Human Resource as a Source of Competitive Advantage Order Instructions: No Title page needed.
Why is it important for companies today to make their human resources into a competitive advantage? Competitive advantages focus on condition or circumstance that puts a company in a favorable or superior business position. Explain how HR can contribute to doing this.
References—6-7 scholarly citations/references
Human Resource as a Source of Competitive Advantage Sample Answer
Human Resource as a Source of Competitive Advantage
As business environment bbecomesincreasingly complex and dynamic, organization are relying on their human resource for development and sustainability of competitive advantage. Competitive organization are dramatically increasing the weight, the value and strategic role of their human resource departments in developing new business ideas and innovations to gain the competitive advantage in the market (Bartlett, & Ghoshal, 2013). Competitive advantage is defined as an advantage that a company has over other key players or competitors in the market. Competitive advantage enables a company to generate more sales or margin or win more customers as compared to its competitors in the market. Competitive advantage is derived from the firm’s product offering, cost structure, distribution network, branding and customer support.
It is important for organizations to mold their human resource into a source of competitive advantage. The reason is that human resources are one of the most valuable assets in an organization. Employees can either build or destroy an organization within a short period. The better the organization employees regarding efficiency, creativity, and innovation increase the company production, profitability, and development of sustained competitive advantage (Doz & Prahalad, 2013, January). Human resource is one of the real assets and plays an important role in creating products from natural resources as well as providing services on the organization clients. It is the same human resource that interacts with customers when offering their products and services in the market. Therefore, customers will be more inclined to like an organization with friendly employees as compared with an organization with poor customer relation.
Because of the ever-changing business world, companies strive to employ employees with requisite skills to help in driving the organization towards attaining organization sustainability. Skills demand jobs also keep on changing from time to time and as such knowledge is becoming more and more valuable in an organization. It is the role of the human resource department to recruit the best employees, design appropriate and effective employee training plans and come up with successful retention programs that can help an organization gain competitive advantage (Buller & McEvoy, 2012). Talent is a significant feature that improves organization performance. Statistics indicates that organization with engaged employees who are enthusiastic and committed to their work perform better as compared to their competitors regarding productivity, customer ratings, and profitability.
Innovation is also important if an organization wants to gain competitive advantage. Most great ideas and innovation often emanates from within the organization. Therefore, having a potent human resource management that can help secure the best employees, develop communication and networking within the organization and provide the necessary training to enable employees to become part of the organization innovation team is imperative. A variety of perspectives within the organization can yield pioneering ideas relating on how to differentiate company products or service or how to create new products. Human resource is one of the richest sources of new ideas and innovation. Therefore, an organization should develop a culture that permits employees to explore their skills and natural talents to promote creativity and innovation in the workplace.
Competitive advantage is derived from offering lowest prices on the market. This can be achieved through minimization of operating expenses to maximize the organization profits. Having efficient human resources that can produce value at the minimum expense can lead to the minimization of cost, and thus the organization can lower their prices as compared to its competitors and thus gain competitive advantage. This is achieved by hiring the best employees that can work as a team to increase organization productivity as well as minimize production cost. The human resource department can also train its employees.
A company can also derive its competitive advantages from operational effectiveness. In such a situation, having skilled employees, who develop ways to reduce operation cost, can help increase operating margin. Having a strong organization culture, and high employee morale and engagement through motivation can help the organization to increase its productivity, profitability, and competitive advantage.
Human Resource also provides various skills and experience to the company. For an organization to attain a competitive advantage, the organization requires various skills ranging from production to customer service delivery. Human Recourse Department can play an important role in the recruitment of specialist who understand organization strategic goals and can play an important role in bringing success to the company. The human resource department can also help in designing job descriptions and training programs to bring out the best of the employees. By aligning human resource goals with the organization long term goals, the company will be able to derive competitive advantage from its human resource.
Human Resource can also help in the transfer of skills necessary for the effective operation of a company. That is older employees in an organization can transfer their skills to their juniors and new employees in the organization (Aswathappa, 2013). It is the duty of the human resource department to ensure retention of such valuable skills within the organization. Therefore, human resource helps an organization to retain important, valuable skills that can be used to derive a competitive advantage.
The human resource also helps to enhance organization corporate image. A company is essentially the stakeholders, management, and staff. It is the employees of the organization that interacts with customers in the market. Therefore, human resources are the bearers of organization corporate image (Decenzo & Robbins, 2015). The way employees interact with customers of the organization can determine how the company is perceived. Employees who treat customers with respect and using corporate ethics plays may enable a company to gain reputation and thus competitive advantage. Employees are also the ones who carry their companies brand when relating with people in the community.
The human resource department also plays an important role in shaping organization human resource into a source of competitive advantage. The human resource is responsible for recruiting employees with the requisite skills necessary for handling business operation. It is also the duty of human resource management to design job descriptions and training programs (Wagner III & Hollenbeck, 2014). On the same note, the department is also responsible for advising a company on where to source for the best candidates to work for the organization.
It is also the duty of the human resource to ensure that employees stay motivated through the provision of reward systems to appreciate and reward employee performance. It is the duty of the HR department to develop performance evaluation programs to point out and reward exceptional performance in the organization. As such help motivate employees to work towards attaining organization goals and thus organization sustainability.
In conclusion, human resource is a valuable asset to cthe ompany, and when utilized well it can be a source of competitive advantage. Human resource provides a competitive advantage because it is the human resource that produce products from raw materials or provide services to the organization clients. Similarly, it is the human resource that interacts with organization consumers, help improve productivity, minimize production cost through efficient operations and thus a source of competitive advantage.
Human Resource as a Source of Competitive Advantage References
Bartlett, C., & Ghoshal, S. (2013). Building competitive advantage through people. Sloan Mgmt. Rev, 43(2).
Doz, Y., & Prahalad, C. K. (2013, January). Quality of management: An emerging source of global competitive advantage?. In Strategies in Global Competition (RLE International Business): Selected Papers from the Prince Bertil Symposium at the Institute of International Business (p. 345). Routledge.
Buller, P. F., & McEvoy, G. M. (2012). Strategy, human resource management and performance: Sharpening line of sight. Human resource management review, 22(1), 43-56.
Wagner III, J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2014). Organizational behavior: Securing a competitive advantage. Routledge.
Aswathappa, K. (2013). Human resource management: Text and cases. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Decenzo, D. A., & Robbins, S. P. (2015). Fundamentals of human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.
