Strategic human resource management is the process of planning of the best ways of managing personnel in the organization. This involves adopting practices that guarantee financial and managerial advantage of the organization over other businesses (Luo 2001). Apple implements IHRM to achieve all this. As shown by Apple's prowess in differentiated production, marketing and personnel strategy the IHRM process has helped Apple to hire talented staff (O'Grady 2009).
In order to retain its employees, Apple has a generous employee benefit program. This has seen it retain highly talented staff for its own benefit. From the times of Jay Elliot Apple has had success in Strategic human resource Management. Jay Elliot is known for Establishing the Apple Culture. Once in an interview he was quoted saying, “I’ve done a lot of work building the basic Culture of the Company we call it the Apple values (Shea 2013”
Apple has five principles under which it operates. These include:
- Know your roles.
- Free leadership.
- Making work meaningful.
- Retaining staff wit growth opportunities.
- Restricting personnel working hours to 60 hours a week.
Apple has a clear policy that restricts it from hiring under age labour because it is unethical and unwanted. This is especially true and teenagers are screened out to minimize management constraints (Luo 2013). On top of that, Apple has set high standards for hiring new employees. They are trained as interns for six months after which they are evaluated based on performance before being hired. It also does its best to minimize the job recruitment fee. In China for example it is $10 refundable.
Who evaluates the local workers in a Subsidiary of Apple Inc.?
This differs from country to country but Apple Operations International bears the most in responsibility for this. It is an international partner company of Apple Inc. Other companies involved are Johnson & Johnson and Proctor & Gambler. These act as holding companies who hire employee’s in the global market. In any Branch, the Human Resource manager evaluates the workers while working together with the Branch head (Luo 2001).
How should the performance be evaluated?
This should be done in a transparent manner. The Human Resource management should inform all employees about the performance review and the due date (Shea 2013). Workers should also be briefed on what to expect in the evaluation process. All employees should also be able to view the performance evaluation form and have it explained briefly to them. After reading out the performance recorded for each employee, it should be kept separately (O'Grady 2009). All positive records about an employee should be recorded. Lastly, the worker should be congratulated for their work.
The HRM board team should note both the strong points and the weak points for each employee. Then the worker(s) should be allowed to give confidential feedback of the whole process. Finally each employee should be rewarded according to performance and promises of the company. Performance evaluation is important because it improves employee effectiveness. It also motivates employees since it has no favouritism regardless of status in the workplace.(Shea 2013). This kind of environment improves both vertical and horizontal communication between workers. In my own opinion evaluation of workers should be done every financial year to give room for promotion of hard working employees and letting off of non competitive workers.
References
Apple - Supplier Responsibility - Labor and Human Rights. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/labor-and-human-rights.html
Luo, Y. (2001). Strategy, structure, and performance of MNCs in China. Westport, Conn: Quorum Books.
O'Grady, J. D. (2009). Apple Inc. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.
Shea, T. (2013). Steve Jobs and Apple. New York: Rosen Pub.
