SIGNIFICANCE OF STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN NEW NORMAL SITUATION.

INTRODUCTION

Background

The Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) has been a thriving concept over the past few decades in the field of Business and Management where the idea itself promotes the “high performance workplaces” and “human capital management” (Salman G., et al., 2005).

SHRM is framework for employees to be hired, managed and developed to achieve organizational long-term goals (CIPD, 2022)The SHRM derived from multiple human resources strategies where focus on the employment relationship, resourcing, learning and development, performance management, reward, and employee relations(Armstrong M., 2006).

Covid 19 pandemic has urge organizations to introduce SHRM in order to survive and achieve long term goals in challenging volatile environment. It forced organizations across the world to adapt to new way of how work is organized, and jobs are designed.

 Objective

To review the importance of Strategic Human Resource Management at organizations in new normal situation after the Covid 19 pandemic.

LITERATURE

SHRM and COVID 19

SHRM is a method to manage human resources in accordance with organizational vision, mission and goals. It is a process and stream decisions made over a time period to managing its human resources where specific strategies needed to be developed to fulfill the organizational goals (Armstrong M., 2006).

Most businesses have come across with various challenges in related to Employee Resourcing, Employee Development and Employee Motivation in post pandemic period. Introduction to online recruitment, work from home and distance learning methods for employee development and flexible working hours are highlighted in recent past as common but effective strategies adapt by the organizations.

                                                                (Figure 01 - Evolving HR Strategies)

Employee Resourcing

Social distancing and remote recruitments have reduced the human interactions in recruitment process whereas the technology has taken a major part in recruitment process using algorithms and artificial intelligent to access and sort out the skills from resume where many talented people excluded automatically due to missing credentials, skills, or gaps in their employment history (Vulpen E V, 2022)

Organizations has adapted “downskilling” where they have cutting back on recruitment of high skills employees to reduce the cost and ensure the business sustainability in Covid 19 pandemic( Campello M., et al., 2020).

Efforts to minimize the costs and remote recruiting has lead to shortage of critical talent nowadays, organizations has develop processes, norms, new job roles and career development opportunities within the organization to create “internal labour market” to retain employees(Turner J. and Baker M., 2022).

Employee Development

Remote working has enhanced the productivity during the pandemic whereas employee interaction has been reduced significantly which has negatively impact on teamwork and innovation. Designing a physical and digital workplace, Organizational design allowing cross functional teams and talent programmes for job rotation as human resources strategy can be used to avoid negative impact of remote working (Vulpen E V, 2022).

Use of Information Technology to develop knowledge and skills of the employees while having a virtual supervision to measure and evaluate progress of employee development has been emerged as a new effective way of employee development method due to remote working and social distancing (Hamouche S., 2021).

Employee Motivation

The pandemic has changed the way how people work, when and how, wellbeing of the employees has surpassed the traditional long-term incentives in motivating employees. Organizations has pursuit new motivational methods by way of offering mental health support, medical benefits to the employees (Vulpen E V, 2022).

Post pandemic motivational factors have been categorized into main five categories.

             I.            Physiological Needs - attending basic health needs even outside the office

           II.             Safety and Security -remote meetings and healthy office environment that ensure safety

         III.            Belonging and social connection -building sense of identity and strong relationship between managers and subordinates

        IV.             Self Esteem- proper recognition and appreciation

           V.            Self-Actualization – sense of meaning to the work

The traditional motivation factors has changed with the pandemic (Jurist S., 2022)

(Figure 02 - Motivational Factors)

CONCLUSION

Post pandemic has created challenging and more volatile environment for the organizations where they are forced to adapt new human resources strategies and chose Strategic Human Resources Management over traditional Human Resource Management to thrive their businesses in new normal.

9 Post Coronavirus HR Trends which has changed the SHRM in new normal.

READINGS

• Strategic Human Resource Management: What Is It And Why Is It Important? 
• 9 Future of Work Trends Post Covid-19

REFERANCES

Campello M., Kankanhalli G. & Muthukrishnan P., 2020. Corporate Hiring under COVID-19: Labor Market Concentration, Downskilling, and Income. NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES, 05, Volume I, p. 44.

Armstrong M., 2006. A Handbook of Human Resource Management. 10 ed. London: Kogan Page Limited.

CIPD, 2022. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/strategy/hr/strategic-hrm-factsheet#gref
[Accessed 30 07 2022].

Hamouche S., 2021. Human resource management and the COVID-19 crisis: implications, challenges, opportunities, and future organizational directions. Journal of Management & Organization, I(1), p. 16.

Jurist S., 2022. Sjiassociates. [Online]
Available at: https://sjiassociates.com/blog/employee-motivation-in-a-post-covid-world/
[Accessed 30 07 2022].

Salman G., Storey J. & Billsberry J., 2005. Strategic Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Turner J. and Baker M., 2022. Gartner. [Online]
Available at: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/9-future-of-work-trends-post-covid-19
[Accessed 30 07 2022].

Vulpen E V, 2022. 11 HR Trends for 2022: Driving Change and Adding Business Value. [Online]
Available at: https://www.aihr.com/blog/hr-trends/
[Accessed 30 07 2022].