HR10

10.- STRATEGY AND PLANNING – ETHICS.

PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIC HR POLICIES

Aligning HR strategies and programs with environmental opportunities, business strategies and organizational characteristics is the key to success.

Strategic HR planning is the process of formulating HR strategies and establishing programs or tactics to implement them to bring many direct and indirect benefits to the company.

Some strategies are:

• Encouragement of proactive rather than reactive behavior
• Explicit communication of company goals
• Stimulation of critical thinking and ongoing examination of assumptions
• Identification of gaps between current situation and future vision
• Encouragement of line managers’ participation
• Identification of HR constraints and opportunities
• Creation of common bonds

Somethings that may prove challenging of strategic planning include:

• Maintaining a competitive advantage
• Reinforcing overall business strategy
• Avoiding excessive concentration on day-to-day problems.
• Developing HR strategies suited to unique organizational features.
• Coping with the environment
• Securing Management Commitment.
• Translating the strategic plan into action.
• Combing intended and emergent strategies
• Accommodating change

STRATEGIES TO INCREASE PERFORMANCE

Strategic HR choices are the resources available in designing its Human Resources system. Here is a brief description of strategic HR choices:

No strategy is necessarily good or bad in itself, it is more about the effect it has on a specific firm and how well it fits with other factors. Some key factors that a firm should consider in determining which strategies will have a positive impact in performance are organizational strategies, environment, organizational characteristics and organizational capabilities.

HR DEPARTMENT AND MANGERS

Managers are the first line of responsibility for the effective use of a company’s Human Resources, meaning all mangers are personnel managers. The role of HR professionals is to act as internal consultants or experts, assisting other department managers to do their jobs even better. An increase of HR professionals reflects the growth and complexity of government regulations and also the awareness of the importance of HR issues its relation to achieving business objectives.

ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Now more and more companies are starting to embed their sustainability efforts into HR programs to include them in the employees every-day lives. these companies believe that this practices will help employees become more engaged in social and environmental causes. Here are some examples of companies taking this ethical and socially responsible approach:

• Alcatel-Lucent: committed to reducing 50% of the company’s carbon emissions by 2020
• Hitachi: announces a program to actively involve and engage employees in socially responsible practices and activities.
• Interface: introduced a system to address contamination and unnecessary waste and to reduce their carbon footprint
• Pepsi Cola: encourages employees to engage in organic gardening on company premises, they acquired land including a beehive and a fence to keep out deer and groundhogs.