In this perspective, employer or management is one class and employee is another. Every profit-oriented organisation has its primary goal of making profits, so to speak. Here comes the business strategies these firms resort into with the goal of coming up with grater productivity to drive the organisation to reach its financial goals. These organisations invest into business strategy planning and trainings and dedicate a team to focus in this cause.
Miles and Snow (1984) and Schuler (1989) stressed the importance of considering the human resources management issues. To study the relationship between business strategy and human resources management strategy is just as important. Embracing the concept of human resources management is not always the easiest thing to do for the management (Beardwell, 1996). More often than not, the human resources interests do not coincide with the objective plotted in the business strategic planning done by the management, for the organisation itself.
As the cited instance goes, the management may opt to pursue feudal business strategies such as cost-minimization, having short-term employee contract for the almost total flexibility of the business itself, or resort to having hire-and-fire policy. By so doing, organisation’s financial, business needs may be addressed but workforce commitment is never within the reach. It is often the case that employees have this notion that management is in for themselves. On the lighter note, however, there are also shared interests between employees and management.
If this is otherwise the case, the workforce would simply break down (Edwards, 1986). Alignment and Support of Human Resource Strategies to Corporate Goals It may be foul to think that business strategies can, solely, bring the organisation up to its goals. Human resources management strategies should work hand-in-hand with business strategies (Herriot, 2001). Employees are the ones delivering the work. No matter how profound the business strategy may be, if the cooperation of employees is not gained, this will just be a tunnel with no lights anticipated at the end.
This provokes the need to have a quality relationship between the management and the employees. Changes are not always easy to bear. Resistance has almost made it to the top of the line of reactions whenever something new is introduced. This can be a human nature that would probably take bunch of perspective-tweaking effort to minimize, if not really totally eradicate. Every change the business introduces entail change in the workaround and mindset of its employees. In turn, some cases may even pose mandatory changes in employees’ personal lives.
Some of the changes posed in their personal lives are negative or those that would equate to difficulty (Herriot, 2001). For instance, the management opted to mandate the shifting of work, requiring most of the employees to report to work at odd hours (dawn). If the affected employees used to work in regular working hours, management can never expect a cordial acceptance of this thing. Another instance would be the cost-cutting measures that try to relax the business cash outflows. Management may resort into the lay-off of some of the human resources.
This act is proven to provoke the emotional button of the employee class. Justifying the act of management does not always resolve the issue. Why? Because employees see it as a means of attaining management’s business goals at the expense of employees’s convenience. At times, the response to changes like these is not welcoming, as expected. Why? This is due to the fact that most, if not really all, of cases of compliance to the management’s demands are seen unilateral by the employees.