Chapter 12: HR

• Change Strategies


  Plans to make things different
• Reasons for change (triggers)

  • Internal triggers (arise from within an organisation)
  • External triggers (affect change from outside the organisation)
• Key issues regarding change

  • What to change?
  • What to change to?
  • How can it be done successfully?
• Transformational Human Resource Strategies

  A forward-thinking approach in managing an organization's human resources that aligns with broader business transformation goals
• Transformational Human Resource Strategies involve HR practices that are not merely administrative or supportive in nature but are instrumental in driving significant organizational change
• Change initiatives have both strategic and implementation perspectives (two facets of change management)
• Change strategies


  • Turnaround change (financially driven - involves redesign of organizational structures, disposal of non-core activities, and large-scale redundancies)
  • Behavioural Transformations (changing behaviour patterns in the organization)
• Models of change


  • Project management (rational, linear problem solving; decisions generated from the top)
  • Participative management (takes into account the skills and concerns of people affected by change at lower levels of the organization-(empowerment, commitment, team management))
  • A political perspective (deals with interpersonal and cultural aspects of change)
• Organizations can employ a combination of more than one change management approach
• Restructuring


  • Breaking up and recombining organizational structures
  • Advantages: reduce costs, eliminate duplication, greater efficiency
  • Disadvantages: disorder, interference, destruction of long-term commitments, loss of direction, overwork from excessive cost-cutting
• Synergy


  Making a new whole worth more than its old parts
• Shrinkage


  Reducing the number of employees or downsizing
• Decentralisation


  Cow-boy management
• Incremental change


  Long-term change process based on incremental/continuous improvements
• Action Learning


  Real-time learning experience that is carried out with two equally important purposes: meeting organizational needs and developing individual or groups
• Action learning is an approach to problem-solving and learning in groups to bring about change in individuals, teams, organizations, and systems
• Value of Action Learning


  • Capacity to equip individuals, teams, and organizations to more effectively respond to change
• Five ways of dealing with pressing organizational needs through Action Learning


  • Problem-solving
  • Organisational learning
  • Team building
  • Leadership development
  • Professional growth and career development
• Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a common change strategy
• Strategic Alliances


  An arrangement between 2 or more companies to undertake a mutual project
• Variables to consider at a strategic stage for Strategic Alliances

  • Strategic intent
  • Consolidation
  • Cultural integration
• Mergers


  A merger occurs when one corporation is combined with and disappears into another corporation
• Acquisitions


  Acquisitions means the transfer of ownership, where two parties in the transaction may continue as entities in some form or other after the acquisition
• Challenges in Mergers and Acquisitions

  • Restructuring costs
  • Strategic difficulties – harmonization of goals and objectives
  • Organisational problems – coordination
  • Behavioural problems and barriers
• Mergers and acquisitions: project planning

  1. Major steps in the process

  2. Breakdown of specific tasks within each step

  3. Ownership of each step/task...who is responsible

  4. Completion date for each task

  5. Comments/state of progress
• HR due diligence in mergers and acquisitions

  • Discovery of liabilities that could impact the financial viability of the transaction
  • Discovery of discrepancies between parties
  • Discovery of variations in policy and practice that will be essential when integrating and communicating with employees
• Role of HR in mergers

  • Due Diligence
  • Aligning payroll, benefits, and compensation systems
  • Cultural Integration
  • Communication Strategy
  • Talent Management
  • Training and Development
  • Legal Compliance
• Behavioural Transformation


  The most difficult form of change involves modifying employees' attitudes, behaviour, and commitment
• Plan an effective behavioural change program

  1. Weigh between static and flexible cultural change

  2. Use surveys or interviews to focus on employee attitudes towards: the organisation, its methods, communication channels, company culture, customers, mechanisms for initiating and sustaining innovation and change
• The human resource management (HRM) approach emphasizes treating employees as assets to be developed rather than costs to be minimized.
• HR is the function that deals with people, including recruiting, training, compensation, benefits, performance appraisal, and employee relations.
• A strategic HRM system focuses on aligning people-related activities with business strategy.
• Employee involvement involves giving workers more say over their jobs and work environment.
• Employee resourcing


  The key stages of employee resourcing
• Resourcing: the flexible organisation

  • Modern flexible organisations might adopt a structure for instance – the 'shamrock model'
  • A professional core – managers, technicians, and qualified specialists
  • Contractors – non-core – not direct employees of organization
  • Flexible labour force – part-timers, temporary staff, consultants, and contract staff
• Human resource planning


  A process that anticipates and maps out the consequences of business strategy on an organization's human resource requirements. This is reflected in the planning of skill and competence needs as well as total headcounts
• Manpower planning


  Strategy for the acquisition, utilization, improvement, and retention of an enterprise's human resources
• HRM plan


  1. Jobs that are there, be ceased, changed

  2. Possibilities of redeployment and retraining

  3. Changes in management and supervision

  4. Training requirements

  5. Programmes for recruitment, redundancy, and early retirement

  6. Implications for employee objectives

  7. Feedback mechanism to company objectives

  8. Methods for dealing with HR problems
• Steps for long-term HRM planning

  1. Forecasting methods

  2. Techniques used by HRP

  3. Extrapolation – past is a reliable guide to the future

  4. Projected throughput/production/sales information – use data to forecast

  5. Employee analysis – classify employees

  6. Scenario building – speculations of the future
• Strategic workforce planning


  New approach to traditional HRP that involves analyzing and forecasting the talent required by organizations to meet the objectives of their business strategies