HRMT20026 Strategic Human Resource Management Assessment 2

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HRMT20026 STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Assessment 2 - Individual Essay

HR management is the process of linking the HR functions with the strategic goals of an
organisation so as to improve performance. It is important for a company to adopt an HR
strategy that is related to the larger vision and mission of the company as it has many
benefits. The first is that it is responsible for hiring, retaining, and developing the best talent
(Brewster, and Heg, 2017). This essay talks about the HR strategies in the context of Tesla.
It illustrates the rationale for formulating HR strategies as a part of corporate strategies. In
addition to this, it talks about analysing how Tesla has embedded its HR strategy in corporate
strategy. Furthermore, a brief discussion is provided on how the organisation can implement
HR strategies at various departmental level. At last, it talks about
The rationale for Embedding HR Strategies into Corporate Strategy
For the HR manager working in any organisation, it is important to understand and adopt the
aims and objectives so as to achieve the organisational goals (Shaikh, 2015). For doing this,
an HR has to link the HR strategies to the business strategies that ultimately lead the business
to the path of success. An HR strategy is an articulated plan that helps the organisation to
optimise the use of its human, machine, and financial resources so to get the maximum profit
out of them. The role of an HR is to connect the strategies formulate by them to those
strategies form by the senior business leaders. Harris (2014) highlighted that an organisation
must have a written HR as well as a business strategy. This would be very helpful for the
business entity otherwise, it would have to face challenges. The written HR strategy keeps the
employees and HR updated and informed.
Steinmetz, et.al (2011) outlined that a manager requires to see the HR practices through the
corporate lens for embedding HR strategies in the business ones. The first lens of corporate
strategy focuses on primary business drivers. The HR manager should remember that
business goals usually are based on one of three primary objectives, namely cost control,
revenue growth, and risk management. By making use of these primary objectives, one can
even trace back the HR strategies that might be used in the value chain management to show
how it affects the objective. For instance, recruitment strategy can have an impact on the
company's growing sales force. The main motive behind hiring talented employees is to boost
profitability. Having a structured recruiting process, wherein both HR and sales head are
present improves the team performance. Thus, it improves sales result and helps in driving up
the revenues. Hence, it can be seen that embedding HR strategies into corporate strategies.

Embedding HR strategy into Corporate Strategy
Being a car manufacturing firm, Tesla makes use of the Michigan model of HR management.
This HR strategy helps in increasing the production of cars, thereby increasing the revenue
for the company. Tesla hires talented employees having values in line with Tesla’s culture.
This approach has a tougher, less humanistic edge, and consider that employees are valuable
resources in the same way as other business resources. They have to be managed in an
optimised manner just like machinery and other equipment. A business has to obtain as
cheaply as possible and then be used very sparingly. Tesla's HR approach requires to be a
tight fit to the overall corporate business strategies. It constrains the HR role from being
reactive. The only problem with this HR strategy is that it is pretty much difficult to keep the
right work-life balance in this model.
Tesla’s prime motive is to maintain its distinct culture while complying with business
obligation and giving competitive advantages and compensation in each country. The
company’s HR management department was directed to hire employees those understood the
laws and customs of these countries and Tesla made some efforts to incorporate
organisational culture in its recruitment process. The company hired a single-source partner
to unify its recruitment process across various nations and provide consistent direction based
on local laws and values to the company. In addition to this, the HR strategy emphasised on
drafting locally complying contracts for employees and handbooks that comprise employee
benefits packages. All these would somewhere contribute to boost and motivate employees to
carry out tasks as per the rules and set guidelines given in the handbooks. In addition to this,
this ensures that the host country's standards and rules are followed during the continuous
expansion of the company. Such HR practices reduce the financial risks and benefit Tesla
both legally and financially. In addition to this, it ensures compliance with the host country
laws, thereby keeping the growth of the company on the right track (McPherson, 2016).
Implementing HR strategy at Departmental Level
According to Wang & Verma, (2012), human resources are inter-departmental and can be
used by different teams within an organisation. It is required from the human resource to
understand and interact with business operations as a whole. In addition to this, Rubens
(2012) outlined that HR strategy implementation requires cooperation from the workforce in
a different department and team leaders. Before discussing the implementation of HR

strategy at the departmental level, it is important to understand the issues that might affect the
implementation. The first and foremost issue is poor coordination within departments and
management. The organisational goals and policies might obstruct the cross-department
coordination and cooperation needed by the HR strategy (Shaikh, 2015). Another issue could
be that employees within the company do not understand the prime motive of implementing a
particular HR strategy and they may get uninspired by the overarching strategy of Tesla.
Hence, in order to tackle these challenges, there are certain things that Tesla must accomplish
for implementing its HR strategy at various departmental level. The first and foremost thing
an organisation can do is to assist the team members to understand the HR strategy. They
should be able to comprehend the reason and motive behind a particular strategy (Gomes,
et.al, 2012). The second thing is to augment the members to respect and give their acceptance
to the strategy. Any changes in the existing organisational or departmental system might
cause disturbance or frustration to employees as they need to learn new things and make
changes in their existing stable state. The HR needs to put some extra effort in such situation
in making the employee to accept the HR strategy at the earliest (Edgar, et.al 2017). Another
thing is inducing cross system cooperation by streamlining the departmental effort. This can
be done by realigning relationships within a system. Implementing strategy can be made easy
by improving the relationships between different departments within an organisation. It might
be challenging but if it is done rightly, then one can implement the HR strategy.
HR Challenges Faced by Tesla
Apart from the cash flow issues, rising competition, and slower revenue growth, there are
some HR challenges that are affecting Tesla from achieving its business goals. These issues
are related to poor employees’ performance, lack of training and development efforts, and
poor workforce planning (Dipboye, 2017). The top leadership made some business strategies
that are hindering the current HR operations and strategies. Due to this, the employees are
unable to get the right directions from either their HR head or managers. This created chaos
within the organisation that resulted in the resignation of its HR head. In addition to this,
Tesla strongly promotes innovation and wants its employees to adapt as fast as they can to the
innovation-centric environment of the company in order to beat the competitors (Gibbs, et.al,
2015). However, employees might not be able to catch up with the pace or might be a bit
reluctant in doing so. This is creating problems in implementing HR strategy. Another issue
highlighted is hiring employees that have goals that match with that of the organisation
(Chang, 2016). Tesla seeks such employees because they would walk the extra mile for the

company whenever needed. However, even after putting a huge investment in the hiring
process, the company is not fully satisfied with the current hiring. This creates a gap between
the HR strategy and business ones (Cooke, 2012).
To end this essay on the high note, it is concluded that HR strategies are very essential for
any business to thrive in the market. It was seen that aligning the HR strategy with the
business strategy is quintessential for the business entity like Tesla. It was noticed that having
a gap between the two strategies can be disastrous for the company. Tesla’s has witness poor
performance of the employees due to poor HR strategy.

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