Strategic Human Resource Management: Analysis of Forum Activities

This assignment comprises a series of discussion forum activities focusing on Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM). The discussions cover topics such as the use of job description videos in talent acquisition, strategies for top talent retention, improvements in performance management systems, and the role of knowledge management within organizations. The initial discussion explores how job description videos can aid companies in attracting qualified candidates, emphasizing the importance of clear communication of job expectations. Subsequent discussions delve into practical implications and assumptions related to talent retention, highlighting the significance of employee satisfaction, training, and career advancement opportunities. The analysis of performance management systems emphasizes the shift towards quality feedback, coaching, and fairness in performance reviews. The final discussion addresses the role of knowledge management in gaining a competitive advantage, using a case study to illustrate challenges and potential solutions for implementing effective knowledge-sharing systems within organizations. The solutions proposed include incentive programs and improved communication strategies to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing among employees.

Running Head: STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT 1
Strategic Human Resource Management
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STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Discussion Forum Activity 5
Job description videos can assist the companies in winning the war for talent
because these videos help the companies to attract appropriate skills for the job
description. The job seekers can see whatever that the company expects from them and
they only apply for the job if they feel that they are qualified for the position (Todd et
al., 2014). Therefore, companies can achieve great success in their recruitment if they
can produce videos which define the nature of the work which is accessible to the job
candidates. An organisation can consider measuring the success of using job
description videos by accessing the quality of talent possessed by the employees who
were recruited after having watched a job description video and comparing the variety
of such skills with the quality of abilities that were hired without access of a job
description video.
There are various metrics that human resource managers can use to measure the
success of recruitment in their organisations. One of the most critical parameters is the
retention rate. It measures the numbers of employees that a company can retain after
recruitment. Another aspect that the recruiters can use to assess the quality of the
success of their recruitment is the number of qualified candidates that an organisation
gets per opening (Chen et al., 2106). These factors that determine the success of
recruitment are contingent to the nature of the organisation, and the expectations of
the stakeholders since the organisation’s culture can significantly influence the quality
and type of talents that the organisation hires or recruits.
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Discussion Forum Activity 6
The practical implications of implementing the top talent retention activities are
that it results to employee’s satisfaction in the workplace which makes the top talents
to be retained in an organisation (Phillips & Connell, 2003). One of the activities that
can lead to a high rate of employee retention is training, ensuring trust and confidence
between the employees and the employers and providing career advancement
opportunities for the employees. I feel that these activities would help the
organisations to retain most of their talents.
Some of the assumptions made by the two articles in addressing the retention
issue are that the managers should always be proactive rather than reactive to prevent
job turnover issues. This assumption may not translate easily to the realities of other
organisations. A proactive approach prevents the turnover problem from resurfacing
again, but it is easily said than done. Turnover is brought by many external issues
which may prove challenging to prepare or prevent all of them using a single approach
(Ott, Tolentino & Michailova, 2018). Another assumption is that employees shift jobs
because of lack of enough training and lack of career advancement. The weakness of
this assumption is that not all employees find it necessary for career advancement as
others may shift the job due to other factors such a desire for self-employment.
Companies and organisations may need to ask themselves about whom they
want to retain. It is clear that companies only want to maintain the talents who match
the job descriptions because they are useful to the company (Du Plessis & Sukumaran,
2015). Not every employee is necessary to them, and therefore the company should be
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careful in implementing the retention policies as they may end up retraining what they
would otherwise want to let go and let got what they would have wanted to retain.
Discussion Forum Activity 7
Many things have changed in the performance management systems space over
the past few years. Some of the things that have changed include the attention moving
from quantity to quality of feedback and conversations (Schleicher et al., 2018). Most
mid-sized and large size companies are shifting from annual employee’s performance
appraisal methods to frequent real-time feedback back and regular check-ins. Another
change that has taken place is that organisations have embraced training for their
managers in their daily coaching skills. In the past decade, performance management
was increasingly complex because the organisation's main focus was aimed at
measuring the employee’s performance and linking it to their compensation benefits.
On the other hand, the organisations have changed these complicated performance
management systems to be simple ones.
In my opinion, there are several things that an organisation can do to improve
the development, implementation, and evaluation of their performance management
systems. One of the ways to enhance the PMS is performance coaching (Shields et al.,
2015). Training and coaching are particularly important in improving the employee’s
level of performance and skills. However, this coaching should be done by
professional coaches. Performance review meetings is another way in which an
organisation can improve its PMS. These meetings focus on the interactions between
the managers and their employees, and it enhances fairness (Shields et al., 2015).
Studies have shown that meetings positively predict justice perception and it suggests
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that if this activity is done well, it fosters overall PMS improvement. Besides,
generating and giving performance feedback can marginally improve the employee's
performance when it is done for developmental as opposed for administrative
purposes.
Discussion Forum Activity 8A
I firmly believe that knowledge is a source of advantage. Knowledge is the
proven facts, and they help the organisation to achieve a competitive advantage over
the others which lack the same knowledge. To put this into perspective, we can
consider a company which has specialised experience about making its manufacturing
processes more straightforward and cheaper. Such an organisation enjoys a
competitive advantage over the competitors as it can sell its products at a lower price
and enjoy the economies of scale a significant market share.
Discussion Forum Activity 8B
From the case study, there are specific issues that relate to knowledge
management. One of these issues is that Bob Dunn lacks motivation about the new
management system introduced by Annette Innella who is the appointed head of
knowledge management (Carr et al., 2002). Bob feels threatened by the drastic change
in the organisation’s culture which now requires continuous learning, changing and
sharing of the knowledge.
The core problem in this scenario is that there is overpowering of the current
leadership. Annette is the knowledge management leader has the responsibility to
share and collaborate with fellow employees to ensure that she gets accurate
information and knowledge which is valuable to the company (Becerra-Fernandez &
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Sabherwal, 2014). She has to persuade them to share this knowledge for the benefit of
the organisation. On the other hand, Bob Dunn feels threatened because Annette seems
to invade his department by asking for two experts in his division who will devote half
of their time for knowledge management.
To solve this problem, the organisation should develop an incentive program
that is aimed at motivating the employees such as Bob Dunn to embrace collaboration
and sharing of knowledge for the benefit of the company. Another solution that can
help Concord Machines is communication (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2014).
The company CEO should continuously communicate with the employees on why the
company needs a knowledge management system rather than leaving the whole
exercise to Annette. For Annette to be successful with the role of implementing the
knowledge management system, she should seek assistance from the company’s
president to help her make other employees embrace knowledge management.
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References
Becerra-Fernandez, I., & Sabherwal, R. (2014). Knowledge management: Systems and
processes. Routledge.
Carr, N., Gardner, N., Newman, V., Ligocki, K., & Kramer, R. (2002). Bob's
meltdown. Harvard Business Review, 80(1), 25-34. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org
Chen, L., Feng, G., Leong, C. W., Lehman, B., Martin-Raugh, M., Kell, H., ... &
Yoon, S. Y. (2016, October). Automated scoring of interview videos using
Doc2Vec multimodal feature extraction paradigm. In Proceedings of the 18th
ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 161-168). ACM.
Du Plessis, A., & Sukumaran, S. (2015). The role of HRM in leadership development,
talent retention, knowledge management, and employee engagement.
Ott, D. L., Tolentino, J. L., & Michailova, S. (2018) Effective talent retention
approaches, Human Resource Management International Digest, 26(7), 16-19.
https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1108/HRMID-07-2018-0152
Phillips, J. J. & Connell, A. O. (2003). Chapter 2: A strategic accountability approach
to managing retention. In Managing Employee Retention: A strategic
accountability approach. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Schleicher, D. J., Baumann, H. M., Sullivan, D. W., Levy, P. E., Hargrove, D. C., &
Barros-Rivera, B. A. (2018). Putting the system into performance management
systems: A review and agenda for performance management research. Journal
of Management, 44(6), 2209–2245. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206318755303
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Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P.
... & Plimmer, G. (2015). Managing employee performance & reward:
Concepts, practices, strategies. Cambridge University Press.
Todd, S. Y., Magnusen, M., Andrew, D. P., & Lachowetz, T. (2014). From high
expectations to realistic career outlooks: Exploring changes in job seeker
perspectives following realistic job previews in sport. Sport Management
Education Journal, 8(1), 58-70.
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