Strategic Human Resource Management: A Guide to Action

(Rick Simeone) #1

the eight organizations referred to earlier. In all but two of them the HR
strategies, in Walker’s (1992) terms, were fully integrated, while in these
cases the strategies were ‘aligned’.
As the managing director of ABC Distribution pointed out: ‘Our HR
strategy has to respond to our business strategy. The challenge for HR is to
look at all the areas that they encompass and make sure they are integrated
into the main plan.’ But he admitted that ‘One of the problems this company
used to have up to a few years ago was that HR strategy was seen as some-
thing completely separate from the corporate strategy. What we have tried to
do in the past few years is to make them one and the same thing.’
The director of personnel of ABC Distribution recognized that ‘The devel-
opment of HR strategies should be shared more widely with the business
controllers. If we don’t do that we run the risk of not developing the
consistent themes we need to have.’ But the director of finance was positive
that ‘In terms of performance improvement the business and HR strategies
are very closely linked. Productivity is a major area and the HR implications
of pursuing these policies are critical.’
These, incidentally, were not the only positive contributions from
finance directors. It was found by Armstrong and Long (1994) that,
without exception, the eight finance directors we interviewed were all
fully aware of the significance of the HR perspective for their organiza-
tions, although they were obviously concerned with financial performance
and budgets.
In Loamshire Council, the approach to integration as described by the
director of personnel was simply to get the top team together and ask them:
‘What are the real strategies that will help the organization and its func-
tioning?’ And the director of planning for the authority commented on the
important integrating role of the director of personnel as follows:


In the old days, the personnel manager was not a member of the management
team, and I got used to a culture where personnel advice was not really part of
strategic direction. And any debate there may have been at the corporate level
came out in the wash. It was not led by someone like our director of personnel.
She is now on a par with the rest of us in terms of status and contribution and
she brings the whole of the human resource angle into the debate.

And in reply to the question ‘How well are corporate and HR strategies inte-
grated?’ the director of technical services for the authority said: ‘The short
answer is that they are inextricably linked... You cannot do anything without
having worked through the human resource implications and it’s all about
better performance by teams and individuals.’
The approach of Megastores was described by the director of stores as
follows:


102 l The practice of strategic HRM

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