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Solution
7C002: People Management and Development Strategies for Performance
Question 1
Over the years, owing to dynamism of Human Resource Management (HRM), it has transitioned from simple resourcing to broad people practices. Considering the CIPD (2017) research report, an evaluation of the different situations faced by HR professionals was carried out with disagreements on stakeholders value being the most critical. Hence, the modern HR professionals concern is to people and diversity of people they work with. Apart from this, as ethical stewards, there prevail issues with people needs and preferences particularly ensuring employees meet the ethical values (Heaton, 2020). Hence, the people practice is instrumental for harnessing organisation profitability and leveraging on competitive advantage. Part of this include an evaluation of success of HR operating as strategic business partners adopting various organisation needs. In this part, major approaches of HR function adding value to an organisation is evaluated.
A significant way HR function ensure addition of value to an organisation include operating as a business partner. Adopting Antony and Merila (2019), HR Business Partner include a HR professional is an individual who is proactive to integrate an entity strategy with people practices. Working as a HR partner, professionals are in a position of linking business and HR, support, advising managers on their strategic aspects, assisting adoption of integrated practice and high performing work organisations (Afsar et al., 2018). Considering AI Projects (AIP), HR Function evidence the fact that the partner aspect ensure stakeholders are working in collaboration irrespective of diversity in different levels. The rationale of this is ensuring that employees are taking part in active decision making. This is to ensure that the organisation is successful in areas project management, engineering, procurement, logistics and warehousing, fabrication, construction, transportation and installation and facilities commissioning. Being a business partner, HR work in collaboration with departments specifically line managers in ensuring provision of quality services through a sustainable performance.
Further, HR partner responsibility is in-depth illustrated in David Ulrich Model which evaluates people practice professionals roles. The relevance of this model is since it is anchored on introducing core factors of Human Resources Management area and increasing overall value. This is affirmed in Narayanan and Ferreira (2019) which identify David Ulrich’s Model as evidencing the HR function as ensuring successful development of strategic partnerships. In the modern business environment, the relevance of this to the HR professionals is that business partnering is not achieved without HR function changing. The strengths include flexibility and responsibility of HR allowing professionals to achieve a status of respectable partners. According to McMackin and Heffernan (2021), the strategic partner ensure that the HR activities and the initiatives are in alignment with the international business partners. Despite Ulrich’s Model identifying the key factors for successful HRM function, the major challenge faced is that the selected aspect cannot exist independently. Nevertheless, they are used in collaboration for achieving the set roles and organisation objectives.
HR business partner operates with in collaboration with leadership and management in addressing the organisation needs and preference. The major knowledge and skills of HR working as a business partner are identified in the new professional map appropriately (CIPD, n.d). The key skills possessed by the HR business partner entail business acumen, advocating best people practices, HR understanding, data analytics and stakeholders management. For business acumen core knowledge, it entail a holistic appreciation of the organisation, commercial factors and broader job roles (Makhele & Barnard, 2020). For AIP organisation, HR function play a core role in examining today and future environment and trends. In the sector of the organisation operation, HR function work with other departments including research and development, marketing and administration for appreciating their market needs and developing innovative approaches for provision of competitive and high quality products and services. This is to ensure success in leveraging on competitive advantage and market dominance.
Also, HR function working as a business partner entail an appreciation of different people practices for becoming a successful people professional and promotion of organisation performance. In CIPD (2022), this is identified as a strategy and process adopted by HR professionals in their entire workforce lifecycle. Part of this entail analysis of learning needs, large talent pools development, people practice policies, people data evaluation and successful resourcing (Rogers & Paul, 2018). In AIP organisation, resourcing strategies, onboarding and retention are holistic for achieving diversity and inclusion. The organisation engages new graduates and highly experienced employees. The rationale of this is offering a chance for working with highly competent people and training internal employees for long-term involvement and likely retention. According to Pandita and Ray (2018), the gains achieved by AIP from the strategies entail innovativeness improved while ensuring the organisation is globally placed. Working as a Business partner, the organisation similarly pursue investments in talent development and developing a work environment offering personalised opportunities for improving capability and effective roles execution.
For a successful implementation of HR Partner, the involved people practices incur costs. The costs incurred to implement the HR business partner are immense and include investment in staff growth and development and managing data used (Golenko et al., 2020). Despite of the strategies harnessing employees performance, wellbeing and retention, demanded resources for achieving people practice goals could impact on their overall financial wellbeing. The phenomenon is worse if the expected benefits are not accrued. To the employees, the accrued value is informed by the fact that diverse needs are attained with De Souza Sabbagha et al. (2018) identifying the increased satisfaction and motivation. Hence, working on a cost-benefit analysis for the different people practice practices make sure that the overall investments including L&D and performance management assessing them for strategic and informed decision making. This is with the factor of time in HR function being
In conclusion, a significant manner in which HR function add value to an organisation is via business partnership. This approach is identified in Dave Ulrich Model of HR roles with their benefits including improved productivity, positive work relations and making sure current and future business needs attained (Hategan et al., 2018). The limitations of the HR partner include immense resources spent in implementation. As evidenced in the AIP case study, it uses the HR business model in examining the existing and future demands, strategies integration and working with a broad group of professionals. Nevertheless, immense costs and time are incurred. Additionally, the business partnership must work collaboratively with all the other factors presented in Ulrich model which entail advocating for employees, change champions and admin expert.
Word Count: 1075
References
Afsar, B., Shahjehan, A. and Shah, S.I., 2018. Frontline employees’ high-performance work practices, trust in supervisor, job-embeddedness and turnover intentions in hospitality industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Antony, T. and Merila, A., 2019. How Do Companies Integrate and Adapt to the HR Business Partner Organizational Model?.
CIPD 2017. HR Professionalism: what do we stand for? Research Report. Available [Online] https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/professional-identity-research-report-updatedPFFMay20_tcm18-17960.pdf [Accessed on 24th August 2022]
CIPD n.d. Explore the Profession Map/CIPD Factsheet. Available [Online] https://peopleprofession.cipd.org/profession-map#gref [Accessed on 24th August 2022]
De Sousa Sabbagha, M., Ledimo, O. and Martins, N., 2018. Predicting staff retention from employee motivation and job satisfaction. Journal of Psychology in Africa, 28(2), pp.136-140.
Golenko, X., Radford, K., Fitzgerald, J.A., Vecchio, N., Cartmel, J. and Harris, N., 2020. Uniting generations: A research protocol examining the impacts of an intergenerational learning program on participants and organisations. Australasian Journal on Ageing, 39(3), pp.e425-e435.
Hategan, C.D., Sirghi, N., Curea-Pitorac, R.I. and Hategan, V.P., 2018. Doing well or doing good: The relationship between corporate social responsibility and profit in Romanian companies. Sustainability, 10(4), p.1041.
Heaton, C., 2020. People practices in 2020: Available [Online] https://www.hrdconnect.com/2020/08/17/people-practices-in-2020-an-hrd-handbook/ [Accessed on 24th August 2022]
Makhele, L. and Barnard, B., 2020. The Impact of Business Acumen and Startup Skills on Entrepreneurial Development. IUP Journal of Entrepreneurship Development, 17(1).
McMackin, J. and Heffernan, M., 2021. Agile for HR: Fine in practice, but will it work in theory?. Human Resource Management Review, 31(4), p.100791.
Narayanan, N. and Ferreira, K., 2019. How Does HR Need to Change its Operating Model to Align More to Changing Times?.
Pandita, D. and Ray, S., 2018. Talent management and employee engagement–a meta-analysis of their impact on talent retention. Industrial and Commercial Training.
Rogers, E. and Paul, J., 2018. Strategic people practices in startup organizations. People & Strategy, 41(3), pp.32-36.
Question 6
As evidenced in available literature, there is a direct correlation of people practices and organisation performance. The factors which inform this relationship include capacity development, resourcing approaches and induction. This is evidenced in a meta-analysis by Rauch and Hatak (2016) focusing on 56 studies in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and noted the existence of a positive and significant correlation of HR practices and organisation performance. In regard to high-technology sectors, particularly in tight labour markets, HR practices are instrumental for guaranteeing workforce with increased skills and competencies guided by current and future business demands. Nevertheless, as evidenced in CIPD (2022), there prevail a distinction of SMEs and large organisations in area of implementing HR practices for performance. The differences are informed by resources and time. This inform on relevance of people practices for promoting employee performance.
Through human capital development (Houghton, 2017), it is possible to improve HR practices, empowerment and employees skills for achieving an entity performance. This is supported by Human Capital Theory (Mellander & Florida, 2021), through enhancing employees capacity development, human beings are able to improve on their performance. According to Pereira et al. (2020), human capital development involve investing on workforce skills and competencies development aligned with today and future organisation needs. By focusing on different business clusters, the authors identified human capital as the background of achieving resilience and high performing organisations. The findings are affirmed by Collins (2021) study which had adopted Resource-Based View (RBV) theory and noted organisations as relying on development of right resources for achieving success in their operations. This means that the major resource in an organisation is the employees possessed skills and knowledge acquired. According to Collins (2021), the relevance of RBV is based on the assumption that through strategic human resources management, an organisation is able to leverage on competitive advantage and market dominance. Hence, organisations including AIP need to be investing in development of their employees capability.
The HR practices such as resourcing, L&D and performance management are integrated in organisation design to guarantee organisations possession of appropriate skills and knowledge for market dominance and leveraging on competitive advantage. For AIP, they adopt Elrehail et al. (2019) findings acknowledging employees as most critical organisation resource. Hence, AIP investment in HR entail ensuring they attract best employees, capacity development and their facilitation to achieve their functions. This is nevertheless informed by AIP quarterly performance appraisal. As evidenced in Jungert et al. (2018), it is important develop effective L&D strategies and also invest in appropriate work environment influencing autonomous and skills acquisition from others. It is in this regard that AIP prioritise in harnessing employees awareness on issues pertaining health and safety and their wellbeing. The outcome of this has been identified as inclusive of increased satisfaction, motivated teams and reduced turnover.
Investing in a new HR practice would entail evaluating micro and macro environmental factors and leveraging on acquired insights to establish sustainable L&D practices. For instance, Rauch and Hatak (2016) recommend facilitation of skills and knowledge to employees, empowering them while motivating them. Albeit of these approaches relevant in SMEs case, they are equally fitting in large firms. As evidenced in King and Vaiman (2019), they are applicable in evaluating micro and macro elements. The identified relationship is similarly evidenced by Warwick Model which include 5 different macro environment factors (Tiwari et al., 2019). These are micro aspects, business approach, HRM case and content. Large organisations including AIP are defined with having an appropriate work culture and structure demonstrating the inner context. This is with outer context entailing aspects which influence new HR strategies such as technical, socio-economy and competitiveness. In AIP, the best practice entail what Tiwari et al. (2019) identify as acknowledgement of technology integration as core for organisation growth and development. Hence, the employees L&D prioritise on need to equip staff with relevant information and communication technology (IT) skills.
Modern HR strategies for improving performance entail transitioning from the traditional practices and consider new practices. According to Andersson et al. (2019), the new practices would need to prioritise on an organisation structure, culture and practices. For instance, Cagliano et al. (2019) describe a phenomenon of shifting from hierarchical to matrix/flat organisation structure characterised by high employee voice hence involvement. The advantage of this is ensuring increased empowerment for autonomous decision making. Also, in resourcing and onboarding, AIP initiate the process by creating an account with an organisation, sourcing opportunities, job legislation and being awarded with the job role. Improving this practice would entail an approach of a broad recruitment strategy such as adoption of mass media and 12-weeks induction program. As part of change management, McKinsey 7-S Model (Chmielewska et al., 2022) would be appropriately adopted which entail strategy, systems, shared values, staff, skills, style and structure. Most importantly, shared values would ensure AIP human capital development are in alignment with ethical practices (ref).
In conclusion, the new HR practices are relevance for making sure an organisation adopt approaches for harnessing organisations performance and to achieve entity strategies. Nevertheless, there prevail uncertainty in elucidating the HR practices and performance relationship. This is affirmed in Guest et al. (2003) exploring 366 UK-based entities by embrace of longitudinal and cross-sectional data. In this study, it was affirmed that HRM strategies are directly linked with profitability and productivity of an organisation. Nevertheless, the study had not evidenced correlation of HRM with high performance. This could be due to what Zeebaree et al. (2019) identified as existence of issues with costs and time to implement the HRM development practices. However, Darling-Hammond et al. (2020) noted that the benefits accrued from implementing strategies such as L&D overpower the challenges/costs/limitations. This is supported by Warwick model which hypothesised that the best practice would entail prioritising on HR outcomes, work systems, roles and employee relations. For an organisation such as AIP which is large in terms of revenues and market scope of operation, they would evidence competence in HRM through new strategies adoption.
References
Andersson, T., Cäker, M., Tengblad, S. and Wickelgren, M., 2019. Building traits for organizational resilience through balancing organizational structures. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 35(1), pp.36-45.
Available [Online] https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/human-capital-analytics-and-reporting_tcm18-22281.pdf [Accessed on 24th August 2022]
Cagliano, R., Canterino, F., Longoni, A. and Bartezzaghi, E., 2019. The interplay between smart manufacturing technologies and work organization: the role of technological complexity. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.
Chmielewska, M., Stokwiszewski, J., Markowska, J. and Hermanowski, T., 2022. Evaluating Organizational Performance of Public Hospitals using the McKinsey 7-S Framework. BMC health services research, 22(1), pp.1-12.
CIPD 2022. The business impact of HR in Small Firms/CIPD Factsheet. Available [Online] https://www.cipd.co.uk/news-views/nutshell/issue-116/hr-small-firms#gref [Accessed on 24th August 2022]
CIPD 2022. The business impact of HR in Small Firms/CIPD Factsheet. Available [Online] https://www.cipd.co.uk/news-views/nutshell/issue-116/hr-small-firms#gref [Accessed on 24th August 2022]
Collins, C.J., 2021. Expanding the resource based view model of strategic human resource management. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 32(2), pp.331-358.
Collins, C.J., 2021. Expanding the resource based view model of strategic human resource management. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 32(2), pp.331-358.
Darling-Hammond, L., Flook, L., Cook-Harvey, C., Barron, B. and Osher, D., 2020. Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development. Applied developmental science, 24(2), pp.97-140.
Elrehail, H., Harazneh, I., Abuhjeeleh, M., Alzghoul, A., Alnajdawi, S. and Ibrahim, H.M.H., 2019. Employee satisfaction, human resource management practices and competitive advantage: The case of Northern Cyprus. European Journal of Management and Business Economics.
Guest, D.E., Michie, J., Conway, N. and Sheehan, M., 2003. Human resource management and corporate performance in the UK. British journal of industrial relations, 41(2), pp.291-314.
Houghton, E., 2017. Human capital analytics and reporting: exploring theory and evidence. London, England: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Jungert, T., Van den Broeck, A., Schreurs, B. and Osterman, U., 2018. How colleagues can support each other’s needs and motivation: An intervention on employee work motivation. Applied Psychology, 67(1), pp.3-29.
King, K.A. and Vaiman, V., 2019. Enabling effective talent management through a macro-contingent approach: A framework for research and practice. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, 22(3), pp.194-206.
Mellander, C. and Florida, R., 2021. The rise of skills: Human capital, the creative class, and regional development. Handbook of regional science, pp.707-719.
Pereira, V., Temouri, Y. and Patel, C., 2020. Exploring the role and importance of human capital in resilient high performing organisations: evidence from business clusters. Applied Psychology, 69(3), pp.769-804.
Rauch, A. and Hatak, I., 2016. A meta-analysis of different HR-enhancing practices and performance of small and medium sized firms. Journal of business venturing, 31(5), pp.485-504.
Tiwari, V., Srivastava, S. and Kumar, D., 2019. Adoption of HRM practices: A practical model-case study of a hotel. IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM), 21(4), pp.59-63.
Tiwari, V., Srivastava, S. and Kumar, D., 2019. Adoption of HRM practices: A practical model-case study of a hotel. IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM), 21(4), pp.59-63.
Zeebaree, S.R., Shukur, H.M. and Hussan, B.K., 2019. Human resource management systems for enterprise organizations: A review. Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences (PEN), 7(2), pp.660-669.
Question 12
In the last decade, popularity of flexible working has tripled. The phenomenon has been escalated by prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic as the demand for working from home for controlling spread has increased. As evidenced in Chung et al. (2021), COVID-19 has impacted organisations leading to consideration of other distinct work practices particularly remote working defined by employees completion of their roles at their convenience. Through flexible working, virtual teams have been developed intended for harnessing tasks and involving team members who work from various locations in distinct timelines. According to Maes and Weldy (2018), virtual teams harness high-level quality employment relations which is a role of line management, employee engagement and holistic communication. In subsequent section, people management professionals appropriate support to line manager for harnessing employment relations in virtual teams interactions has been reviewed……………………………….
Question 13…
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