Organizations are operating in a dynamic and competitive environment. They need to create and sustain a competitive advantage if they want to survive and grow. A traditional source of competitive advantage has been eroded. Now it is believed that productivity is through people.
People provide an organization with a source of competitive advantage. Various studies have concluded that an organization’s human resources can be a significant source of competitive advantage.
The human factor is the only organizational resource to develop a competitive advantage. Porter argues that people are becoming a significant differentiating factor. Managers should select those people who are more intelligent, better trained, more motivated, and more committed.
In his famous book “Human equation,” Jeffry Pfeffer argues that the source of competitive advantage has shifted over time.
For their sustained advantage, successful companies in the USA tend to rely not on technology, patents, or strategic position but on how they manage their workforce.
Achieving competitive success through people requires a fundamental change in how managers think about their employees and how they view the working relationship.
Follow these 11 HRM industry tips and guidelines for achieving a competitive advantage In human resource management.
Competitive Advantage In Human Resource Management (11 Industry Tips)
Employment Security
Employment security is a critical element of a high-performance work arrangement. The security of employment signals a longstanding commitment to its workforce.
Feeling stable employment may generate loyalty, commitment, or willingness to expend extra efforts for the organization’s benefits.
Employment security enhances employee involvement because employees are more willing to contribute to the work process when they need not fear losing their own or co-workers’ jobs.
The security of employment contributes to training as both employer and employee have more significant incentives to invest in training because there is some assurance that the employment relationship will be of sufficient duration to earn a return on the time and resources expended in skill development.
Employees will develop new ideas when their jobs are secured because they know that introducing the new system will not affect their employment stability. They will welcome the change.
Selective Recruiting
Organizations serious about making a profit through people will expend the efforts needed to recruit the right people in the first place.
Japanese companies have a reputation for their extensive screening of employees. Organizations need to have a large applicant pool to select the right person. Firms serious about selection put applicants through several interviews and a rigorous selection procedure.
Screening is done carefully to find people who work better in the new work environment, learn and develop quickly, and need less supervision.
Organizations must be clear about their application pool’s most critical skills and attributes. Care must be taken while selecting employees.
If organizations select a less qualified employee, they will be a burden for the organization for a long time.
High and Lucrative Wages
An organization can attract and retain qualified candidates if it pays a high and lucrative pay package.
Higher wages tend to attract more outstanding applicants, permitting the organization to be more selective in finding people who will be committed to the organization.
Higher wages send a message that the organization values its people. Low labor costs cannot ensure competitive success for a long time.
Incentive Pay
The pay system should be based on the performance or productivity of employees.
Employees will contribute more if they earn more. The contingent incentive can take many forms, such as profit sharing, stock ownership, pay for skills, or various forms of individual or team incentives.
Microsoft, for example, encourages sharing ownership. When employees are owners, they act and think like owners.
Moreover, the conflict between capital and labor can be reduced by linking them through employee ownership. Profit-sharing causes employees to focus on costs and profits because they receive a percentage of those profits.
Paying for skills acquisition encourages people to learn different jobs and become more flexible. There is a tendency to overuse money to solve organizational problems.
But this is not always a true solution. Many people prefer recognition, security, appreciation, and fair treatment, which greatly matters.
Employee Ownership
Organizations should make an employee a mini-employer. A stock ownership plan can do this. This may increase their sense of ownership.
Employee ownership reduces conflict between labor and capital. Employee ownership puts stock in the hands of people.
These employees are more inclined to take a long-term view of the organization, its investment policies, and strategies and less likely to support hostile takeovers and acquisitions. It has a positive effect on the firm’s performance if managed properly.
The stock ownership plan makes the employee a mini-employer. This may increase their sense of belongingness and ownership.
Employee Empowerment and Participation
Empowerment indicates many things to many experts. It refers to mutual influence, creative power distribution, and shared responsibility. It is a democratic and long-lasting process.
Empowering enables people to use their talents and capabilities, fosters accomplishment, invests in learning, finds the spirit in an organization, builds effective relationships, informs, leads, coaches, serves, creates, and liberates.
Participation increases both satisfaction and employee productivity. Managers should encourage the decentralization of decision-making.
Autonomy is one important dimension of the job and was the focus of the many job redesign-related efforts undertaken by many companies in the early 1980s as a part of the movement for quality of working life.
The basic change involves moving from a system of hierarchical control and coordination of activity to one in which lower-level employees are permitted to do things to increase performance.
In Germany, for example, employee empowerment in the board of directors occurs through the system of co-determination. It is also known as industrial democracy.
Information Sharing
To be a source of competitive advantage, people must have the information necessary to do what is required to be successful.
Information sharing is an essential element of high-performance work systems. The sharing of information on issues like budget, strategy, and financial performance conveys to an organization’s people that they are trusted.
Even motivated and trained people cannot contribute to increased organizational performance if they do not have information on critical performance dimensions.
Stack articulates the importance of sharing information. He argues not to use the information to control or manipulate people.
Use it to teach people how to work together to achieve common goals and gain control over their lives. Provide people with information that allows them to make the right decisions”.
Training and Development of Skills
Training is an essential component of high-performance works systems because these systems rely on front-line employees’ skill and initiative to identify and resolve problems, initiate change in work methods, and take responsibility for quality.
This requires a skilled and motivated workforce with the knowledge and capability to perform the requisite tasks. As time goes on, employee skills may become obsolete.
They need to be retrained to upgrade and acquire new skills. Training also changes and modifies employee attitudes and behaviors. Trained people must be placed in jobs to apply their acquired skills.
Treat People with Respect and Dignity
Dignity is a term used in moral, ethical, legal, and political discussions to signify that human being has an innate right to be valued and receive ethical treatment.
At the heart of human rights is the belief that everybody should be treated equally and with dignity – no matter their circumstances.
This means that nobody should be tortured or treated inhumanly or degradingly. It also means that nobody has the right to ‘own’ another person or to force them to work under the threat of punishment.
And it means that everybody should have access to public services and the right to be treated fairly by those services. This applies to all public services, including the criminal justice system.
For example, if you are arrested and charged, you should not be treated unfairly, and your trial should be fair. The dignity of labor indicates that all types of jobs are respected equally, and no occupation is considered superior.
Though one’s occupation for his or her livelihood involves physical work or mental labor, it is held that the job carries dignity compared to the jobs that involve more intelligence than the body.
No work is superior or inferior in itself. Work is work. It is wrong to consider any work as high or low. The work itself is dignity.
Every work has some dignity attached to it. It is improper for anybody to think that a certain kind of work is undignified or below the status. No work is meant high or low.
Wage Compression
Pay differential among the levels of management should be lower. Wage compression between senior managers and employees will reduce status differences and develop a sense of common fate.
A huge pay gap may damage the cooperative spirit between managers and workers. The high pay gap causes employees to feel less valued. The pay gap is the lowest in Japan and the highest in the USA.
Wage compression is the situation that occurs when there is only a small difference in pay between employees, regardless of their skills or experience.
It is also referred to as salary compression. Pay compression results from the market rate for a given job outpacing the increases historically given by the organization to high-tenure employees.
Therefore, newcomers can only be recruited by offering them as much or more than senior professionals.
Pay inequities exist in all public and private sector organizations and may be caused by overtime, talent acquisition, reorganizations, demotions, reassignments & transfers, demand for technical expertise, and seniority.
Some organizations conduct compression studies to achieve certain levels of internal equity so that people in relatively similar jobs in the organization receive equal pay.
Promotion from Within
It is of vital importance to encourage employee promotion from within the organization.
This practice may boost employee morale. It encourages training and skill development because the availability of promotion opportunities within the firm binds workers to employers and vice versa.
Promotion is a reward that is status-based. It provides a sense of fairness and justice in the workplace. It facilitates decentralization, participation, and delegation because it helps promote trust across hierarchical levels.
Another advantage of promotion from within is that it tends to ensure that people in management know something about the business, the technology, and the operation they are managing.
