HR Ch 2

quality of fill

A metric designed to measure how well new hires that fill positions are performing on the job

cultural audits

Audits of the culture and quality of work life in an organization

business environment

External factors in the general environment that a firm cannot directly control but that can affect its strategy

skill inventories

Files of personnel education, experience, interests, skills, and so on that allow managers to quickly match job openings with employee backgrounds

remote environment

Forces that generally affect most, if not all, firms, such as the economy and technological, demographic, and legal and regulatory changes

staffing tables

Graphic representations of all organizational jobs, along with the numbers of employees currently occupying those jobs and future (monthly or yearly) employment requirements

strategic planning

Procedures for making decisions about the organization's long-term goals and strategies

succession planning

The process of identifying, developing, and tracking key individuals for executive positions

SWOT analysis

A comparison of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for strategy formulation purposes

Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

A measurement framework that helps managers translate strategic goals into operational objectives

Markov analysis

A method for tracking the pattern of employee movements through various jobs

trend analysis

A quantitative approach to forecasting labor demand based on an organizational index such as sales

strategic vision

A statement about where the company is going and what it can become in the future; clarifies the long-term direction of the company and its strategic intent

competitive environment

Consists of a firm's specific industry, including the industry's customers, rival firms, new entrants, substitutes, and suppliers

core capabilities

Integrated knowledge sets within an organization that distinguish it from its competitors and deliver value to customers

Explain how human resources planning and a firm's mission, vision, and values are integrally linked to its strategy.

LO 1 Strategic human resources management (SHRM) integrates strategic planning and HR planning. It can be thought of as the pattern of human-resources deployments and activities that enable an organization to achieve its strategic goals. The firm's mission, vision, and values provide a perspective on where the company is headed and what the organization can become in the future. Ideally they clarify the long-term direction of the company and its strategic intent.

Understand how an organization's external environment influences its strategic planning.

LO 2 Analyzing the firm's external environment is central to strategic planning. Environmental scanning is the systematic monitoring of major external forces influencing the organization, including forces in the business environment, the remote environment, and the competitive environment. Changes in the external environment have a direct impact on the way organizations are run and people are managed. Some of these changes represent opportunities, and some of them represent real threats to the organization.

Understand why it is important for an organization to do an internal resource analysis.

LO 3 Conducting an internal analysis to gauge the firm's strengths and weaknesses involves looking at a firm's core capabilities, its talent and composition in the firm, and the firm's corporate culture. An internal analysis enables strategic decision makers to assess the organization's workforce—its skills, cultural beliefs, and values. An organization's success increasingly depends on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees, particularly as they help establish a set of core capabilities that distinguish an organization from its competitors. When employees' talents are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and organized, a firm can achieve a sustained competitive advantage through its people. HRP is a systematic process that involves forecasting the demand for labor, performing supply analysis, and balancing supply and demand considerations. Quantitative or qualitative methods help a firm identify the number and type of people needed to meet the organization's goals.

Explain the linkages between competitive strategies and HR.

LO 4 After managers have analyzed the internal strengths and weaknesses of the firm, as well as external opportunities and threats, they have the information they need to formulate corporate, business, and HR strategies for the organization. A firm's corporate strategy includes the markets in which it will compete, against whom, and how. The firm's business strategy is viewed in terms of domain navigation. It is more focused on how the company will compete against rival firms in order to create value for customers. A firm's HR strategies and practices should be aligned with its corporate and business strategies.

Understand what is required for a firm to successfully implement a strategy and assess its effectiveness.

LO 5 Strategic planning decisions affect—and are affected by—HR functions. Via HRP, human-resources managers can proactively identify and initiate programs needed to develop organizational capabilities on which future strategies can be built. HRP and strategic planning tend to be most effective when there is a reciprocal relationship between the two processes.

Describe how firms evaluate their strategies and HR implementation.

LO 6 Formulating an HR strategy is only half of the HR battle. The strategy must also be implemented. Employment forecasts must be reconciled against the internal and the external supplies of labor the firm faces. This can include having current employees work overtime; hiring full-time, part-time, or contract employees; downsizing employees; furloughing them; and outsourcing or offshoring. If there is a labor shortage, the firm might have to reformulate its long-term and short-term strategic plans or find ways to develop employees "from the ground up." Firms also need to establish a set of parameters that focus on the "desired objectives" of strategic planning, as well as the metrics they will use to monitor how well the firm delivers against those objectives. Issues of measurement, benchmarking, alignment, fit, and flexibility are central to the evaluation process. Firms use benchmarking, strategy mapping, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) tool and various HR-related metrics for these purposes.

replacement charts

Listings of current jobholders and people who are potential replacements if an opening occurs

environmental scanning

Systematic monitoring of the major external forces influencing the organization

mission

The basic purpose of the organization as well as its scope of operations

organizational capability

The capacity of the organization to act and change in pursuit of sustainable competitive advantage

management forecasts

The opinions (judgments) of supervisors, department managers, experts, or others knowledgeable about the organization's future employment needs

strategic human resources management

The pattern of human resources deployments and activities that enable an organization to achieve its strategic goals

human resources planning (HRP)

The process of anticipating and providing for the movement of people into, within, and out of an organization

human capital readiness

The process of evaluating the availability of critical talent in a company and comparing it to the firm's supply

benchmarking

The process of measuring one's own services and practices against the recognized leaders in order to identify areas for improvement

values-based hiring

The process of outlining the behaviors that exemplify a firm's corporate culture and then hiring people who are a fit for them

core values

The strong and enduring beliefs and principles that the company uses as a foundation for its decisions

value creation

What the firm adds to a product or service by virtue of making it; the amount of benefits provided by the product or service once the costs of making it are subtracted