Essay: HRM Strategies

Sample Essay

Words 1,210

“The “hard” model, which reflects “utilitarian instrumentalism”, emphasizes the importance of close integration of human resource policies, systems and activities with business strategy (Fomburn et al. 1984). From this perspective, the human resource is seen as an object of manpower planning and a factor of production (Tyson and Fell, 1986).

Therefore, emphasis is placed on calculative HR policies such as performance-related pay or formal appraisal systems.” (quoted in Farquharson & Baum 2002, p. 243) Hard HRM considers employees as people who will create competitive advantage. The Soft approach highlights how to increase the employee morale to get them to do the task in a synchronized way and the Hard approach focuses on how to equip people with the right kind of skills to perform a task in more competitive and cutting edge manner. In marketing, to premium price a product the company has to equip it with an added value aspect or service. The Hard HRM policy views its employees kind of like products; they are trained and value added aspects are added to them. (Armstrong and Baron 2002) “It regards people as human capital from which a return can be obtained by investing judiciously in their development.” (Armstrong and Baron 2002, p. 5)

Guest (1999, quoted in Armstrong and Baron 2002, p. 5) commented; “The drive to adopt HRM is based on the business case of a need to respond to an external threat from increasing competition. It is a philosophy that appeals to managements who are striving to increase competitive advantage and appreciate that to do this they must invest in human resources as well as new technology.” Realistically approaching the Hard HRM theory it proves to be present in every today. The essence of this theory is to continuously invest in new human resources alongside technological updates. In even simpler words it means that new people have to be hired to replace the old people. This does not always have to be related to age but younger individuals usually are more up to date with current technology changes. A computer is useless is if it is outdated. A new computer is useless if it does not have the appropriate person to operate it. Businesses continuously need new blood in their organization to keep up with the competitive market. At any interview, when an HR person is asking questions it is only common sense to know that the interviewee is expected to bring something fresh to the table and show promise.

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