HRM Strategy!

Karl Nagra

Karl Nagra
Lecturers Name: Alan Hughes
Human Resource Management
Due Date: 28 October 2013

HRM Strategy
Organisations are under increased pressures to reduce costs whilst improving productivity. These pressures are contradictory to each other and without the correct foresight and unity within the organisation, incorrect or rash decisions are likely to be made. It is because of this that the concept of Strategic Human Resource Management (HRM) is required. Strategic HRM sees an organisations human resources as an asset that needs to managed correctly and in a long term perspective. This essay will discuss how the use of strategic HRM can be used alongside or within other organisational strategies to further progress the organisation.
Organisations have two main parts to their HRM strategy. The first part being the
Overall or General Strategy. Overall strategies are used to describe the general intentions of the organisation. This includes how people are managed and how the organisation intends to retain valuable employees along with attracting new ones (Armstrong, 2008 p54). Armstrong also discusses the four types of Overall Strategy. The first one being a strategy that depends on the organisations current position and the management styles of the organisations figure heads.
The second type is a broader statement of the organisations intentions for its aims and
HRM strategies. These strategies are concerned with overall organistional effectiveness.
Boxall and Purcell describe this as “better people in organizations with better process’ and creating ‘a great place to work”.

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HRM Strategy!

Karl Nagra

The third type of strategy is to create clear and specific practices that then used to create a coherent HRM strategy. For this strategy to be successful, the use of Highperformance management and Lawler’s (1986) “High-involvement Management”.
The fourth type of Overall Strategy involves the careful and conscious introductions of the overall HRM. this includes, High-involvement Management, High-performance Management and High-commitment Management.
High-performance management is used to make an impact on an organisation by by improving its staff in areas such as quality control, customer service, growth and profits.
High performance management works by having rigorous recruitment procedures, extensive but relevant training regimes, management development activities, incentive pay systems and performance management processes. When used in bundles, these processes are mostly known as “High-performance Work Systems” (Armstrong, 2003 - p55).
Lawler (1986) used the term High-involvement Management to describe the process of
HRM by increasing employees commitment instead of the old system of simply trying to control them. This means that employees will increase their levels of involvement with the organisation if they are given the opportunity to further control and understand the work in which they are doing. The process works by treating employees as partners within the organisation whose interests are respected and that their voices are heard on matters that concern them. This creates an environment where continuous dialogue between managers and their teams is encouraged and used to define the organisations mission and goals.
A framework can be built from this to manage and develop the people within the organisation. Guest (1997) observed that increasing commitment and flexibility by highly involving the employees brought behavioral changes within the organisations employees. The staff started to higher levels of commitment, increased motivation and began to work more like a citizenship. They began to adopt better-performing behaviors which lead to lower levels
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HRM Strategy!

Karl Nagra

of absenteeism and employee turnover rates which lead to increased productivity and higher levels of quality.
Mutual commitment is a defining characteristic of HRM.