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Course name: Generic MBA

Subject name: Strategic Human Resource Management

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No. of pages: 17

Word count: 2380

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Title:

Strategic Human Resource Management

Assignment Topic:

You are required to identify a specific Human Resource Management issue in your
organisation and develop a proposal that includes the following

• Background information on the issue,

• An explanation of what you think needs improvement and why the change is required; and

• Benefits you plan to achieve.

Your analysis should be linked to the Human Resource Management literature and include the
citation of relevant references throughout that help to validate your proposal.

Word Count:

2380

Executive Summary:

The past several years have seen considerable changes within implementation and
execution of human resource planning.

The following essay has been devised in order to analyses the key importance of
Human Resource Planning as discussed by Schwartz (1985), where their key findings
highlighted that more sophisticated groups showed a ‘fairly to very strong
characteristic’ when dealing with human resource planning which included:

 Human resource data being used in strategic planning process

 Senior level human resource planning executives being involved in strategic
planning.
 The integration of employee career planning with succession planning.

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All which showed a strong overall integration of human resource programs within
corporate level planning structure. Thompson et al. (2014) state “A company’s
strategy is its action plan for outperforming its competitors and achieving superior
profitability” and in the case study used, this essay will show human resource plan is a
major factor when aligned with the growth targets of any organisation.

This essay will analysis the key steps in the in the human resource planning process
and demonstrate that a combination options which begin with a short term immediate
solution in the hiring of both temporary employees and outsource will give access to
strategic longer term solutions such as new external hires and technological
innovation that will be ensure the long term growth of the subject company.

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Table of Contents:

1. Introduction.....................................................................................................................5

2. Overview of Raine & Horne SA Pty Limited (RHSA)..................................................5

3. Analysis of the Strategic Human Resource Planning Process of RHSA .............8

4. Strategic Recommendations............................................................................................13

5. Conclusion.......................................................................................................................14

References .............................................................................................................................16

Appendices List.....................................................................................................................17

5
1. INTRODUCTION

Most typical business environments can be comprised by a very wide range of forces,
any or all of which may lead to complications with regard to organisations structure
and performance.

It is important for each organisation to be able to adapt in order to stay ahead of these
issues. It is in the way that an organisation responds to these factors that will vary
depending upon such things as the industry which they operate within and also the
organisations size.

The organisation which will be used to showcase the need to use human resource
planning as part of the strategic plan is the head office of the Raine & Horne Real
Estate Network in South Australia (RHSA).

2. Overview of Raine & Horne SA Pty Limited

RHSA operate under a Licence Master Franchise Agreement to the parent company
Raine & Horne (Holdings) Pty Ltd, operated out of Sydney, Australia. RHSA operates
independently to this international body but it is represented on the board of Raine &
Horne (Holdings) Pty Limited by Licensee, Chris Weston and the Chief Executive
Officer of RHSA, Michael McDonald.

This operational independence does allows RHSA to have total control over the
stability of the business of RHSA and makes it solely responsible for the overall
growth of its South Australian real estate network and its franchisees.

RHSA.com.au (2013) cites the companies the Vision Statement as “Raine & Horne
S.A. empowers our team to be recognised as marketplace leaders through innovation,
reputation and results.”

To this end in an email received on the 12 April 2013, the Chairman and Master
Licensee of the Raine & Horne SA Board, Mr Christopher Weston, stated ‘The
growth of the Raine & Horne SA network is a key factor in the appointment of a new
team at head office, one that is to drive the use of technology and market leading
systems to enable Raine & Horne SA enter this century and ensure its capabilities for

6
growth into the future’. This shows RHSA commitment to growth through the use of
technology and backs their vision statement.

Sharlit and Khokha (1987) suggest approaches in business planning for growth and
continued profit and the importance of preparing a ‘statement of operations’ which is
focused on achieving profit goals and the identification of noncontributing products
which in the case of RHSA can be found in the service provided by the employees of
RHSA as much in it’s also in the tangible products it also delivers, such as marketing
collateral.

RHSA head office is operated as a standalone business which operates with

essentially 2.5 staff members who between them must service a network of 26 offices
located throughout the state of South Australia and collectively there are over 160
people employed within the statewide group.

As discussed in the article Agents of Change (2012), which highlighted through a

national survey of franchised offices across various real estate groups that it is a “lack
of corporate support” which is seen as the number one issue for most members of any
real estate franchisees group.

This is further backed up when you take the approach discussed in to by Covey (1989)
in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (1989), which sees many
business owners as “a technician who decided to open a business”. In this case
salespeople who decided to run a business rather than work from within one, a trend
which is predominate in the real estate industry.

RHSA has a based their primary core value on help for these “technicians” by
adapting a vision of being the source of ‘implementation’.

These salespeople who are now business operators require help it a lot of areas as
their usual skills sets lie outside of the technology and business operations realms.

It is particularly, the impact that technology is going to have on businesses over the
coming years and this impact, discussed Ong & Chen (2013), where the results of
their study show that the IT capabilities of a company positively and significantly
influence the design, methodology and approach that an organisation must take and
that the IT capabilities are more relevant to organisations value, which represents
growth opportunities, intangible assets, and innovation, etc

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The strategic plan for RHSA involves helping to get this “technician”, which in this
case is a high performing salesperson, back out from behind their computer and get
them back where they are of value, which is face to face with clients, whilst being
able to implement technology and systems on behalf of this owner to enable growth
for their business which in turn will increase the bottom line of RHSA as its income
source if primarily derived from franchise fees taken from the offices within the
network, so the better the offices perform the more revenue comes to RHSA.

3. Analysis of the Strategic Human Resource Planning Process of RHSA

The link between Strategic Human Resource Management and the strategic plan is a
key factor to consider in progressing with the strategic plan.

It is the need to be able to forecast the potentially needed labour demand for RHSA,
who are planning rapid growth of their network, whilst also ensuring ways of being
cost efficient during the initial growth period are both going to be major factors in the
survival of the company.

The RHSA vision is to establish, and deliver, all the extra skills needed by their
offices, as a value add service and therefore unique selling point for RHSA against
competing real estate franchise groups.

It is to this vision that RHSA need to look at strategic human resource planning in
order to deliver this plan in a cost effective and efficient manner. Noe et al. (2013)
have their interpretation of the human resource planning process and highlight in
Table 5.3 seven options for avoiding an expected labor shortage. This chosen
methodology for the analysis of RHSA was chosen as it addresses both short term and
long term solutions for both fast and slow implementation processes and it will be
used to determine the best course of action for RHSA.

Table 1
Analysis for avoiding Expected Labour Shortage in RHSA

OPTION SPEED REVOCABILITY NOTES / OBSERVATIONS

8
1. Overtime Fast High As an employer who the majority
of employees fall under the
Clerks Award Private Sector
Award 2010, overtime is
consideration, having current staff
work longer and/or additional
hours for the ‘reward’ of overtime
is within possibilities.
Through a chosen methodology
of a series of informal
evaluations, this course of action
have been identified as highly
negative and is not recommended
as the employees already identify
as being under strain.

2. Temporary Fast High This area potentially has the

Employees capability to provide a high speed
solution in some identified core
areas of operations. Temporary
employees could easily be utilised
in several key areas, such as
Information Technology and
Accounting, with minimal
training.

This will allow for existing staff

to have the opportunity to
implement new systems, which
will require development but with
the temporary employee assisting
will be able to be develop and
have a major effect on the
companies’ operations. However

9
 the additional expenses associated
hire costs would be a negative in
the immediate future.

3. Outsourcing Fast High This again has been highlighted

as an area which could be utilised
within certain areas of RHSA,
particularly in copywriting, book
keeping and social media
management and some levels of
information technology. These
areas have specific needs that
could be fulfilled by an outside
labour force both in the
immediate short term and even
ongoing over the long term. This
also will aid in cash flow as the
associated costs of employment
such as payroll tax and
superannuation cost will not have
to be entertained by RHSA.

This would be the main

recommendation for to address
the immediate workload issues
that RHSA staff reported.

4. Retrained Slow High Given the current numbers

transfers employed by RHSA being 2.5
people, transferring from within
will be difficult and impractical
even from within the network
group.

5. Turnover Slow Moderate Once again the recent

10
 reductions. replacement of the entire team at
RHSA management team has
enabled the development of a
strong company culture where the
company vision is openly
discussed.

This was recognised during the

informal interviews with staff as
not being a major foreseeable
issue however it must be
addressed as part of the strategic
plan, as the employment or
engagement of new staff within
RHSA affected the companies
culture with each hiring.

6. New External Slow Low In order to reach its future goals

Hires RHSA must address that
additional staff will be required
for the proper management of a
larger network.

The speed of implementation for

this avenue is much slower and
specific skills will need to be
identified in potential applicants
and those skills will need to align
with the proposed strategic plan
and also be a good fit for the
newly established company
culture.

This will be the longer term

solution, and if the use of the

11
 previously mentioned outsourcing
option is used then the plan can
be developed to properly recruit,
train and monitor new employees.

7. Technologica Slow Low Today we have been witness to

l innovation many major technological
advances. Technology itself has
had a substantial effect on areas
such as company administration.
For example, the last 15 years
have seen a major change in the
way real estate offices deal with
their databases, payroll
administration and work
practices. Many areas such as
research and development, both at
an individual and also a corporate
level, has been eased due to
introduction of new technology.

As a major area for RHSA, the

utilisation and embracing of new
systems and procedures through
the better use of information
technology will enable RHSA to
drive towards its vision statement
and will help ensure a more
streamline approach and therefore
it must be considered as a key
area when planning.

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4. Strategic Recommendations

In what is now not only a true a global marketplace, that is also intensely competitive,
organisations must make the choice to become either a low cost provider or have a
strong differentiator.

Either of these factors are key for maintaining a competitive advantage in this rapidly
changing marketplace however this does puts a heavy emphasis on having a highly
committed and competent workforce.

A true competitive advantage lies not just offering a different product or service. Any
organisation must be able to look to any special skills and competencies that are
available within the company in order to be able to respond to the changing customer
needs and also any changes in its competitor’s strategy.

In other words, a competitive advantage really lies in the management's ability to

combine corporate-wide technologies and skills into real competencies that help
empower all the individual businesses involved to be able to adapt and change quickly
enough to embrace and take advance of changing opportunities.

It is going to be essential for RHSA to view its potential human resources as a source
of a true competitive advantage.

Sims (2007), p. 323 defined Strategic human resource management as:

[t]he linking of human resources with strategic goals and objectives

in order to improve business performance and develop organizational
culture that foster innovation and flexibility.

Based on this analysis and that of the Noe et al. (2013) framework, Strategic Human
Recourses means accepting that the HR function as in reality a strategic partner in not
only the formulation of the company's strategies but also it is involved in the
implementation of those strategies and this is through all the HR activities such as
recruiting, selecting, training and even rewarding personnel.

Based on the findings of this essay it is the recommendation for RHSA is to initially
look at outsourcing and with the potential of potential temporary employees as a way
of freeing up current managers to enable them to be able to focus on the long term

13
goals of hiring of new external staff and the implementation of new technological
innovations.

Enabling the current managers to play a stronger role in Strategic human resource
management this will give them the opportunity to identify and analyze external
opportunities and potential threats that may be crucial to the company's success, it is
important that these staff who have been involved in the strategic planning for the
group, are allowed the time to develop the new systems to help the company flourish
as the creation of these roles within human resource management will also put RHSA
in a unique position to be able supply competitive intelligence that may be of use
during the remaining strategic planning process as these staff are already experienced
in regards to the company's current internal strengths and weaknesses.

Allowing for this, these staff can help develop the new systems and operating
procedures, ideally through the embracing of Information technology and new
external hires that will help complement the growth plan, these new HR managers
will be in a position where they understand the needs and also possess the knowledge
and know how to measure the monetary impact of their actions and decisions and
therefore should be able to demonstrate the value added contributions of their actions
and decisions.

4. CONCULSION

The results of these primary actions, of these strategic human resource managers will
translate into the real business strategies and also will help highlight the HR priorities
therefore helping RHSA in three ways.

First, they will permit the business to be able to adapt to change rapidly because there
involvement will help minimise the time from the conception through to the execution
of the any strategy.

Second, the business can better meet demands of its customers, in this instance both
internal (franchisees) and external (vendors and landlords) because its customer
service strategies will have been converted into specific policies and practices.

14
Third, RHSA will then have the potential to be able achieve financial performance
through effective execution of its strategic plan.

In brief, a strategic perspective of human resources management requires

simultaneous attention of both the external (i.e. the business strategy) and internal (the
level of consistency) requirements that will led to superior performance of the firm
and enabling the staff to step into these new roles will allow for the building and
ongoing monitoring of the plan.

15
REFERENCES

‘Agents of Change’, 14 August 2012, viewed 11 April 2014,

http://www.rebonline.com.au/features/technology/5385-cover-story-agents-of-
change

Covey S., 1989, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press, United
States

RHSA Franchise Opportunities, 2013, viewed12 May 2014,

http://rhsa.com.au/the-franchise

Noe R., Hollenbeck J., Gerhart B. & Wright P., 2013, Human Resource
Management, Gaining A Competitive Advantage, Part 2, pp. 195-210

Ong, C, & Chen, P 2013, 'Information technology capability-enabled

performance, future performance, and value', Industrial Management & Data
Systems, 113, 6, pp. 669-682, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost,
viewed 18 May 2014.

Schwartz, RH 1985, 'Practitioners´ Perception of Factors Associated With

Human Resource Planning Success', Human Resource Planning, 8, 2, pp. 55-
66, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 3 May 2014.

Sims R., 2007, page323, Human Resource Management: Contemporary

Issues, Challenges and opportunities, IAP – Information Age Publishing,
United States

16
 Thompson, A, Peteraf, M, Strickland, A, Gamble, J 2014, Page 4, Crafting and
Executing Strategy The Quest for Competitive Advantage19th Edition,
McGraw-Hill/Irwin Publications, New York.
Ibid, Page 199 Table 5.3

Sharlit, I, & Khokha, A 1987, 'Planning for Growth and Continual Profit',
Journal Of Business Strategy, 8, 2, p. 76, Business Source Complete,
EBSCOhost, viewed 19 May 2014.

APPENDICES

A. Clerks – Private Sector Award 2010

17