Strategic role of Human Resource Management

 The role of human resource management evolved in the last two decades. In the current context, HR managers are focussing on recruiting and managing the workforce in order to meet the strategic goals of the organisation. It has a key role in fulfilling the visions and mission of the company. Companies work and reach goals through their workforce. Hence, HRM has a relevant role as it provides the most competent employees to the organisation which further the objective of the company. Thus, there is an energies trends that combine the theories of HRM with strategic management. This is known as Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM).

It consists of decisions and actions that result in the formulation and implementation of strategies specially designed to achieve the goals of the organisation. Strategy is defined as a unified comprehensive and integrated plan designed to ensure that the basic objective of the enterprise is achieved.

Strategies can be formulated at the top level which is known as corporate-level strategy. Strategies made for attaining specific goals are called business-level strategies. When the business-level strategies are furthered to functional departments like HR, marketing and R &D, they are known as functional strategies.

Corporate strategy for human resource management facilitates the creation of a competitive advantage for the firm over its competitors. This is done by building employee competence. SHRM thus means applying strategies human resource practices.

Scope of SHRM:

• SHRM is the link between the goals, objectives, strategies of the organisation and its human resource. It is at improving business performance by developing a good organisational culture. It also furthers competitive advantage, innovation and flexibility in the organisation.
• It aims at focussing on the ways how the human resources of the organisation can directly impact the growth of the company. HR managers adopt strategies to develop and retain their workforce in order to meet the objectives of the organisation.
• Organisation frames a strategic plan and quantifiable strategic aims or goals. These plans and aims suggest certain staff requirements. These are in terms of the worker skills and behaviours required to attain the company's strategic goal.

Process of SHRM:

Develop an understanding of the Goals of the organisation: The HR strategies are dependent on how well the company goals and achievements are envisioned. Both the long-term and short-term goals must be understood clearly in order to build effective strategies for HRM.

Evaluate the Capability of HR: This assists the managers in learning what kind of employees are present in the organisation and how they are contributing towards the organisation goals. This step also considers developing skill inventories and learning about the expertise of the employee in a particular area. The skills of the employees are tested and employees who have a keen interest in being are trained are identified.

Analysing Current Capacity: This will help the manager in recognising barriers and implementing plans to effectively capitalise the opportunities and combat threats. The HR manager will learn about the skills of the current workforce and assists them in building their competencies in order to fulfil the strategic goals of the company.

Estimating Future Human Resource Requirements of the Company: The managers must forecast on the basis of supply and demand aspects of human resource planning. This comprises of estimating the number of employees required with particular skills and matches it with the current workforce or supply of the organisation.

Identifying the Tools Required: The manager must collaborate with other departments to ascertain how certain software's tools and techniques are used by the employees. He studies how the usage of these tools affects the productivity of the workforce. There is an audit of software, tool kits or hardware that are prerequisites for more organised and timely completion of work.

Implementing Strategies: The HR manager expands the workforce on the basis of forecasting. He also equips his current workforce with tools and resource to achieve the goals.