Week 1 Project

HRM Planning

HRM is the ongoing management of human resources in support of an organization’s strategies and goals. It continues to evolve and executives are now beginning to realize the impact it can have on the bottom line. Therefore, executives are including a place for HRM in their strategy.

Strategic HRM, then, increasingly provides direction at all levels within an organization and all departments or divisions. Again, the benefits and goals for this are that organizations become better suited to meet their strategic goals. The nuts and bolts of how this is accomplished is that HRM doesn’t only include the management of people but also provides insight and control over structure and design, communication, culture, ethics, and organizational change. At many levels today, HRM is involved with recruiting, restructuring and downsizing, mergers and acquisitions, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), etc.

Strategic HRM is the management of HR philosophies, policies, and practices to enable the achievement of the organizational strategy. Ideally, these philosophies, policies, and practices form a system that attracts, develops, motivates, and trains employees who ensure the survival and effective functioning of the organization and its members.

As demonstrated, strategic HRM is strongly linked to the profitability of an organization. It is obvious that an organization achieves success through people. Therefore, the management of people is considered a strategic resource that requires planning. Successful organizations place a high value on employees throughout their strategic planning. In this light, strategic HRM planning would consider recruiting people with skills required by the organization today and also recruiting people for tomorrow‘s needs. This requires forward thinking HRM.

Strategic HRM is at the heart of an organization’s competitiveness, profitability, and relevancy. Organizational performance is gained through HRM’s effective management of employees that is in harmony with the organization’s strategy.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Managing Employee Performance and Reward (2nd ed.), read the following chapters:

• Performance and reward basics
• Managing for engagement
• Strategic alignment

• Managing for results

From the South University Online Library, read the following article:

• Understanding Human Resource Management in the Context of Organizations and their Environments

From the Internet, read the following articles:

Hrcouncil.ca (n.d.). HR Planning. Retrieved from http://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/planning-strategic.cfm

Cooke, R., & Armstrong M. (1990, December). The Search for Strategic HR. Personnel Management, 30–33.