Similarly, a study on 1993 found that organizations with sound human resource management practices (for example, "companies that properly test and interview job seekers and evaluate the effectiveness of recruitment and selection procedures") have higher levels of annual profits, profit growth and overall performance than those with less sound practices. Jeffery Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford University, described the potential impact of human resource management practices on competitive advantage in his book "Obtaining Competitive Advantage through People". Pfeiffer summarized 16 human resource management practices that can improve the company's competitive advantage.
16 human resource management practice to improve competitive advantage
1. Job security: Employment security that ensures that employees will not be fired for lack of jobs. The organization provides long-term commitment to employees. This practice will lead to employees' loyalty, commitment and willingness to make extra efforts for the benefit of the organization.
2. Selection during recruitment: Carefully select qualified employees in the right way. The average productivity of highly qualified employees is twice that of less qualified employees. In addition, through the selection in recruitment practice, the organization sends a message to job seekers that they are an elite organization, and at the same time sends a message that it has high expectations for the performance of employees.
3. High salary: the salary is higher than the salary required by the market (that is, higher than the salary paid by competitors). High wages tend to attract more qualified job seekers, reduce mobility, and convey the message that companies cherish employees.
4. Attractive salary: Let employees who improve their performance and profitability share the allowance. Employees think this is both fair and just. If the benefits of employees' talents and efforts reach the top, people will think that this situation is unfair, and they will be discouraged and give up their efforts.
5. Employee ownership: the benefits of ownership in an organization are given to employees by providing them with company shares and profit sharing plans. If properly implemented, employee stock ownership can closely combine the interests of employees with those of other shareholders. These employees may have long-term beliefs about their organizations, their strategies and their investment policies.
6. Information sharing: provide employees with information about operation, productivity and profitability. Provide employees with an information base to correctly evaluate how their own interests are related to the interests of the company, so as to provide them with the information they need to do what they have to do to succeed.
7. Participation and authorization: encourage the decentralization of decision-making and expand the participation and authorization of workers in the process of controlling their own work. Organizations should shift from a hierarchical system that controls and coordinates activities to a system that allows low-level employees to do things that can improve their performance. Research shows that participation can not only improve employee satisfaction, but also improve productivity.
8. Team and work redesign: Use interdisciplinary teams to coordinate and monitor their own work. By setting appropriate standards for the quantity and quality of work, teams exert a strong influence on individuals. When the group effort pays off, when the group has certain autonomy and control over the working environment, and when the group is valued by the organization, it is more likely to produce positive results from the group influence.
9. Training and skill development: provide employees with the skills they need to complete their work. Training can not only ensure that employees and managers are competent for their jobs, but also show the company's commitment to employees.
10, job rotation and cross-training: training people to do several different jobs. Letting people do multiple tasks can make the work more interesting and provide more flexibility for managers to arrange their work schedules. For example, it can use trained workers to perform these tasks instead of absent workers.
1 1. Symbolic egalitarianism: employees can be treated equally by canceling the manager's restaurant and reserving parking spaces. Reducing the embodiment of social categories may reduce the opposing thoughts of "us" to "them" and provide a feeling that everyone is working hard for a common goal.
12, Salary "concentration": the degree to reduce the salary difference between employees. When tasks need to be interdependent and work needs to be coordinated with each other, salary concentration can lead to the improvement of productivity by reducing interpersonal competition and improving cooperation.
13. Internal promotion: filling job vacancies by promoting lower-level employees. Promotion increases training and skill development, which provides employees with incentives to "do a good job" and a sense of fairness and justice in the workplace.
14, long-term perspective: organizations must understand that it takes time to achieve competitive advantage through labor, so they need a long-term perspective. In the short term, firing people may be more profitable than maintaining employment security, and reducing training funds is also a shortcut to maintain short-term profits. However, once you gain a competitive advantage by using these human resource management practices, this advantage may be more lasting.
15. measurement of practice: the organization should measure the attitude of employees, the success of various programs and plans, and the performance level of employees. Measurement can be guided by pointing out "what is important", which can provide feedback to companies and employees and tell them how well they perform compared with measurement standards.
16. Infiltration philosophy: let the basic management philosophy connect the practices of different individuals into a cohesive whole.
The success of the practices listed in 1 to 15 depends to some extent on forming a system on the basis of success and how to manage people's values and beliefs. For example, the infiltration philosophy of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is "continuous rapid improvement, authorization, boundaryless organization, high expectations and technical excellence".
(B) strategic human resource management practices and organizational competitive advantages
The effective combination of human resource management and organizational strategy is the core of strategic human resource management. Deepening the understanding of strategic human resource management is helpful to the connection of all aspects of human resource management and the connection between human resource management and enterprise strategy. The trend of economic globalization is an important driving force of strategic human resource management. When the enterprise is in the stage of globalization, the strategy of the enterprise is based on the integration of all resources, skills and knowledge of different business units around the world and the flow of resources in the global company network. Enterprises in globalization plan their business, carry out research and development activities and carry out various commercial activities on a global scale. For example, Microsoft has established China Research Institute, Haier has established joint ventures with many foreign companies and industrial parks in the United States, many joint-stock companies are listed abroad, and many domestic companies have invited international people as executives (such as Ping An Insurance Company in China) ... In a global company, any part is equal to the flow and integration of knowledge and information. It has become a strategic proposition of modern human resource management to mold the advanced management culture of enterprises, cultivate outstanding talents and use talents globally, and carry out cross-cultural management by combining globalization with localization.
The fierce competitive environment is also one of the important motivations for enterprises to use strategic human resource management. The world today is facing multiple and rapidly changing competitive pressures. If an organization wants to survive and develop continuously, it must constantly adapt to these pressures. The dynamic change of organizational environment has caused more thinking of human resources management department. They should seek employees and organizational structures that can adapt to changes and then have competitive advantages, including the adjustment of their own systems, which will inevitably lead to strategic human resource management.
The application of modern information technology, including the rapid and extensive development of computer, communication, internet and other technologies, has also prompted enterprises to start managing human resources from a strategic perspective and promote the long-term development of enterprises. With the rapid development of new technology, it not only improves the operation efficiency of enterprises, greatly reduces the transaction cost, but also has a great impact on the management mode of enterprises, and constantly redefines the working mode. It is the rapid development of information economy and technology that makes enterprises more and more aware of the important role of people who create and invent technology. In addition, modern human resources management, like the application of computers in various fields, also uses a lot of modern information, and the management is marked with E. The work of human resources departments gradually enjoys the same or even higher attention status as other functional departments. For example, some multinational companies publish their employees' training plans to every employee in the global branches on the company website every month, so that everyone can get what they need, upload their training needs separately, and finally form the company's global training plan for implementation.
A general model of strategic human resources can be constructed with the overall strategy of the enterprise as the source and the functions of human resources management as the link. Strategic human resource management can be defined as the overall strategy of an enterprise, which is the center of the enterprise human resource management system, that is, to build human resource management that supports the overall strategy of an enterprise, which is collectively called strategic human resource management.
People have different understandings and definitions of the overall strategy of an enterprise. Generally speaking, the overall strategy of an enterprise is a complete system planning such as target design, strategic support, resource accumulation and distribution, and key action planning. It is the overall design of enterprise value chain; It is the overall design of profit zone identification, business boundary definition, profit zone control and profit acquisition. For example, using Porter's value chain model as a tool of strategic thinking, we can analyze that human resource management is the support of the value chain. Successful strategic planning should not only design the enterprise's value chain system, but also identify value and provide excellent value through excellent value creation process design. Human resources, R&D and procurement should be combined with the basic value chain of enterprises. Its combination mode is the transmission process of strategy-human resource management. From the perspective of consumer value, it is also the transmission and realization of the maintenance value of human resource management. In strategic planning, the key is the connection between human resource strategy and the overall strategy of the enterprise: strategic determination of business process-organizational adaptation process-organizational determination of posts-employees adaptation to posts-employees are guided by post standards and methods-employees are rewarded for achieving performance goals-employees are encouraged by incentive system and corporate culture to work hard-employee development promotes organizational growth.
This process involves all aspects of human resource management functions. Enterprise strategy is the source of this process, and all links are guided by strategy. The fundamental feature of strategic human resource management is that human resource management conveys the overall strategy of the enterprise and is well combined with the overall strategy. This process thinking mode helps us to deepen our understanding of strategic human resource management from two aspects.
First of all, it is helpful to establish strategic requirements or standards for all aspects of human resource management functions. This process actually includes all aspects of human resource management, such as organization and post design, demand analysis, recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal, salary and incentive management, etc. And put forward the corresponding standards and requirements. For example, the relationship between organization and post design and strategy is generally considered as "structure obeys strategy". In fact, through the process analysis of human resource support strategy, we can gain a deeper understanding. The overall strategic planning of the enterprise designs the process of value production, so as to design the business process corresponding to value realization. Organizations and posts should adapt to business processes. If the organization and post design are improper and the business process is separated, it will inevitably lead to low efficiency of value production. This is very obvious in those industries with outstanding process status, such as a listed real estate enterprise in Beijing. No one is responsible for the whole process of the project except the general manager, and there is a lack of effective coordination among various functional departments, which leads to fragmentation of the process, prolonged project cycle and rising costs. The fundamental reason is that the project team lacks such an institutional arrangement, or a key coordination post. Similarly, after the strategic direction is determined, taking real estate enterprises as an example, if we strengthen the pre-planning power and accumulate relevant intelligence and knowledge resources, then the recruitment and training in the corresponding human resource management should focus on the introduction of relevant talents and the diffusion and development of knowledge. In other links, the guiding role of strategy is very obvious.
Secondly, more importantly, with the help of this process analysis, we can strengthen the relationship between various management functions and the relationship between human resource management and strategy. For some enterprises with relatively sound and standardized human resources management, there are various commissioners, such as salary commissioners, under the personnel manager and even the vice president of personnel. As you can imagine, for those group enterprises with tens of thousands of employees, subordinate companies or staggered departments, it is not easy for each Commissioner to work, and it is very easy to get into specific affairs. This process/process thinking strengthens their sensitivity to the coordination of all aspects of human resource management, and helps them to look beyond daily affairs and keep their attention to the overall situation of enterprise strategy and human resource management, which is undoubtedly very crucial for the long-term development of enterprises.
(C) Human resource management practice and sustainable competitive advantage
In the contest of future market competition, only by establishing a set of strategic human resource management system can enterprises turn existing talents into the source of enhancing core competitive advantage. To reconstruct the new system of enterprise strategic human resources management, the most important thing is to take human resources as an important strategic resource of the enterprise, and effectively manage the existing human resources according to the strategic requirements of the enterprise, so as to construct the enterprise strategic human resources management system. The starting point and destination of strategic human resource management is to build the core competitiveness of enterprises in the future, and the core lies in how to cultivate and train a staff with core competitiveness from the existing human resource stock of enterprises. The biggest difference between strategic human resource management and traditional human resource management is that the human resource management department can directly participate in the strategic decision-making of the organization, coordinate and cooperate with other departments under the premise of clear organizational strategy, and realize the strategic objectives of the organization.
Strategic human resource management has a wide range of functions, specifically involving enterprise competition evaluation, enterprise organizational planning and design, organizational culture construction, job position analysis, personnel recruitment and allocation, training and career development, employee evaluation and performance appraisal. Salary system, welfare, labor management, human capital control and labor relations. The four basic core functions of human resource management, namely, enterprise competitiveness evaluation, enterprise organization planning and design, job determination and analysis, and salary system, play the most basic and key core role in the actual operation of establishing a strategic human resource management system. In view of the complexity of the above-mentioned human resource process, that is, the management of human resources is difficult to be imitated, so the competitive advantage of enterprises constructed by human resources is longer than that obtained by other means. This is because it is difficult for every enterprise to fully understand the specific human resources practice process and arrangement. Even if understood and imitated, measures that are effective in one enterprise may not be fully applicable in another enterprise. For example, the development of different enterprises and their different development stages need to cooperate with different organizational structures and different types of talents and human resource management methods.
It is a systematic and procedural work for enterprises to establish a strategic human resource management system. Strategic human resource management requires enterprises to break through the traditional "personnel" orientation and rise from a maintenance and auxiliary management function to a strategic management function. In order to improve the strategic value of human resources in the company and ensure that the company's human resources policy matches the company's development strategy, the human resources are systematically planned. In this process, the concept and consciousness of the leader is the premise of the successful establishment of the system. Along the main line of "enterprise's strategic goal-human resource goal and strategy-human resource system and specific measures", we must first make clear "what kind of human resources are needed to realize the strategic goal of an enterprise (analysis of key success factors) and what kind of behavior core talents are expected to have (definition of key success behavior); What core talents should we attract and retain; By what means to attract, retain and motivate these core talents, we can promote the improvement of enterprise competitiveness. The main body of company value creation is the company's leadership and core business employees. The acquisition of value creation subject and the improvement of business ability are the core of the company's human resource planning. Human resource planning is a kind of strategic planning, which focuses on preparing manpower for the future production and operation activities of enterprises, continuously and systematically analyzing the needs of enterprises for human resources under changing conditions, and formulating and formulating personnel policies suitable for the long-term interests of enterprises. It is an integral part of the overall planning and financial budget of an enterprise, because of the input and forecast of human resources.
The core of strategic human resource management is to systematically arrange various human resource systems and specific measures at the level of enterprise strategy, organization and the whole human resource management system. Specifically, around the value chain of "value creation-value factor analysis-value factor evaluation-value distribution", it is necessary to clarify who created the company's value, which factors participated in value creation, how to evaluate the contributions of different factors and people in value creation, and who is the subject of value creation, so as to determine to whom the value distribution system should be tilted. The strategic human resource management of modern enterprises must establish the concept of human capital investment and attach importance to the investment in human capital, not the investment in material capital. To build the competitiveness of human resources in enterprises, we must attach great importance to the training and development of human resources, establish the strategic position of education and training, formulate practical training and development plans, establish a system of all-staff education and lifelong education, urge employees to constantly update their concepts, optimize their knowledge structure and improve their comprehensive quality. Strategic human resource management also requires enterprises to break the institutional obstacles in the flow of talents and ensure that the main body of the talent market is fully in place. Therefore, in the allocation of enterprise human resources, it is necessary to realize the optimal allocation of enterprise human resources and the organic combination of production factors such as labor (employees) under strict cost constraints. The strategic human resource allocation mode of competitive recruitment is based on the pursuit of rational development, rational allocation and optimal use of talents. Through open competition, we will build a platform of fair competition, two-way selection and human resource allocation to better meet the needs of business development and structural adjustment for human resources, and select the most suitable and matching person from those who meet the post conditions, so that talents can be used in the post. In a word, whether a company can win a place in the increasingly fierce international and domestic competition depends largely on whether it can quickly build the competitiveness of human resources and build a new strategic human resources management system that meets the needs of modern company management.
At the end of the case:
-"Proceed from the mission of the Head Office"
ABC Company is one of the largest and oldest industrial enterprises in the world. The founder of ABC Company was born in a village in new york, USA. When he was seven, his father taught him how to do business. Later, he and four other people jointly established the Standard Oil Company. At that time, the development of the oil industry depended entirely on the transportation of oil. Therefore, he reached a long-term agreement with the railway transportation system: standard oil will ensure that the railway transportation system regularly transports a large amount of oil and other products. Due to the large volume of oil freight, the railway transportation system will give the most favorable price to standard oil. Its experience is: "The only way to rise in the chaotic competition is to cooperate with or merge competitors. If you and your competitors kill each other blindly, then all the same kind will die out in the cruel competition. "
The global mission of ABC Company is to "strive to be the best oil company in the world, make steady investments for shareholders and provide rich returns". The company's definition of "best" is not the biggest, but refers to the best profitability. In order to obtain the best profitability, we must operate at low cost and high efficiency in all business areas. . On the basis of establishing the mission statement, the company has formulated a clear education and training mission: "to establish a world-class education and training system and accelerate the development of business skills and knowledge dissemination required by the company." The management of every company says that people are the most important factor and the most precious resource of the company. But this point is often forgotten in practice or put in the least important position in decision-making. ABC Company pays more attention to the training of managers than other companies. A reporter from The New York Times once said: "ABC company often says that its competitive advantage is human resources, and so do other companies, but ABC company has really done it. No company can match ABC company's efforts in training new managers." The company clearly points out the importance of employee training and development in its business principles. One of the company's business objectives is "excellent talents: the success of the company in strategy, organization and operation depends on employees." ABC Company is committed to hiring high-quality talents in all possible resources and providing equal opportunities in all human resources projects, including employment, job assignment, training opportunities, transfer and promotion. " Just like McDonald's fast food restaurants all over the world operate in a unified mode, ABC company branches all over the world operate in full accordance with the principle of headquarters and have the same mission and goals.
In China, all institutions of ABC Company conduct business according to the principle of headquarters and cultivate development talents without any deviation. Such strict replication requires a strict internal control system to maintain. The company has a very high standard of internal control system, and set up a special expert group to inspect and audit all departments and organizations of each branch from time to time to check whether there is any deviation from the company's principles and regulations in the previous operation, and to dig out loopholes and defects in the existing operation.