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Should an Organisational Strategy intertwine itself with the Human Resources Policy?

With regards to the argument of whether organisational strategy should or should not be intertwined with the human resources policy, I believe that it should be.

As written in by Buchanan and Huczynski (2010), people form an organisation, even down to the organisations “personality” – while the organisational strategy may seem on the surface to be more along the lines of the organisations ideal vision and mission, this is the weight the employees must take on their shoulders and human resource policies should be structured to align the real world, daily function of the organisation to achieve the ideals specified in the strategy.

HRM Guide (n.d.) states “organisations can be regarded as people management systems” as well as “Human resource managers can encourage organisations to adopt strategies (for their structures) which foster both cost-effectiveness and employee commitment”. Particularly important, is the employee commitment that HRM Guide has pointed out, without the full commitment and belief of the employees in the organisation and its strategy, the organisation is going to find it difficult to implement the strategy and the values.

HR-Info (n.d.) explains how “people management professionals” have the role of becoming knowledgeable about an organisation but are often discouraged by jargon and complexity, following this comment we can assume that if the management professionals are discouraged by the complexity of the strategy then most of the employees will be too. It is the job of the management professionals (specifically HR), to, as HR-Info puts it, “demystify” the organisational strategy for the employees and it should be an important part of the HR policy to explain the details behind the organisational strategy.

I also feel that, from my experience, if an employee has full understanding of the goals and vision of an organization – they will perform better and also feel more part of the organisation. Many employees are unaware of the strategy behind an organisation or feel detached from it due to the “higher level” overview carried across in vision and mission statements. If organisational structures are evaluated against internal staff policies this will aide in a more unified vision and understanding in an organisation.

To conclude, it is my view that the vision and mission of an organisation, therefore, should be simplified with regards to the use of jargon and structured in a clear manner which considers the employees of the organisation. Upper management and/or directors of an organization should consult with the HR department when developing, or redeveloping their organisational structure, perhaps to the point where the HR department drafts the organisational structure based on initial instruction of the upper management/directors. Without consultation, organizations run the risk of losing the link between upper management goals and employee participation which make up the day-to-day life of the organisation. Without the alignment of these two, it is difficult to imagine the fruition of the strategy behind the organisation.

References

Buchanan, A. & Huczynski, A. (2010) Organizational Behavior. 7th Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

HR-Info (n.d.) Demystifying Organizational Strategy [Online]. Available from: http://www.hr-info.com/2011/03/demystifying-organizational-strategy/ (Accessed: 20 March 2011).

HRM Guide (n.d.) Organizational Structure [Online]. Available from: http://www.hrmguide.net/hrm/chap4/ch4-links3.htm (Accessed: 20 March 2011).