Human Resource Strategy Formulation

The job of human resource manager is changing rapidly as there companies that downsize and reorganize. Strategic responsibilities of the human resource manger include assessing the staffing needs and costs for the alternative strategies proposed during the strategy formulation and developing a staffing plan for effectively implementing strategies.  The human resource department must develop performance incentives that clearly link performance and pay to strategies. The process of empowering managers and employees through their involvement in strategic management activities yields the greatest benefits when all organizational members understand clearly how they will benefit personally if the firm does well. Linking company and personal benefits is a major new strategic responsibility of human resource managers. Other new responsibilities for human resource managers may include establishing and administering an employee stock ownership plan, instituting an effective child care policy and providing leadership for managers and employees in a way that allows them to balance work and family.

A well designed strategic management system can fail if sufficient attention is given to the human resource dimension. Human resource problems that arise when business implement strategies can usually be traced to one of three causes; (1) disruption of social and political structures, (2) failure to match individuals aptitudes with implementation tasks, and (3) inadequate top management support for implementation activities.

Strategy implementation poses a threat to many managers and employees in an organization. New power and status relationship are anticipated and realized. New normal and informal groups values, beliefs and priorities may be largely unknown. Mangers and employees may become engaged in resistance behaviour as their roles, prerogatives, and power in the firm change. Disruption of social and political structures that accompany strategy execution must be anticipated and considered during the strategy formulation and managed during strategy implementation.

A concern in matching managers with strategy is that jobs have specified and relatively static responsibilities, although people are dynamic in their personal development. Commonly used methods that match managers with strategies to be implemented include transferring managers, developing leadership workshops, offering career development activities, promotions, Job enlargements and job enrichments.

A number of other guidelines can help ensure that human relationship facilitate rather than disrupt strategy implementation efforts. Specifically, managers should do a form of chatting and informal questioning to stay abreast of how things are progressing and to know when to intervene. Managers can build support for strategy implementation efforts by giving few orders, announcing few decision, depending heavily on informal questioning, and seeking to probe and clarify until a consensus emerges. Key thrusts that needed should be rewarded generously and visibly.

In Human resource strategic management, the strategist tries to achieve a competitive advantage for his organization. The competitive advantage may be in the form of low cost relationship in the industry or being unique in the industry along dimension that are widely valued by customer in particular and the society at large. and so that they can obtain a competitive edge by becoming a low cost leader or a differentiator puts a heavy premium on having a highly competent and committed team for human resource..

The role of human resource in enabling the organization to effectively deal with external environmental challenges, the human resource management function has been accepted as a strategic partner in the formulation of organization's strategies and implementation of such strategies through human resource planning, employment, training, appraisal and rewarding of personnel. An organization's recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisal an compensation practices can have a strong influence on employee competence is very important.

Strategic Role of Human Resource Management: The prominent areas where the human resource manager can play strategic role are as follows;

1. Providing purposeful direction; The Human resource management must be able to lead people and the organization towards the desired direction involving people right from the beginning. The most important tasks of a professional management is to ensure that the object of an organization has been internalized by each individual working in the organization. Goals of an organization state the very beginning and justification of its existence. The management have to ensure that the objects of an organization become the object of the each person working in the organization and the objectives are set to fulfill the same.
2. Creating competitive atmosphere; Present's globalized market maintaining a competitive gain is the object of any organization. There are two important ways of business can achieve a competitive advantage over the others. The first is cost leadership which means the firm aims to become a low cost leader in the industry. The second competitive strategy is differentiation under which the firm seeks to be unique in the industry in terms of dimensions that are highly valued by the customers.
3. Facilitation of Change; The human resource will be more concerned with substance rather than form, accomplishments rather than activities and practice rather than theory. The personnel function will be responsible for furthering the organization not just maintaining it. Human resource management will have to devote more time to promote changes than to maintain the status quo.
4. Diversion of workforce; In the modern organization management of diverse workforce is a great challenge. Workforce diversity can be observed in terms of male and female workers, young and old workers, educated and uneducated workers, unskilled and skilled or professional employees etc. Moreover many organization have people of different Castes, religious and nationalities. Non financial incentives will also play an important role in motivating the workforce.
5. Empowerment of human resources; Empowerment means authorizing every member of a society or organization to take of his/her own destiny realizing his/her full potential. It involves giving more power to those who at present have little control what they do and little ability to influence the decisions being made around them.
6. Building Core Competency; The human resource manger has a great role to play in developing core competency by the firm. A core competency is a unique strength of an organization which may not be shared by others. This may be in the form of human resources, marketing, capability, or technological capability.
7. Development of work ethics and culture; Greater efforts will be needed to achieve cohesiveness because workers will have transient commitment to groups. As changing work ethics require increasing emphasis on individuals, jobs will have to be redesigned to provide challenges. A vibrant work culture will have to be developed in the organizations to create an atmosphere of trust among the people and to encourage creative ideas by the people. Far reaching changes with the help of technical knowledge will be required for this purpose.

The number of people I need to hire is depending upon the requirement of the company and the cost which can be afford by the organization on this behalf. Few of my recommendations are as follows;

• Chief executive Officer; is the person who is considered as responsible for everything happens in the company.He is the person responsible for building the strategy of the company. He make ultimate decision about how resources are allocated and used .The person should be highly skilled and also a strategic thinker.
• Chief Operating Officer; is the person responsible for handling the complex transaction incurred in the operation of the company. He is the person who make sure about the going concern of the entity. He is responsible to make sure that the business should deliver its products in the forseable future also.
• Chief Financial Officer; In simple words CFO handles money. He creates budgets and fiance strategies.He is responsible for monitoring the company's financial health. He should seek arrangements for ensuring the working capital availability for running the day to day operations of the entity.
• Chief Marketing officer; in the current scenario business will succeed only with an effective marketing plan. A marketing manager will help in find best suitable marketing strategies by considering marketing mix and other external factors.
• Chief Technological officer; Technology is changing day by day. A business can not survive without adopting the recent emerging technologies that will increases the effectiveness of the working of the organization. if the organization does not opt for the same the competitors will get added advantage. so it is necessary for having a technological officer who has in depth knowledge in latest technology.
• Human resource manager; He is responsible for finding low cost best suitable workforce available for the entire organization.