Strategic Linkages
December 15, 2013
1.
Strategic partners (also called strategic allies) are two or more companies that will work together in joint ventures. Strategic partners often share long-term relationships and all parties within the partnership strive towards similar goals. Partners also do not get in the way of each other. Instead, they reinforce one another in order to obtain their set business objectives. Strategic planning produces fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it.
It is important for an HR department to be a strategic business partner because it allows them to be able to work in and with every other department in an organization. There’s even a strong need for the HR function to adopt a more strategic and business like approach too. Due to this type of involvement, workers at all stages of employment will become familiar with, and ...view middle of the document...
In my book, its all about instilling motivation and trust. When corporations forget about the human element, or don’t have a properly aligned HR team, negative side effects tend to occur.
Another benefit of having an arrangement like this is the influence HR has on change management. Being able to cope with and manage change is one of the sole capabilities needed to gain or keep a competitive advantage against competitors along with working in a team environment. The synergy of all the teams associated within a business is crucial to overcome obstacles. Having a human resources team that is working with you and worrying about the company’s most valuable resource (the employee, or worker) while still keeping the overall strategic goals of the company in mind is a great thing.
3. The best interest of those in HR should be the workers and the strategic plans of the business and they should coincide with one another. If HR is boosting employee morale, then employees are more motivated and more likely to be effective in completing strategic goals. The risks of a purely task-oriented, strongly administrative HR team would be abundant. Mainly because this would mean that HR wouldn’t directly be involved in a company’s decision-making process. It’s here where most of the risks would occur, for example this would cause management responsibilities to be improperly distributed throughout the company (change, project, quality, task management, etc). An HR department not forming a strategic alliance with a business would cause a huge disconnection of communication between the two potential partners. This disconnection would lead to things like HR not being completely accommodating to company mangers. Managing the change process is very important here too. People tend to resist change because of uncertainty, threatened self-interests, different perceptions, and feelings of loss.
References:
(Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, 10 Edition, John Wiley & Sons p. 40)
