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strategic human resource management 785 student summaries
shrm 785 student summaries
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Stellenbosch University (SUN)
Strategic Human Resource Management 785 (SHRM785)
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STRATEGIC HUMAN
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
785
, UNIT 2: BUSINESS STRATEGY & STRATEGIES HRM COMPETENCE
QUESTION 1: Investigate the business strategy that Coates adopts to maintain its
market competitiveness as Australia’s leading general hire company.
Business Strategy
- Business Strategy is the strategy framed by the business managers to
strengthen the overall performance of the enterprise. The nature of this
strategy is executive and governing. The length of the execution is often short
term. To achieve the organisations objectives a strategic plan is conjured
up by senior and middle level management. The focus of a business strategy
is often to compete successfully in the marketplace. Porters’ competitive
strategies to increase a firm’s performance will be used to analyse Coates
market competitiveness as Australia’s leading general hire company. Porter’s
competitive strategy consists of a cost leadership strategy, differentiation
strategy and a focus strategy. In the case of Coates, the organisation tends to
implement a differentiation and focus strategy to achieve Coates way vision.
Coates Way objective
- Coates business objective is to be the $1 billion hire company of first choice
for customers, employees, shareholders, and suppliers. To achieve this goal,
Coates needs to engage its people and deliver a positive employee
experience. Through Human resource management, Coates provides a
positive employee experience under an approach called the Coates Way. The
Coates way provides the strategic direction for the company. Overall, Coates
will achieve its business objective by ensuring that employees are engaged
with the company and are developed to do achieve the goal. Coates aims to
build a performance culture and strategic plans have been developed by its
HR function to achieve it. The HR department at Coates has set in place a
strategic intent. It is: Our Investment in people today will sustain financial
performance and growth in the future’.
1
,DIFFERENTIATION STRATEGY
- The differentiation strategy is one of Porters Key business strategies and can
serve as a tool for increasing firm performance. According to Porter, the
differentiation strategy is a strategy in which an organisation seeks to
distinguish itself from competitors through the quality of its products or
services. If product or service is unique, this strategy provides high customer
loyalty. Hence, if customers perceive the product or service as unique, they
are loyal to the company and are willing to pay a higher price for its products.
What Coates is doing to achieve differentiation:
- Coates has developed a set of expected and concrete outcomes from the
strategic intent. These set out what the HR department must achieve.
- These Are to:
✓ Positively influence employee engagement with more employees
striving for Coates
✓ Develop and leverage the capability of their people at all levels
✓ Improve workforce flexibility and organisational effectiveness
✓ Enable employees to experience a working environment reflective of
the Coates Way and a culture of safety, which will attract and retain the
best performers.
- The aim of the outcomes is to create a company culture where employees are
committed to fostering the company vision. Coates aims to do this by
providing the necessary training and support to develop employees’ careers
and skill sets in a safe environment.
Furthermore, to develop their employees
Coates has developed a Performance Development Plan (PDP) for employees. The
PDP reaffirms the Coates Way, provides the opportunity for feedback, and assesses
employees’ behaviour against acceptable standards of performance.
- Coates has rated itself in terms of employee engagement against other
organisations. It benchmarks itself against other, similar businesses, including
the best performers. {insert benchmarking process here}
2
, - The results show that Coates has achieved a solid level of engagement. In
particular, the survey showed that Coates has performed better than other
businesses in areas such as career opportunities, quality of work locations
and work tasks. Some areas for improvement included work/life balance,
recognition related activities and the physical work environment. (NB)
The SWOT analysis
- Coates SWOT analysis will assist in identifying areas of the business that are
performing well. These areas are the critical success factors, or the
organisation and they give the business its competitive advantage. Identifying
these strengths can help make sure that they are maintained to prevent losing
competitive advantage.
- The side-by-side comparison with competitors can also be done to see where
the business is and what they need to improve to be better and different from
their competitors.
- {Insert Strengths and Opportunities from SWOT analysis here}
How does Coates benefit from their differentiation strategy?
- Excellent and clear and measurable goals will improve how effectively people
do their jobs
- The benefit of having engaged employees is that they will go the extra mile for
customers which will contribute to overall business success.
- Generally, with the implementation of a differentiation strategy there will be
greater product flexibility, greater compatibility, lower costs, improved service,
less maintenance, greater convenience, or more features.
THE BIG PICTURE:
- Adopting the differentiation strategy ensures that the people of Coates are
engaged, and since the company takes an individualistic approach towards its
employees by training and developing their skills and careers, it will lead to
increased employee satisfaction and commitment to the organisation. This will
in turn increase performance and service delivery which will increase
customer satisfaction, business profits and overall, the organisations
performance.
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