Hutomo, P.T.P. and Pudjiarti, E.S., 2018. Corporate governance and HRM practice on
consumption product sector listed in Indonesia stock exchange. European Research
Studies Journal. 21(3). pp.132-142.
Ivanova, O.E., Ryabinina, E.V. and Tyunin, A.I., 2019. Pragmatic constructivism as a soft-
methodology of the HRM concept. International Transaction Journal of Engineering,
Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies. 10(2). pp.245-253.
Martin, T., 2019. Review of student soft skills development using the 5Ws/H approach resulting
in a realistic, experiential, applied, active learning and teaching pedagogical
classroom. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management. 19(1). pp.41-57.