Introduction
This report is a human resource management (HRM) system design for Senaat Holdings, an agglomeration of industries headquartered in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. This report will focus on creating a framework within which the HRM function of the company can be structured, streamlined and linked to the overall strategic framework of the company. The study will provide a justification for the existence and role of the human resource team and its activities. The report will be done in three parts. The first part will define the mission and strategy of the HRM function of Senaat and create a framework for the operation of this system. The second part will discuss the way through which Senaat will relate to the corporate environment and external environment to attain optimal results. Finally, the report will examine the HR function and how it will help the company.
In order to critique the research requirements, a literature review will be conducted that will critically define the main concepts, ideas and theories relevant to the study. This will help to define the parameters of the actual work relating to Senaat and provide a conceptual background for a more thorough and meaningful analysis.
Background of Study
This literature review provides a framework through which the core and important concepts and theories relating to strategic human resource management. CIPD defines strategic human resource management as “an approach to managing human resources that supports long-term business goals and outcomes with a strategic framework.”. This means that strategic human resource management is a process through which the human resources of a company can be harnessed but it is done within a system through which it is linked and connected to the overall corporate strategy of the company. Thus, it has to be given a personalized form with a mission and vision that defines its extent and limits. Also, when instituted, there are change management issues and matters that will restructure the HR function of the company. Thus, this theoretical review will analyze and review these change and restructuring matters in order to draw inferences that will be used for the actual problem evaluation.
The “mission statement lays out our expectations of what we are going to do in order to become the human resource function that we envision”. This indicates that it provides a set of clues and information about the main things and matters that the HR function stands for. This includes amongst other things, the way through which the HR department of the company will carry out functions like recruiting, employing, training and development, motivation and retention of staff and workers.
The mission statement is a logical starting point for human resource management and it must be compatible with the organizational goals and its reasons for existence. This means that it is a form of definition of a personality and a form for the very existence of the human resource management unit. This provides information about the main roles and means through which the HR unit will operate and how it is going to meet the requirements and desires of the company. This includes the provision of an outline of how the HR function will contribute to the company and what it seeks to become in the next couple of years, usually 3 – 5 years.
Human Resource Management Mission Statements are often a philosophical explanation of why the HR function exists. However, its actual essence is given by the enumeration of specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely objectives that will be achieved by the HR function of a company. This makes it easy for the mission statement to become a yardstick. This yardstick provides parameters within which the HR activities of the company can be evaluated and analyzed. This helps to improve and enhance the HR operations of the company.
Change Management and HRM
Change is something that occurs in various levels in organizations. The institution of a new strategic human resource management mission and vision will require the company to move from one system or form to another. This inevitably comes with some degree of change and modification of affairs and systems within the company. Therefore, it is necessary and important for some important approaches to be instituted to ensure that the change meets its objectives and furthermore, the change does not destabilize the organization as a whole.
One of the most influential models for the integration of a new HR philosophy into an organization is Dave Ulrich’s model on human resource management which places the change of human resources management on two axes – strategy-operation axis and people-process axis. This helps to provide a framework within which human resource management is conceptualized and integrated into the overall function of a company.
Figure 1: The Ulrich Model of HR & Business Change
The operation of HR therefore creates the avenue for four main things to occur in a company:
Strategic partner
Administrative expert
Employee champion and
Change agent
This shows that the HR function of a company will have to become a means through which the company’s strategy can be transposed and transliterated into the functioning of the company. This is done by creating compatibility between the corporate strategy and the human resource unit. Thus, the labor rendered by the staff members of a company will have to be in line with the kind of strategic vision the company’s board members and top-level management have defined. This will mean getting staff members to provide the right level of expertise and effort to move the company from one point to the other in fulfillment of corporate strategy.
As an administrative function, a company’s HR unit will have to take information about workers and ensure that due processes relating to employment and service delivery is done in the right way and form. This includes various forms of monitoring, evaluation and the discharge of the company’s legal and moral obligation towards staff members.
The HR function’s operation as an employee champion will mean creating a system through which employee concerns can be discharged and carried out without issues and problems. This is about helping employee grievances and demands to be honored without tensions and conflicts which could lead to negative impacts and consequences.
Finally, as a change agent, the HR unit will create a synthesis between conflicting claims and circumstances. This will mean noting and defining issues and conflicts and trying to ensure that changes are made as and where necessary. This will lead to improvement and the enhancement of operations and processes.
Restructuring and HRM
The framework through which change is carried out in a company is done within the context of Lewin’s model of change management. And this is about three main things:
Unfreezing
Change and
Refreezing
This implies that a company will have to identify the plans for change and modification. This culminates in a process whereby the company has to modify things and make some adjustments from within. In the words of Lewin, this is about making away with things that existed previously in order to make way for new things. Once there is the unfreezing and the undoing of previous things, there is room for the change.
Change initiates the impetus for instituting new structures. This implies the creation of new processes and procedures that will reflect the adjustments and modifications that the company is going through. Ultimately, the best processes and systems are instituted whilst the old processes and procedures are done away with in order to achieve optimal results. This refreezing establishes codes of best practice and new processes are adopted by consensus by all the parties in the organization.
Change is influenced by various variables including internal and external variables. These variables come together to define what is the best practice and what is not appropriate or acceptable. The elements of the internal environment include the different claims and demands by the workers and management. The external environment include the PESTEL factors which are:
Political
Economic
Sociological
Technological
Environmental &
Legal
They are different variables that must be examined and reviewed closely for the achievement of optimal results. This will help to achieve the most important and most vital goals and ends that are best for the company.
Section 1: The Framework of Human Resource Management for Senaat
Senaat Holdings is a multi-billion dollar Emirati conglomerate that “mandated to create, optimize, promote and champion capital-intensive assets” in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Thus, the company is an equivalent of a charter company owned by the government of the Emirate with the duty of managing the industrial resources of four key sectors – metals, oil and gas, construction and building materials and food and beverage manufacturing.
The vision of the company is to become a leader in industrial matters in the United Arab Emirates and promote the growth of the economy and its related industries. The corporate strategy is based on excellence and leadership as well as optimization of resources and building core competencies.
In line with this, the HR function of Senaat will need to have the mission of “mobilizing, harnessing and developing the best human resource base in the United Arab Emirates to promote efficient and effective utilization of resources to achieve the best collective processes and specific operational results.”
The vision is to be able to recruit, select, train and develop the best people in the UAE and give them the right inspiration and competency to do their best. Furthermore, the HR unit of the company will seek to create a culture and employment climate where the workers can cooperate and operate to achieve the best and most optimal resources.
In the process of achieving the mission of Senaat’s HR strategic business unit, the following objectives are important:
Create a result-oriented culture in which employees and managers will be focused and adequately recourse to meet specific work objectives in the microcosmic sense and also respect other stakeholder perspectives and desires in their routine work practices. Formulate an emergent and flexible work environment where new ideas, concepts and relevant internal and external changes will be recognized and used as a catalyst for positive change and the development of Senaat Holdings Company. This is to ensure the continuous improvement and enhancement of the company and its operations.
Develop a balance scorecard that will translate to basic metrics that will be used to measure the performance of each employee in the company in the absolute and relativist sense. This will include the collection of information about the performance abilities and standards of individual members of the company and aggregately to identify the major trends of career development in relation to key performance indicators of every job position in order to improve and enhance the results.
The framework of the proposed HR mission is to ensure that the human resource unit is able to achieve the key vision of moving from a service-driven unit to a process driven unit and then to an insight-driven entity. This transition will ensure that the company will not just provide services. It will not be an isolated unit in the company that works on its own, like the old personnel management departments that only kept records on workers and did not do much to improve results for the company. Rather, as a process-driven unit, this mission and vision will ensure that the HR function becomes a dynamic entity that will be responsive to issues from the top level management and the entire Senaat Holding Group and also link these changes to the people and human resource base of the company. This will be about moving the company to achieve results with a strong and responsive workforce.
As the company continues to meet its obligations in linking the top level management with the lower level staff, Senaat Holding’s HR department will be able to create insights and present new contributions to the company. This will include providing a convergence point for the company and its employee related matters. With time, this will lead to the creation of a series of rather stable cultures and processes which are going to be enforced throughout the company. Furthermore, the HR function is going to become a buffer zone whereby things relating to motivating, leading, training and development and hiring will be defined and consolidated over the years. Eventually, this will provide a human capital system that will help Senaat Holding to pursue its goal of being an industrial leader in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.
In terms of providing insight, the HR department will help to get the company to grow and develop. This includes the provision of a representation at the strategic level, to identify what the workers are capable of doing and not capable of doing. This will include the provision of realistic insights into the human capital status in strategic planning matters. Also, the HR department will be represented at the strategic level to present cogent issues, advice and recommendations that will help to move the company forward. This includes the provision of information about the most important and most significant matters that are necessary and then help the company to improve its activities and take decisions that will bring the highest and best results to Senaat Holding. Therefore the HR unit will be the people’s voice and a technical advisor of the people’s abilities and limitations in helping Senaat to become the leader and the main player in the capital intensive industry of Abu Dhabi. This will include getting the best employees, retaining them, improving their productivity and enhancing the structures in order to get the workers to give off their best and create a win-win situation for the company over a sustained period of time into the future.
Section 2: The Main Features of Senaat’s HR Function and the Ulrich Model
The Ulrich model provide a framework within which a company’s human resource management function can be aligned with the corporate environment of a company it serves in order to create a fit. This fit creates the opportunity for the HRM unit to function properly to genuinely optimize human resource and also contribute human capital to the development of the company.
Basically, Senaat needs the HR-function to centralize its different operations and bring together all the different companies in the group. This will mean the creation of a consolidated set of human resource ideals, philosophies and worldviews that will spread throughout the different units of the group. Therefore, Senaat will have to utilize the Ulrich model to outline these key pointers.
Strategic Partner
The new HR unit of Senaat will aim at creating a consolidated human resource management unit. This unit will be represented at the board level and provide timely information and assistance to help to meet the company’s corporate goals and strategic plans.
Senaat’s new HR unit will be a business expert. Obviously, human capital is a specialized function. The aim of Senaat is to get the best and the most qualified and competent people to work with them. Therefore, the new HR unit of Senaat will function by providing the company with expert advice and information on how to retain the best workers and ensure the best workers give off their best. This is a specialized function that the other strategic business units of Senaat cannot provide.
HR practices will be continuously formulated in Senaat. Therefore, the new HR function will have to document new changes and ensure there is an environment whereby different processes are developed albeit in a positive manner not to interfere with the company. However, as the company emerges and grows, there is the need for the new practices to reflect the broader role and expectations and this will lead to the gradual codification of HR codes of best practices.
Finally, the administrative and knowledge management function implies that Senaat will have enough information through the HR department in order to sort information and also gather intelligence relating to the labor market and applying them to the workplace based on data available to the HR unit.
Employee Champion
Senaat’s new HR function will deal with employee relations. And this relates to the legal, administrative and moral relationships between workers and the company. This is often an area of widespread dispute, disagreements and strikes. However, with the HR function proposed, there will be an opportunity for matters to be streamlined and presented to the management’s attention for the right action to be taken.
Also, as an employee champion, Senaat HR will have to use transformational leadership techniques and systems to ensure that the workers give off their best. This is nestled in the use of various performance measurement techniques to define the performance of workers and try to nurture it and improve it.
There is an additional need for emotional intelligence to develop the totality of workers in all units of the group. Hence, there is the need for empathy and internalizing to feel what the workers are feeling and also try to position motivation within this context to ensure that there trust and support between Senaat and its workers.
Administrative and Functional Expert
Senaat HR is one of the strategic business units of the company alongside marketing, finance, accounting, research and development, legal and compliance, engineering, IT and many more. As a strategic business unit, the HR team will have to provide services that ensure that the workers make the best of all the resources and services of the company. Therefore, the HR unit will ensure optimal promotion and utilization of information. This will include the orderly processing of information in ways that is compatible with existing systems and also the preparation of workers to make the best of the resources from the other strategic business units.
Also, there is the need for the HR unit to utilize the best principles of HR and the best theories and concepts to make sure that the staff members of the company are positioned to give off their best ahead of competitors. This includes the use of the latest and most appropriate theories and concepts to achieve the best results from the use of its HR. This includes the gathering of the most vital and most important resources and instituting them and using them for the achievement of the best results and the best optimal processes to be established.
All in all, the HR’s administrative work for Senaat will be about identifying and applying the best tools and techniques to projects. This will lead to the achievement of the best results in everything. This will enhance operations and ensure the best results.
Change Agent
There is going to be challenges and modifications induced internally and also externally. This will include changes in the external environment and the changes in demands and expectations of the company. The HR unit of Senaat will need to project future needs of the company by the use of PESTEL Analysis and other tools to deduce the labor needs of the company and position the staff members to achieve the best and most optimal results. This will include identifying the labor needs and the institution of performance measurement techniques of the current staff to identify deficits which will lead to training and development. This will further lead to the recruitment of necessary staff members in order to achieve optimal results in the future.
There is also the case for motivation and leadership whereby the HR system will create the appropriate environment whereby the right needs and expectations of workers will be identified. Also, the proper managers and supervisors can be duly prepared to lead the workers and move them from one point to another in order to achieve all of the company’s targets. This will lead to optimal results and ensure that the staff members work to meet their highest and most appropriate levels.
Section 3: Change Management in Senaat’s New Strategic HR Framework
The institution of the new HRM unit will have to be done by centralizing the HR function and creating sub-HR units within the group that will comply with the centralized HR function. This is by no means going to be simple. It will require various forms of changes that will be properly managed in order to ensure optimal results. There are three models that are applicable in this process – Lewin’s Change Management Model, Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Model and the Covey Model. These will be applied to Senaat to identify the best approach of managing the changes and its deficit that are bound to occur in the company.
Lewin’s Change Management Model
As discussed in the background to this study, the Lewin change model requires unfreezing, change and refreezing. This comes with restructuring and the potential change of significant parts and aspects of the company. They are therefore going to be reviewed and analyzed for Senaat Strategic HRM.
Unfreezing: This will require the halting of the current disorganized and unstructured HRM system used independently by the different companies in the group. Thus, there will be the need for the old system to stop and for everyone to halt operation of its HRM system. This will mean placing an embargo on what people are doing and then ask them how they accomplish their HR activities and processes. When this is done, there will be the need for documentary evidence of how the different units operate and there must be the cutting down of some units and the significant restructuring of some units. This might need to some dismissals and some transfers.
Change: When the main problems and issues are identified in each of the HR units of the group, there is the need for the central strategic human resource management plan to be defined. This is about identifying the best way through which the mission and vision can be implemented. This must lead to specific instructions and directives that must be given to the different HR systems in the quest to streamline the function.
Refreezing: Then there is the need to monitor the functioning of the different HR units after the change. This will help to identify areas that are working well and those areas that are not working too well. Areas that are working well must be consolidated into the code of best practice. Those areas that are not doing well must be adjusted and changed further.
Kotter’s Eight Step Approach
This approach is more appropriate for the need to actually implement the change in the second stage of the Lewin model. They include the following activities:
Create Urgency: There must be the definition of a deadline and a set of actions that will be conducted. This should include the identification of tasks and actions and all HR managers in the Senaat Group must hold meetings and get their workers to be prepared for the change ahead.
Form a Powerful Coalition: The heads of the different HR units of the group must be brought together and given the power and strength to achieve things. This should be centralized and reports must be brought back to the head of the HR for the entire group.
Create a Vision for Change: The vision must be clearly defined. Where we are now and where we can get and where we want to get must all be identified and reinforced in the minds of the workers.
Communicate the Vision: The HR managers of the different units must be made to share their plans with their subordinates and this must be done through official meetings to avoid panic and rumors.
Remove Obstacles: Where obvious blockages occur, there is the need for a conscious effort to reverse them in order to ensure that the goals of the new human resource management unit is identified and instituted properly.
Create Short Term Wins: There must be the demonstration of obvious actions that led to positive results. This should include the presentation of information about what has succeeded and this must be singled out, praised and recommended to other followers of the Senaat HR unit so they can identify what is expected of them in the future.
Build on Change: Where change has worked out, there is the need to promote it and consolidate it. This is what will gradually lead to better results and a new cultural identity.
Anchor the Change in the Culture: The successes must define the corporate culture. This is what Lewin calls refreezing. This should lead to improved and enhanced results.
Covey’s Model
Steven Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people can be very important for Senaat in creating and instituting a new strategic human resource management mission and strategy. The model presents seven habits that must be espoused for the achievement of optimal results.
Be Proactive: There is the need for the strategic HR manager instituting these changes to take a leading role in this entire process. This is about going out and ensuring there is the proper implementation of plan as opposed to sitting back and delegating core functions.
Begin with an End in Mind: There must be a specific goal an end that the strategic HR unit might want to achieve. They must have an idea of what the company will look like and operate like when the new system is put in place.
Prioritize: There is the need to put the first things first. Therefore, there is the need for a work breakdown structure that will define what is to be done at which time. This can lead to the identification of a system of doing things better and more effectively.
Think Win-Win: This is about the need to create a system whereby all parties can transform each other and different people in the entire new HR system of Senaat can do things that will benefit others.
Listening and Understanding: Leaders must first seek to listen and understand others and know their worldview before they try to get them to understand them. This is because when you understand how a person views the world, you can break down instructions to them in a more effective manner.
Synergize: This is about helping people to work with each other in order to create more optimal relationships and partnerships in order to achieve better results.
Sharpen the Saw: Seek self-renewal for members of the group and help them to improve themselves and become better on a regular basis. This will promote and enhance results.
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