Federation University: Technology Impact on HRM Practices Report

This report delves into the significant impact of technology on Human Resource Management (HRM) practices. It begins by exploring the environmental factors influencing HRM, with a particular focus on technological advancements. The report then analyzes key HRM functions, including HR planning, job design, and the quality of work practices, using Michael Hill Diamond company as a case study. The analysis examines how technology affects workforce planning, the design of jobs to enhance efficiency and employee satisfaction, and the implementation of continuous learning and quality management. The report also discusses the importance of adapting to changes in technology. Furthermore, the report provides recommendations for the HRM at Michael Hill Diamond company. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for organizations to embrace technology to improve efficiency and productivity.

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Running head: TECHNOLOGY IMPACT ON HR PRACTICIES
Technology impact on HR practices
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Contents
First: Introduction............................................................................................................................3
Second: The impact of technology on HRM...................................................................................4
2.1 The environmental factors.....................................................................................................4
2.2 Changes in technology...........................................................................................................4
2.3 HR planning...........................................................................................................................6
2.4 Job design..............................................................................................................................7
2.5 Quality of work practices.......................................................................................................8
Third: Recommendations...............................................................................................................10
Conclusions....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12

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First: Introduction
The business environment represents an important base for contemporary organizations,
including the human resources management (HRM) activities. The internal and external
environments that the HRM have to manage is a very complex process. The internal environment
of HRM includes factors like the organizational mission, objectives and structure. The external
environment of HRM includes factors like the economic, political, social and technological
aspects (Boxall, Ang, & Bartram, 2011).
Michael Hill Diamond company was founded in 1979, currently, it operates 303 Michael
Hill stores and 29 Emma & Roe stores in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States.
The company succeeded in building brand quality over its lifetime (Michael Hill, 2018). It
expanded its operation in Australia since1987 and in 2016, the stakeholders voted for moving its
primary listing in the stock exchange from the New Zealand stock exchange to the Australian
securities exchange. In July 2017, the company employed about 2,820 permanent employees
across its retail sales, administration and manufacturing roles. The company strategic goal is to
grow the wealth of its shareholder over time by adopting the philosophy of controlled profitable
growth (Michael Hill, 2017).
This report concerns with the impact of the technology development on the HRM. It
analyses the major HRM roles of planning, job design and quality of work practices with an
application on Michael Hill Diamond company. Important recommendations to the HRM at the
company are discussed and justified.

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Second: The impact of technology on HRM
2.1 The environmental factors
The organizational environment impact on human resource management is continuously
developing. Kane and Palmer (1995), as cited in Genc (2014), argues that environmental factors
have a significant impact on the overall human resource management (HRM) strategy. HRM
plays several roles in the organization that makes it a strategic partner that aligns HR strategies
with the business goals. Also, it develops the business processes and strengthens them through
providing its services. In addition, it fulfills the individual and organizational demand in
managing the change process (Cascio & Boudreau, 2014).
The factors that impact the organizations are internal and external factors; the external
factors include, changes in the international economy, changes in technology, changes in the
national economy, national culture and traditions, industry characteristics, legislation and
regulations, actions of unions, actions of competitors, impact of professional organizations and
HRM staff’s experiences in other organizations. The internal factors include organizational
mission, strategy or objectives, actions of corporate headquarters, the size of the organization,
structure of the organization, priorities of top management, changes in of power and politics and
priorities of line managers. This report concerns with the changes in technology that represents
an external environmental factor (Genc, 2014).
2.2 Changes in technology
Changes in technology significantly and positively impact the business organizations.
They affect the organizational substructure and influence the profits to increase, which is likely
to increase the employees' wages. Also, it facilitates the human resources functions of selection,
recruitment, induction, training and performance appraisal. In addition, international practices

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and developments in HRM can be learned faster by organizations seeking global expansion.
Although technology can negatively impact the HR policies if it replaced the labor that results in
lower levels of employment and leads to dismissal of low skilled employees. Technology
development could result in social cost represented in the retirement of workers, breaking their
contracts causes anxiety and low-spirit. But it definitely increases the demand of talented
employees, the matter that decreases the training costs, but the cost of hiring the qualified
workers is high and might lead to higher spending. Also, the highly qualified employees are
creative individuals who can well perform in flat organizational structures (Genc, 2014).
Michel Hill company vision is to expand its global footprint by opening additional one
thousand stores. This vision is challenging for the company to achieve for its failure to identify
the differences between its HR policies in Australia and New Zealand, Canada and the United
States. There exist differences between the employment policies in each country. In addition, the
company was not able to recruit the right local talents required to build a positive candidate
experience that matches the local culture of each country. The HR initially relocated its senior
staff from Australia and New Zealand to work in its stores in Canada. The matter that resulted in
missing out the knowledge of the local market conditions and delayed success. Also, the lack of
brand awareness in the American and Canadian markets resulted in a condition of business start-
up rather than business expansion in new markets, the matter that complicated the attraction of
new customers and local employees. Accordingly, the company was highly challenged in
adopting the suitable country-specific human resources, practices of talents management and HR
systems in globalizing its business. The HR of the company took the responsibility of
outreaching other companies to gain their support and assistance. It aimed to learn from their
experiences through partnerships with organizations to achieve success. The HR adopted the "try

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to learn" strategy, which depends on learning valuable lessons from their mistakes. The major
lesson was to understand that what works in one region does not mean that it is going to work in
the other region. Along with its learning process, Michael Hill realized the importance of
technology in managing its global business operations that also involve managing multi-national
talents, recruitment technology space and automating the business process required for its
expansion plan (PageUp, 2016; Reddington, et al., 2011; Smith, Wenn, & McKinnon, 2014).
2.3 HR planning
Planning represents a major HR role in organizations because people are the most
valuable asset that requires to be well planned to enable organizations to achieve their long-term
goals. They should be allocated among the departments according to the organizational needs.
The HRD should prepare 3 to 5 year plan, including the number of employees, their educational
level and skill levels to be able to fulfill the changing needs of the internal and external
environment. Flexible and dynamic HR is required to ensure a timely response to the changes in
demand and future expansion objectives (Hudson, 2015).
Michael Hill should follow the effective workforce strategy planning that could be done
according to Sambartolo (2015) and Quam (2015), as follows:
 Demand: The company should select its demand pattern, whether static or dynamic and to
predict the demand fluctuations to employ the skillful employees who can adapt to the
changes in demand. In fulfilling its global expansion, Michael Hill should carefully study
the market demand depending on technology tools in the countries of expansion and hire
the employees accordingly.
 Utilization: The organization's success in fitting the workforce in the right place to
effectively respond to the demand reflects its capability of demand utilization. Michael Hill

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productivity is likely to increase due to the cost reduction and increased output volume.
The automation of these factors in an information system facilitates the HRM activity of
evaluating the utilization level of the employees.
 Improving employee performance: Selecting the highly skilled workers and monitoring
their performance through an information system facilitates the process of monitoring the
employee's performance, including skills, capabilities, risk-taking, satisfaction level,
certification and experience.
Hiring the qualified employees is a challenging activity to the HRM due to the limited
number of the highly qualified employees in the job market. Being the most valuable asset in the
organization, top management seeks to attract them to create competitive advantage. Technology
acts as an enabler of aligning the strategy with the business strategy to ensure the effectiveness of
collaboration and communication among the functional teams and help to steer the organization
towards working to achieve the organizational goals (Eaglebarger, 2016). Accordingly, the HRD
at Michael Hill should hire the qualified workers from the local markets it operates within to
benefit from their local experience and effectively respond to the market needs.
2.4 Job design
The HRM at any organization is challenged by utilizing the innovative potential of the
employees. Employees who possess the capital tacit knowledge about the business process and
operations should be fully utilized. They directly represent a competitive advantage to the
organization that requires to be mobilized through enabling innovation at workplace.
According to Bakker & Demerouti (2007), as cited in Hootegem, De Spiegelaere, & Gyes
(2012), the Job Demands-Resources model (JDR) categorizes job characteristics into two main
groups; job resources and job demands. The job resources are the work aspects that perform

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functional role in achieving the work desired goals that are likely to reduce the job demand and
its associated costs represented in motivation and learning and development. The job demands
are the aspects required to sustain the employees' skills. They are related to the cost of health and
employees motivation.
The approaches to job design reveal the existence of trade-offs between the mechanistic
and the motivational job designs. The mechanistic job design is derived from the industrial
engineering and directed towards simplification of processes and efficiency. Where the
motivational job designs are derived from the organizational psychology and aim to increase the
employee satisfaction.
Michael Hill is recommended to use the lean manufacturing job design because the lean
system is mainly designed to enable quick adoption with the small variations in demand and it
reduces the process variability. The company needs this type of job design to enhance the
efficiency of its production system through designing a system where employees get a timely
feedback on their performance, like the defect rate and product quality (Cullinane et al., 2012).
Also, the lean job design will enable the company to be more dynamic in responding to
the environmental changes with variable rates, including the technology change. The HR
professionals can design the employees' jobs in the appropriate way to flexibly respond to
strategic challenges (Sheehan, et al., 2016).
2.5 Quality of work practices
Adopting a culture of continuous learning, quality management and process re-
engineering are linked with lean manufacturing. Also, feedback has a significant role in
enhancing employee performance and work practices. It depends on visual management tools
and statistical process control. For example the statistical process controls are fed by the

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behavior of continuous data processing that influences the product quality through short
feedback loops to the process operator. Feedback is likely to enhance employee knowledge, self-
efficacy and motivation (Curson & Skidmore, 2010; Cullinane et al., 2012).
The HRM has a major role in managing the quality of work practices through facilitating
the process of continuous learning. It requires to be embedded in the organizational culture and
leaders should adopt it by leading with an example. Using technology facilitates the organization
learnability and enhances the feedback process (Deshler, 2016).
Michael Hill strategy recognizes the importance of building solid organizational
capabilities to support its strategic growth plan. Accordingly, it builds a world-class team and
focuses on the ongoing development of the working team across the company. Also, the
company invests in technology to develop its systems and infrastructure in order to improve
efficiencies and productivity. In addition, the company asses impairment of all of its assets
regularly through the evaluation of the internal conditions in relation to its assets to eliminate the
impairment. This process includes store, technology and economic environments, product and
manufacturing performance and future product expectations (Michael Hill, 2017).
Utilizing the technology solution that was specifically tailored for Michael Hill international
expansion empowered it and enabled its HRM to manage the recruiting activities by using a single
software platform. The company could manage the different local employment conditions and workflows
to manage its talent acquisition requirements in each market. The company could effectively manage its
global team and work distribution. Utilizing technology solutions enabled the company to manage its
global process while maintaining its ability to localize these processes when needed. Michael Hill could
improve its needs from the local workforce and support their local regulatory policies, social and cultural
needs. It also facilitated the HRM job by managing its global expansion without the need of increasing

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the number of recruiters. Moreover, the technological facilities enable the company to open its desired
one thousand stores supported by the facility of online commerce (PageUp, 2016).
Third: Recommendations
Michael Hill should strengthen its team engagement across various global markets by
improving its tools and technology in order to create superior customer experiences that are
likely to increase individual performance, income, productivity and engagement. Also, it should
continue developing its omni-channel capabilities to improve the customer experiences and
enhance the repeated business process. In addition, it has to attract local talents to help in
accelerating its expansion strategy and the establishment of new products, including
differentiated bridal and fashion brands. Adopting the lean manufacturing strategy will assist in
implementation of the strategy of ongoing development and establishing the new branded bridal
and fashion collections. It is likely to support the relevant stories that deliver incremental margin
and drive the consumer preference (Michael Hill, 2017).
Michael Hill should fully depend on online recruitment, which is increasingly used in the
recruitment process by other organizations. This could take place by utilizing the social network
in addition to its website to attract the job applicants. It is important to provide accurate
information about the job for organizational attraction. The social media pages should be utilized
in sharing experiences and achievements with the outside community that help in brand
expansion. Moreover, the social networks provide the recruiters at the company with all
necessary information required about job candidates that facilitates the selection process.
Technology embedded in the social networks enables in content analysis through the IT tools

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that relate different factors and shortlists the most fitting skills (Ladkin & Buhalis, 2016; Smith
& Cantrell, 2011).
Conclusions
Changes in technology significantly and positively impact the business organizations.
They affect the organizational substructure and influence the profits to increase, which is likely
to increase the employees' wages. Technology increases the demand of talented employees, the
matter that decreases the training costs, but the cost of hiring the qualified workers is high and
might lead to higher spending. The HRD should prepare 3 to 5 year plan, including the number
of employees, their educational level and skill levels to be able to fulfill the changing needs of
the internal and external environment.
Technology acts as an enabler of aligning the strategy with the business strategy to ensure the
effectiveness of collaboration and communication among the functional teams and help to steer the
organization towards working to achieve the organizational goals. Accordingly, the HRD at Michael Hill
should hire the qualified workers from the local markets it operates within to benefit from their local
experience and effectively respond to the market needs. Michael Hill is recommended to use the lean
manufacturing job design because the lean system is mainly designed to enable quick adoption
with the small variations in demand and it reduces the process variability.
The HRM has a major role in managing the quality of work practices through facilitating
the process of continuous learning. It requires to be embedded in the organizational culture and
leaders should adopt it by leading with an example. Michael Hill strategy recognizes the
importance of building solid organizational capabilities to support its strategic growth plan.
Accordingly, it builds a world-class team and focuses on the ongoing development of the
working team across the company.

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