I believe, as a budding HR
professional, I have acquired the following knowledge, skills and
abilities from the courses in my concentration of Human Resource
Management:
- Got to know how to focus genuinely
much upon the Line and Staff aspects of the Human Resource
Management such that it confers the staff with requisite authority
to make their decisions while to the Line Managers, to
direct the work of subordinates and to the Staff Managers,
to authorize to assist and advise line managers in their goals. As
an HR Professional, I should facilitate the staff managers to aid
the line managers in areas like recruiting, hiring and compensation
more efficiently.
- An HR Professional I learnt few
tactics to ensure that the functional strategies support the
competitive strategies.
- An HR Professional’s Role
in Executing Strategy should also be well-defined.
Execution has traditionally been the heart of HR’s strategic role,
and that makes sense. A firm’s functional strategies should support
its competitive strategies. This, I am yet in the process of
learning. For example, FedEx’s competitive strategy is to
differentiate itself from its competitors by offering superior
customer service and guaranteed on-time deliveries. This requires
highly committed employees— ones who’ll “go the extra mile” to do
their best.
- HR Professionals should support
strategy implementation in other ways as well. For example, HR
Professionals should handle the execution of firm’s downsizing and
restructuring strategies—by out placing employees, instituting
pay-for-performance plans, reducing health care costs and
retraining employees.
- HR Team and Value Chain
Analysis Strategy execution usually involves identifying
and reducing costs, and therefore value chain
analysis. A company’s value chain “identifies the primary
activities that create value for customers and the related support
activities.” Simulation activities have helped me inculcate this as
well.
-
Outsourcing—letting outside vendors provides
services—is another option. My internship during the course helped
me develop an insight to this activity.
- HR Professional’s Role in
Formulating Strategy Formulating a strategic plan requires
identifying, analyzing, and balancing the company’s external
opportunities and threats, and its internal strengths and
weaknesses. HR Professionals could play a significant role here,
too. Significance of the same, I well understood in the class.
In terms of knowledge, skills, or
abilities I believe there are few essential to being an exemplary
HR professional such as an HR professional must address several
basic issues, including improving competitiveness, globalizing the
firm’s operations, implementing technological and Internet-based
advances, and contributing to the firm’s strategic success. What I
also expected to acquire but did not as yet is that I felt it shall
be also necessary to find an emphasis on practical material that an
HR Professional will need to carry out your day-to-day management
responsibilities. They should be pro-active and aim at achieving
competitive advantage by carefully integrating the cultural,
structural & personnel techniques. They should further be
Utilitarian and instrumentalist, focusing on strategic fit—both
internally and externally. In terms of qualities, they need to be
technically sound, empathetic in approach and possess good
analytical skills to evaluate the staffing process. All these
aspects were more theoretically explained than what I practically
acquired as a budding HR Professional.