The Importance of Human Resource Management

‘Human resource management is the basis of all management activity, but it is not the basis of all business activity. … The basis of management is always the same: getting the people of the business to make things happen in a productive way, so that the business prospers and the people thrive.’ Torrington et al (2005:4)

Human Resource can be say to be the strategic and coherent approach management of an organisations most valued assets. The people working these individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. Human resource is one of the important parts of any organisation management in the 21st century and up still date. Any corporate firm can get competitor advantage by human resource.

The term Human resources’ can be viewed in two contrasting ways. Placing emphasis on the word Human implies that an organisation’s assets are valuable human beings with feelings and aspirations that should be respected and nurtured. Highlighting the word resource may have the effect of devaluing the human element by relegating people to a mere resource that is to be deployed as effectively and efficiently as possible, like a piece of machinery. These associated have been embodied as ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ HRM (storey, 1992). ‘Soft’ HRM is often associated with quality-enhancing and value-adding measures, whereas ‘hard’ HRM is linked to cost-cutting and cost ‘minimization strategies (Schuler and Jackson, 1987).

Important of Strategy Human Resource Management

Strategy human resource management is very important because it help to resolve the problems that affect people management programs in the organisation. In every organisation, the employee and customers are very important and the try to listen to their employee and resolve whatever complains from them or the customer. This will help to increase the performance of the organisation.

Strategy human resource management also help to improve a business performance and foster an environment of innovation and flexibility among employees.

Strategy human resource management help about assessing the company’s internal strength and weakness. This is very important as the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s human resources have a direct effect on the future of the company.

It also helps to check whether the expectations of the employee are addressed properly. The management of Strategy human resource management try to provide the right strategy that will enable the employee to work in a very safe environment and make sure those employees expectation are look into one after the other.

Strategy human resource management help to develop the maintainer of competency among workers and it also help to motivate workers to perform their job properly and increase productions.

From the above we can see that strategic human resource is now coming to play a very important role in today’s business word. Strategy human resource management is all about strategically managing a business’s human resource in a manner that works to the overall benefit of the business.

Strategy human resources deal with organisational performance and systems of practice and human resources management deal with an individual employee performance. The role of strategy human resources management or human resources management is to establish a system of human resources management practices that transforms middling work performance to human assets and sustaining the heightened work motivation, expanded job opportunities, and unique skill, knowledge and abilities.

http://www.smallbusinessbible.org/strategic_humanr_management.html

Comparative between SHRM with HRM

The difference between strategy human resources management and human resources management is that strategy human resources management is strategy and human resources management is not, although some resources suggest that strategy human resources management is actually one of the applications of human resources management within an enterprise. The key feature where the two ideas are connected is that they are precisely in approach toward people management.

1.2 BREIF HISTORY OF MCDONALDS

McDonalds started as a burger brand in 1940 and it was formed by two Brother Richard and Maurice McDonald in San Bernardino, California. It progressed from a hotdog stand into one of the world’s leading restaurant chain. By 1953, McDonalds’ brothers began franchising their restaurant and the first was taken by Neil Fox who opened in other parts of California.

McDonalds Corporation came into existence in 1954 after an entrepreneur and milkshake mixer salesman Ray Kroc acquired the franchise of McDonalds outside California after which he bought the business rights from the McDonalds brothers for $2.7 million in 1961.

By 1974 the first restaurant in the UK opened and 1988, they had opened in the communist country in Belgrade, Yugoslavia later in Moscow, China and India. In 2003, the ‘I’m loving it’ campaign was launched and by 2005, McDonalds started a Mc Delivery service in Singapore.

McDonald’s has been looking for a growth strategy for a very long time. And their foreign operation amount for more than half the company’s revenue. McDonald has over 30,000 restaurants over 100 countries in the world today. And they maintain the top position in the fast food industry for the past 50 years.

Amongst the award bagged by McDonalds is the Catalyst award for its program for fostering leadership development in women and McDonalds has been backing the summer Olympics since 1984.

(lifestyle.iloveindia.com/…/history-of-mcdonalds-1806.html) assess on 24 November 2010.

The purpose of Strategic HUMAN RESOURCE IN MCDONALDS

Business strategy of McDonald in UK

Employment planning: McDonalds try to make the right plans in employing the right number of staffs that the organisation need at the right time. This is the process by which the organisation attempt to ensure that it has the right number of qualified people in the right place and at the right time.

Selection: McDonalds involves in choosing from the available candidates the individual predicted to be most likely to perform successfully in the job. They select but the skills and unskilled individual and try to train them in other to make them understand the objective of the organisation. Selection is not always the best process of employing staffs in the organisation because skills will be lack.

Training: McDonalds also used the training strategy to improve and develop the skills of the workers in the organisation. Although training is very important in most organisation but it’s better to bring the right people with the right skill and then give them the right training so they will understand better and know the objective of the training.

Education: The management of McDonald provide education for some staffs that are really willing to retain in the organisation. This education is to improve their performance and to give them more ideas about the economic and how the business is operating.

Performance: The Company always chose a right time to check the performance of their workers. The performance of the worker can help the company to make the right changes at the right time and the right department of the workers. These has help MacDonald to build a better services.

Pay: Macdonald is a big restaurant with so many branches around the world and helps to reduce the unemployment around us. The Company give a good pay to their staffs and encourage them to work.

Staff retention: Macdonald tries to keep their staffs and give them promotions to enable them become a manager of a branch someday in the future. Staff retention is very important to most organisations. This will help the staffs to know what really is happening within the organisation and try to suggest a best opinion to fight that out.

1.3 Contribution of Strategy Human Resource in McDonald

Staffing- McDonald should try to get people with the appropriate skills, knowledge, abilities, and experience to fulfil the organisation objectives.

Rewards ‘McDonald need to give reward to the staffs who work very hard in development of the organisation.

Employee development- the organisation should also help in developing the staffs through providing training and knowledge for them in other to perform a good job.

Employee maintenance- maintaining staffs is important in the development of the company. The administration is should try to encourage the staff and reward them in the good job done. Many organisations try to establish why people leave by conducting exit interviews but these are rarely sufficiently accurate, as many people will not give the full reason why they are leaving for fear of jeopardising future reference requirement or because they may wish to return to the organisation at some later stage. There organisation should make sure they try to maintain and look after their staff in other to keep them happy.

Employee relation ‘ McDonald should develop the relationship between the staffs and the management in other to bring up a smiling environment within the work place.

CONCLUSION

McDonalds is seen as a global restaurant offering a range of products in a highly competitive and fragmented market. The company must positively respond to both internal and external issues to avoid losing sales and market share. They have been able to achieve a broad scope of business activity as they adopt the cost leadership strategy. There offer food prepared in the same high quality manner worldwide, tasty and reasonable priced delivered in a consistent low key and friendly environment.

The opportunities and threats present in the environment enables managers to look both internally and externally to direct their strategy from the information given as it allows them to know their weakness and guard against them as well as make use of opportunities available to them.

SHRM NEW MANAGER IN MCDONALDS

As the manager of McDonalds, the percentage of highly skilled labour/ talent recruitment will be increase, but low skilled will be reduce as they are the ones directly involved in preparing food and serving customers.

Human resource strategy in McDonalds encourage employee involvement and engagement to improve customer service but recruitment and selection in McDonalds is of little emphasis as the nature of the job is mechanical hence most of their recruits are fast learners who can learn on the job rather quickly. There is a rare case of training and development of staff as they are low skilled and the need for the need for developing them would not be beneficial to the corporation.

The strategy of McDonalds is based on concept of Michael Porters’ differentiation and low- cost leadership as their products are mass produced and cost can be reduced by doing this, the threat this can cause is that its competitors like Burger King and KFC can also mass produce at a low cost. Differentiation can be described as marketing technique used by a McDonalds to establish strong identity in the restaurant business. It can also be called segmentation strategy.

In McDonalds, there is a huge number of unskilled labours whose employment contact are mostly on short term basis, hence the need for a huge pension budget will not be necessary, this will be seen as an opportunity for the corporation to save revenue. Also in areas of training and development, since they train on the job and there is no series of further training carried out, the corporation does not lose skill and revenue when such employees decide to terminate their employment.

(McDonalds Strategic Human Resources Management available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/26247206/Mcdonald-s-Strategic-Human-Resource.