Strategic HRM
1. ‘Strategic human resource management is largely about integration or strategic fit between HR strategy and business strategy’. Do you agree? Differentiate between external fit and internal fit. Give example of any one organization you know of, that have achieved a fit between business strategy and HR strategy.
2. XYZ limited is exploring ways of compensating and rewarding employees as a strategy to improve retention. As an advice state and explain various reward management strategies available to XYZ ltd. Highlight the strategies available to the management in dealing with poor performance in the workplace.
3. Siemens is a 150-year old Company, but it’s not the company it was even a few years ago. Until recently, Siemens focused on producing electrical products. Today the firm has diversified into software, engineering, and services, and is also global, with over 400,000 employees working in 190 countries. In other words, Siemens became a world leader by pursuing a corporate strategy that emphasized diversifying into high-tech products and services, and doing so on a global basis.With a corporate strategy like that, human resource management plays a big role at Siemens. Sophisticated engineering services require more focus on employee selection, training and compensation than in the average firm, and globalization requires delivering these sevices globally. Siemens sums up the basic themes of its HR strategy in several points. These include:
i. A living Company is a learning Company. The high-tech nature of Siemen’s business means that employees must be able to learn on a continuing basis. Siemens uses its system of combined classroom and hands-on apprenticeship training around the world to help facilitate this. It also offers employees extensive continuing education and management development.
ii. Global teamwork is the key to developing and using all the potential of the firm’s human resources. Because it is so important for employees throughout Siemens to feel free to work together and interact, employees feel they are part of a strong unifying corporate identity. For example, HR uses cross-border, cross-cultural experienced as prerequisites for career advances.
iii. A climate of mutual respect is the bais of all relationships – within the Company and with society. Siemens contends that the wealth of nationalities, cultures, languages, and outlooks represented by its employees is one of its most valuable assets. It therefore engages in numerous HR activities aimed at building openness, transparency, and fairness, and supporting diversity.
3. A) Describe your opinion on how Siemens rates people as a vital tool in creating organizational competitive advantage.
3. B) Advice Siemens on how it should go in drafting a Training and Development Strategy and show how it should be linked to other HR functional strategies.