Professional Documents
Culture Documents
HR Alignment
HR Alignment
strategy tend to be more profitable and more efficient than those that do not. This
depends on: in the first instance, understanding what the business strategy or strategies
are; second, what constitutes the HR strategy; and third, seeing if there is sufficient
congruency.
This report argues that the process of aligning HRS with business strategy should be
based on circumstance (contingency) rather than a one-size-fits-all approach
(universalist). Consequently, it will not point the reader down some specific, ‘primrose’
path where strategy and HR can be aligned for benefits all round.
HR departments need to become far more literate in the language of business and
financial planning, improve their networking skills across the organisation and
understand that HR strategy development works
best when there is a strong cultural and business ‘fit’.
Each HR strategy requires the development of robust metrics that enable the HR
department to show ‘before and after’ effects wherever possible. Some examples are
reduced employee turnover, new skills acquisition by staff, increased numbers of ideas
and levels of innovation through re organisation.
Universalistic approach
Academics such as Peters and Waterman, Huselid and Pfeffer have claimed that there is
‘one-best’ or ‘universal’ way to manage HR.4 In other words, they have identified a
number of HR policies and practices, which they suggest if followed would always result
in organisational success. Pfeffer, for example, advocates the use of seven integrated
practices, which will enable organisations to ‘obtain profits through people’.5 These
practices are:
• employment security
• selective hiring of new personnel
• self-managed teams and decentralisation of decision making as the basic
principles of organisational design
• comparatively high compensation contingent on organisational performance
• extensive training
• reduced status distinctions and barriers (including dress, language, office
arrangements and wage differentials across levels)
• Extensive sharing of financial and performance information throughout the
organisation.
Scope of HRM
The scope of HRM is very wide. Research in behavioural sciences, new trends in
managing knowledge workers and advances in the field of training have expanded the
scope of HR function in recent years. The Indian Institute of Personnel Management has
specified the scope of HRM thus:
• Personnel aspect: This is concerned with manpower planning, recruitment,
selection, placement, transfer, promotion, training and development, lay off and
retrenchment, remuneration, incentives, productivity, etc.
• Welfare aspect: It deals with working conditions and amenities such as canteens,
creches, rest and lunch rooms, housing, transport, medical assistance, education,
health and safety, recreation facilities, etc.
Job evaluation: Organisations formally determine the value of jobs through the process
of job evaluation. Job evaluation is the systematic process of determining the relative
worth of jobs in order to establish which jobs should be paid more than others within the
organisation. Job evaluation helps to establish internal equality between various jobs.