Gaining Competitive Advantage through Human Resource Management Practices

Human resource management is known as a structure of actions and tactics which is emphasis positively handling staffs at all levels of an organization to succeed organizational goals. Employees are the most valuable asset of HRM. To make a successful organization, employee productivity is a major goal. It will depend of employee’s skills, knowledge. Basically, all managers in organizations are knows as HR manager like College Dean, Matron, Sales managers and Supervisors are assumed to involve in HRM. To make an effective workforce and high employee performance organization have to use HRM input in the following areas like-

· Job analysis and design

· Recruitment and selection

· Health career benefits

· Employee motivation

· Employee terminations

· Strategic planning

· Negotiations with labor

Depend on HRM to select the best employees, they can focus more on productivity and increased sales when HRM department plays a vital role and they can help locate, hire, train and maintain a finely tuned and productive workforce. Many organizations have various separate HR practices for example employee comfort, development, payment and reward. If organization look for improvement of their staffs then they will develop HR strategy. HR strategies based on specific models of high performance management and is respect of specific area like knowledge and development strategy. A challenge for HR profession need to show that good HR practice, as well to being something that is good to do, pays to better organization performance. That is important to show that HR instead of demonstrating a price to the organization “increases value”.

Company can choose to compete by offering the lowest prices on the market. To doing that they must know their operating expenses which they need to keep low as possible to maximize profit. A change of viewpoints can yield lucrative ideas about how to differentiate product or service or create new ones. An early understanding of where organizations can achieve competitive advantage through their HRM practices and it is simplified by a discussion of Strategic thrusts and targets. There are four targets of organizations practices which can be used for competitive advantage as in the diagram. For example, PepsiCo training store managers in merchandising techniques to assistance growth store trades as well as sales of PepsiCo. Unifi helps their employees with their enactment appraisal system so that they can make their customers more competitive and better able to buy their product.

HRM practice methods through Recruitment and Selection:

Recruitment means selection for qualified candidates who has well known knowledge, external skills, work experience and ability to work with other people. The aim of recruitment is to fill up the post of organization. Only the best candidate can get the chance to work with company and companies are looking for best employees who can help them to full fill their desire. If they select right candidate then it will be huge benefit for them but if they choose wrong candidate then they have to suffer a lot even it causes them financial. Because when employee get fired or left the job then organizations have to give advertisement for job post then selection process so they have to spend money for doing this. However, this process can be long term or short term which is depends on companies HRM that what kind of employee they want. Most of the organization make this process long term because they want best employee for their company. Basically, HRM is involved in this whole recruitment and selection process. Candidate will get the job or not it will depend on their behaviors, performance, qualification, body language and mentality. For any candidate it is important to understand the recruitment process. HRM department will tell them the interview time and others thing that they have to bring with them.

Source: Strategic recruitment process (CivilServiceIndia, 2018)

For example, Accenture is the world’s large management, consulting, technology service and outsourcing company and they eventually hire merit track for their selection and recruitment process. Sometimes Accenture give advertisement for job vacancies in different type. Firstly they are looking for internal talent. They make a list of their employees and give promotion to their best employee. In case if they do not find potential employee then they start external advertising to select employees from their company. Company hire talented people who can deliver good result and it will help organization to gain competitive advantage.

Another example like Apple one of the most successful and largest technology company in the world. Their candidates have to go through 3 to 4 rounds of interviews and after that if Apple is pleased with their performance then they can get the job. Apple always hire talented employees who can development software well and who has great knowledge about technology. When employees will produce good quality types of smart phones, tabs, laptops then company can sell many quantities and earn more profit than any other companies and they will also gain competitive advantage through earing good profits rather than other techno companies.

HRM practice methods through Training and development:

Training and development is the heart of a company which pursue continual development and upgrading. It is a way of learning and achieve new knowledge of technical skills in jobs. In this competitive world, the globalization of markets and technological frenzy are not sufficient for the enterprises to be productive. For that reason their survival and growth of company depend on their employees abilities. HRM department should organize this training to develop their employee’s ability. Training is an essential part of HRM and development. Some of companies are now practicing E-learning training. It is an internet and computer based training. It is a low costing process and easy to access. Even there are shy employees in the company who feels shy to ask something for them it is a good opportunity to teach. E-learning process is now affordable for any companies. Because of this process today employees are now more advanced. There are also benefits of this system like:

· Train with no travel cost: Before companies have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for employees to attend training courses. But now employees can easily participate those courses on Skype, Viber etc. even they can watch YouTube to gain more knowledge.

· Software apps: Now employees can gather resources by using different kinds of apps even they can collect time sheets, running payroll and booking etc.

· No need to pay instructor: With E-learning now company can save 25 percent money. There are lot of sites where employee can find instructions of any problems or projects. So they can easily solve problems from those sites.

For example, McDonald’s is one of the successful restaurant because of their quality, service and cleanliness delivery to customers and their well-trained crew and managers are the reasons for their success. They followed a development structured. Their first stage of training is Welcome meetings. Crew of McDonalds’ work shoulder to shoulder. Majority of their training program is on the job where they practice how to behave well with customers. They also attend class room based training program where they learn how to maintain the quality and service. For them customer interaction is important and for that reason they are focusing on “Hire the smile” where they can serve customer with a smile. In Malaysia, people who are physically disorder can work in McDonald’s. They train this kind of people so that they live better live which is a grate initiative from them. Customer are more comfortable with them in terms of giving orders. McDonald’s main competitive advantage is companies cheat prices because they involved in an extensive utilization of economics of scale to achieve the cost advantage. McDonald’s burger is popular all over the world especially Big Mac burger and taste of that burger attract customers co come and eat. And it also helps company to gain competitive advantage.

HRM practice methods through Diversity Management:

A diverse workplace contains a different believes, understandings, values, ways of observing world and distinctive data. Hasty internationalization has heightened the implication of workplace diversity. Diversity has progressively become an “important” issue in political, legal, corporate and educational arenas. Workplace diversity runs the following benefits to organization:

· Innovation and Creativity: A standardized workforce will have droning business ideas. Hiring and absorbent a diversified pool of people can help company to achieve this. For example: Microsoft in Ireland has 1200 employees and they are from 50 different nationalities and 30 different languages. HR director of Microsoft promotes diverse workplace because it helps their company to stay open minded so that more people will come and work together which helps them to gain competitive advantage.

· Productivity: Diversity and productivity are openly comparative to each other. A comprehensive and diverse workplace can motivate different thinking to invent new ideas which basically produce higher productivity. For Example: In USA, one of the biggest Cosmetics giant L’Oréal reviled the company success which is based on diversity and inclusion in their management. They always recruit talent and experienced people from different culture which helps them to expand their outlets in worldwide to gain more competitive advantage.

· Growth in Skills: Diversified workforces has huge rations of employee engagement. Companies are looking for capable employee who can increase client and make profit for company.

For Example, At Coca-Cola, they have 3, 75,000+ employees in the world. Their diversity is shown as more than just policies and practices. Their diversity education program is including training, speaking. In 2007, they implement a new policy which is 6 weeks of paid leave will be extended to new parents. Their main strengths is Global presence and brand image which is connected with many famous players and actor and that is their key strength to gain competitive advantage. And also Coca Colas large market supply and distribution network helps them to gain competitive advantage like they manufacutres and distribute their products to customers and vending partners and this vending partners has very good realtion with customers.

To sum up, HRM helps organization by building teams, recruitment, engagement and development. The main focus of HRM is dealing with people and how their decisions are going to affect their productivity. HRM helps organization to select best employee for them. They takes care of the performance of the management. They are responsible is caring people feel motivated for their work. Their effective feedback mechanism from time to time helps their employee to expand their skills. HRM also play a vital role in building culture. Creating a well favorable working culture is expected from the HR department. There can be many occasions where employees and employer has disagreement and HR takes timely action for this kinds of things so that things do not go out of hands. Lastly, HRM is responsible for holding meetings, seminars and all the official and unofficial gatherings on behalf of the management. So basically, HRM helps organization in building and managing for building a successful company.