Employee Development and Performance

Business Strategy 2

Effective Strategies for a Competitive and Profitable Organization

Heather Hinkle

HRM 599: Human Resource Management Capstone

Lorenzo Wash

10/28/2020

Developing competitive strategies for a business is important because it clearly defines customer’s different preferences and ensures customer satisfaction is guaranteed. Organizations can survive in the market because of competition from other organizations, and developed strategies help the customers identify the product quickly. The efficient strategies help the organization develop new skills that are vital for the organization and also be able to carry out research where necessary for improvement. Therefore, organizations must adopt some strategies that will enable them to stay long in the market.

Different competitive Strategies Organizations Can Focus On

Cost leadership

Cost leadership is a strategy where a given company has mass production, and in return, they lower their prices. It aims at attracting customers as a result of the low prices and making profits at the same time.

Low Cost strategy

Low cost strategy is where the business will concentrate on a specific product and reduce the price to attract more customers. A firm that adopts this strategy is able to compete with other organizations due to their reduced prices.

Differentiation Strategy

Differentiation strategy is where a specific business concentrates on a single thing that makes customers not buy a product and includes it to attract the customers.

Many businesses mainly adopt these strategies in order to stay in the market and attract more customers. Marketing of a product play a major role in the success of an organization. The right marketing strategies can increase a company’s profitability rate which is the main goal of running a business. Therefore, it should be the organization’s responsibility to identify the right strategies that will enable the organization to stay in the competitive market and this includes the leaders and the employees.

The low-cost approach is preferable since the company can reduce a product’s price while maintaining high quality. Therefore, maintaining loyal clients and pulling in new clients to the product is easy. Once the customers are satisfied with the cheap product quality, they will be willing to try other products to be higher. Some retail centers like Walmart use this strategy and ensure their shelves do not run short of supplies. The main goal of low-cost focus is to attract customers and, as a result, will be interested in buying other commodities despite of the cost. Organizations that have embraced this strategy have successfully managed to compete with other organizations because their products are always on demand, leading to healthy competition.

Cost focus strategy will lead to less concentration on recruitment and selection because their overall aim is to reduce costs at all levels. The low-cost focus will affect different areas of HR, including little investment in career planning. They do not increase their cost levels. Businesses that focus on low cost will ensure they provide a conducive and healthy business environment to ensure their safety. The business may focus more on part-time employees rather than the long term to maintain low wages. Another strategy used by low price organizations is hiring inexperienced employees and then training them as an organization. This strategy helps to reduce the cost that is incurred if the organization hired the trained personnel.

Approaches to a job design

Job design refers to the process which involves how different tasks are performed in an organization, the procedures that are followed when performing these tasks and how they are related to the other tasks in the organization. Job design aims to reduce workloads in the office by organizing different tasks by specific people (Murire et al., 2020.) Different approaches to job design are;

Job enrichment approach involves where the employees who are carrying out a certain task are allowed to make certain decisions, ensure that the work is of quality, and interact with different clients to create a client employee relationship. The job enlargement approach includes adding more related tasks to the one which the employee initially had. The job adds more tasks to be performed, which helps increase morale as the employees are motivated.

Job simplification is where a specific job is simplified into different segments and assigned to various workers who have specific skills. This approach helps reduce the costs incurred in training since the workers are assigned tasks, they are good at. The job rotation approach is where a worker is transferred from one job to the other one but in the same field to reduce the boredom of working on the same job every day. This approach helps broaden the employee’s level of knowledge and increase their skills.

A practical job design approach is crucial because it helps the workers bring out their best, ensuring quality output. Job design helps motivate workers, reduce the rate of boredom, reduce workloads on a single person, and increase workers’ skills and knowledge. Effective job design guarantees quality output in terms of the jobs assigned and workers’ satisfaction.

Challenges and Constraints Associated with Recruitment

Recruitment of workers has some challenges, which are identified below;

Lack of qualified candidates is a significant challenge that is experienced in most organizations. Those candidates who apply for the advertised position do not meet the qualifications needed by the organization. The recruiting team’s best solution is to ensure that the position is widely advertised on different social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other television channels. This ensures that the message is spread widely and gives more people the chance to apply for the job.

Many organizations want to hire fast. Vacant positions in organizations can pressure those responsible for hiring and hurry to hire available candidates. It is preferable that the leaders responsible for hiring and taking their time when recruiting the candidates. The hiring process is generally long, and it might take more time to fill the top positions. The hiring team should clarify to the managers the time needed not to make mistakes, which can cost the organization more money.

Attracting the right candidates is quite a task for many organizations. The advertising team cannot clearly explain the qualities that they are looking for, making it challenging for the right applicants to apply. When advertising for the vacant positions, it is vital to outline the duties and roles they are expected to perform. This makes it straightforward for the applicants, and they can weigh themselves if they can bring out the best.

Lack of resources is a challenge many organizations face, whereby they incur many costs when placing advertisements on different platforms. This can be a significant hindrance, especially when targeting qualified candidates. Government interference is a setback to public corporations, primarily when recruiting new employees. This is because government officials must be involved in every step, and decision making takes a lot of time.

Candidate Selection Process Ideas

When selecting the best candidates, it is essential to focus on what the preferred candidate has successfully achieved and how the tasks assigned previously impacted him (Weinzimmer, 2017). The interview questions formulated should describe the candidate's' behavior, morals, and values that are important for the organization. The leaders involved in the selection process, should not major on the previous job's candidate failures because it is clear that some employees, after exploiting their workers.

The leaders involved in the selection process should learn from the previous process and ensure they do not repat the same mistakes again. The team involved in the selection process should note how toe candidate could tackle the most challenging task given and which skills to use to complete the task.

Mistakes the HR Team Should Avoid During Selection Process

Employee selection is crucial in any organization; therefore, it is important to avoid some common mistakes. The HR and management teams should avoid judging the candidates based on their gut feelings because it is not always the right thing to do because the judgment can be wrong (Patil et al.,2019). The selection members should avoid talking too much and focus on listening to the candidate to understand them clearly. The main mistakes is to avoid in hiring people because you know them. The selection and hiring procedures should be followed to get the right qualities needed for the company.

The HR team should avoid selecting when they have not cearly defined what they want because they need a clear picture. Individuals involved in the selection process should restrain from asking for examples and consider engaging in the customers and more in behavioral questions to critically examine their behaviors (Sîrbu et al., 2016). The HR team should avoid giving the candidates offers in fear of losing them because quality matters most.

The selection team should avoid hiring candidates just because of the market pressure because this can lead to the wrong person being hired into the organization which can cause poor performance. The selection process can be very difficult because the organization only wants the best. The HR team and other leaders should be careful not to repat the same mistakes they did during the last selection process. If they hired a candidate that does not meet the organizations requirements, especially in terms of the tasks they perform, they should change the criteria used to avoid the same mistake. Proper recruitment and selection of candidates is critical element of an organization’s profitability.

Conclusion

Competition strategies are useful because they help the organization maintain producing quality products that meet their needs. It is though competition that the organization can maintain its reputation and improve where necessary. An organization will attract customers more if different strategies are adopted.

The strategies include using the right job design approaches and ensuring the recruiting selection process is well undertaken. Qualified employees help drive the organization in the right direction, increasing the organizations profit. It is the overall aim. The strategies that are often adopted depend on the managers who are the ones that ensure they are followed by the employees and revising them often.

References

Murire, O., Chinyamurindi, W., & Cilliers, L. (2020, March). Challenges faced by employers when using social media for recruitment and selection purposes. In 2020 Conference on Information Communications Technology and Society (ICTAS) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.

Patil, G. R., & Vadavi, S. (2019). An empirical study on challenges faced by human resource managers towards recruitment of its professionals and its influence on employee performance at bangalore. international journal of management and social sciences (IJMSS), 8(2.5), 13-18.

Sîrbu, A. A., & Chiroiu, D. A. (2016). Jacob Morgan (2016) The Future of Work, Build Better Leaders and Create a Competitive Organization, John Wiley & Sons, 234 p. Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 14(1), 85-89.

Weinzimmer, L. G., & Esken, C. A. (2017). Learning from mistakes: How mistake tolerance positively affects organizational learning and performance. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 53(3), 322-348.