Human Resources ManagementAn in-depth knowledge of Human Resources Management will help a firm to maintain a competitive edge against other players in the same market in which it operates. Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working within an organization, who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business.
Good Human Resource Management practices will help a company enhance its competitive advantage over other players in its business line. A company can also pursue the following thirteen HRM practices in order to enhance his competitive advantage:
1. Assuring employment security to his workers, by guaranteeing them that none of them will be laid of because of lack of work. Such a practice will generate employee loyalty, commitment, and a willingness to expend extra effort for the garage’s benefit because it provides a signal to the employees of long term commitment by the organization to the workforce.
2. Practice selectivity in recruiting by carefully choosing the right employee in the right way. Some scholars argue that on average a highly qualified employee produces twice as much as poorly qualified one. Such a practice will send a message to applicants that they are joining an elite organization that has high expectations regarding employee performance. 3. Offer higher wages than those required by the market in order to reduce staff turnover as well as attracting better qualified applicants. By doing so, the firm will a send signal to the outside world that it values its employees.
4. By giving incentive pay to employees who are responsible for enhanced levels of performance and profitability. Such practices are considered to be fair and just by employees consider. Avoiding such a practice will be perceived as unfair, and will discourage workers and it will cause them to abandon their efforts.
5. Firms should consider employee ownership of the garage by going into partnership with some of the employees. This will in aligning the interests of workers and firm owners because the employees taken as partners will take a long – term view of the organization’s strategy and investment policies.
6. By providing employees with information on productivity, operation and profitability. Information sharing helps in providing an informed basis for employees to appreciate how their own interest and those of the company relate, thus, equipping employees with information they need in order to do what is required for the company’s success.
7. Companies should also decentralize decision making and broader worker participation and empowerment in controlling the work processes of the firm. 8. The use of interdisciplinary teams that coordinate and monitor their own work will enhance the garage’s competitive advantage since it teams exert a powerful influence on individuals by setting norms and regarding appropriate work quantity and quality.
9. Providing workers with necessary skills to their jobs will ensure that they perform their jobs competently and also demonstrate the firm’s to its employees.
10. Companies should also aim at gaining a competitive advantage by implementing cross utilization and cross training. Cross training involves training to perform different tasks. These activities will provide them with greater flexibility in scheduling work.
11. Firms can also encourage cross-eating between management and staff, food is an ice breaker among people. Cross eating will tend reduce the number of social categories since there will be some equity between Management and the other employees of the firm. By practicing such acts of symbolic egalitarianism, there will be the diminishing of the ‘’us`` versus “them’’ syndrome as people will be having a sense of working toward a common goal.
12. Reducing the size of pay differences among employees when tasks are somewhat interdependent and cooperation is needed to accomplish the work. Such wage compressions leads to productivity because it reduces interpersonal competition and enhancing cooperation.
13. Filling job vacancies by promoting employees from lower organization levels. Such practices offer a sense fairness and justice in the workplace as well as an incentive for doing well.
The above practices however, should be taken as a long term perspective that will help and guide a company in achieving its business ambitions. The thirteen practices will certainly achieve an objective of making the business easy to manage. However human resource management is not an elixir, nor is it a panacea to a company's objectives and business aims there is need to take a further and closer look at other business fundamentals.
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