The Ultimate Strategic Human Resource Management (Document Bundle)

The Ultimate Strategic Human Resource Management

Strategic human resource management (strategic HRM) provides a framework linking people management and development practices to long-term business goals and outcomes. It focuses on longer-term resourcing issues within the context of an organisation's goals and the evolving nature of work. It also informs other HR strategies, such as reward or performance, determining how they are integrated into the overall business strategy.

Strategic HRM, or ‘people strategy', is about creating a coherent planned framework for employees to be hired, managed and developed in ways that supports an organisation's long-term goals. It helps ensure that the various aspects of people management work together to drive the behaviour and climate needed to create value and meet performance targets. It focuses on longer-term people issues, matching resources to future needs, and large-scale concerns about structure, quality, culture, values and commitment.

There's no single HRM strategy that will deliver success in all cases. Organisations must define their own unique strategy according to their specific context, culture and objectives. People professionals are instrumental in applying their expertise to understanding organisational circumstances, and designing human capital value chains that reflect stakeholder demands.

Boxall and Purcell describe strategic HRM as being concerned with explaining how HRM influences organisational performance. They also argue that strategy is not the same as strategic planning because:

1. Strategic planning is the formal process that takes place, usually in larger organisations, defining how things will be done.

2. Strategy, by contrast, exists in all organisations (even if it's not written down and articulated) and defines the organisation's behaviour and how it attempts to cope with its environment.

Strategic HRM can include a number of individual HR strategies, for example:

1. To deliver fair and equitable reward.
2. To improve employee performance.
3. To streamline organisational structure.

In themselves these are not ‘strategic HRM'. Rather, strategic HRM is the overall framework that determines the shape and delivery of the individual strategies, systematically linking people with organisations by integrating HRM strategies into organisational strategies to deliver organisational success.

Regards,

UJ Consulting