Mountain Bank overview and operations

Mountain bank is located at the northwestern part of the U.S. The bank has four major line of business: consumer lending, retail banking, mortgage banking, and corporate banking. Traditionally, Mountain bank has a strong presence in the retail banking with the limited presence in other line of banking system.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the Human Relations (HR) strategy that Mountain bank could employ to achieve competitive advantages in the market place.

Strategies Mountain Bank can use to achieve Competitive Advantages

With respect to the service of Mountain bank, the consumer lending and retail banking have been beneficial to the Mountain Bank with the 50% and 25% cut in the market shares. While Mountain bank has been very effective in the retail and consumer lending, Mountain bank has not been effective in corporate banking system. Mountain Banking has not been able to capture markets in the corporate banking because the bank has just less than 5% of the market shares. To achieve competitive market advantages, Mountain bank needs the service of the quality human resources. Bratton (2005) defines human resources strategy as the managerial policies and practice that assist an organization to achieve organizational strategic objectives. Formulation of human resources strategic is a critical tool that guides management to meet organizational goals. Adopting effective human resources practice assists an organization to achieve competitive market advantages.

There are different human resources strategies that Mountain Bank could implement to achieve competitive advantages. One of the paths is to implement differentiation strategy. The differentiation strategy within a banking sector will allow Mountain bank to deliver services that would make the customers to perceive the bank as different. The differentiation strategy will assist the bank to create unique banking service that would be seen as different to other banks. The advantages of this business strategy is that it would make Mountain bank to develop efficient employees who will do their jobs better that the employees of other banks. Since Mountain bank offers retail banking services for customers and smaller businesses, the strategy would assist Mountain bank to achieve market advantages within the region. (Purcell, 2001).

With respect to the HR strategy for Mountain Bank tellers, the mountain banks needs to enhance the skills of the tellers with innovative banking services. Typically, bank tellers are critical to the success of Mountain bank. Customers' experience with regard to teller has been the primary driver to customer's satisfaction. Within Mountain bank, bank tellers are the banks officials that customers always have contact. Mountain bank should enhance the communication skills of the bank tellers through training to retain current customers and attract new customers. Essentially, tellers are the heart of banking business, and they are the biggest assets to banks. The improvement in the efficiency of the bank tellers will enhance the bank's productivity. Typically, bank tellers assist customers with relation to their banking needs. Thus, tellers who are able to excel in their jobs are able to represent bank better. A well-trained bank teller could have the ability to introduce other products to customers with good line of credits.

Apart from achieving the competitive advantages using bank tellers' strategy, the Mountain Bank could use human resources strategy with related to internal costs, external costs, internal and external differentiations.

HR Strategy related to Internal and External Costs and Internal and External Differentiations

To enhance human resources strategy with relation to internal and external costs, Mountain bank needs to adopt business strategy to achieve cost leadership within the region. The costs leadership is a human resources strategy that will allow Mountain bank to increase market performances with the lowest unit of costs. Human resources strategy with related to internal cost is to empower the internal employee to perform the tasks needed to lower costs. For example, the management of the Mountain Bank should satisfy the needs of employees and this will motivate employees to satisfy the needs of the customers. Kelly (2001) argues that internal alignment of HR is one of the critical business strategies, and the main driver of internal alignment of HR is to lower the costs and drive up the profitability. On the other hand, HR strategy with related to external costs assists Mountain bank to have the knowledge of local labor and study the method they could be profitable to the organization in the future. Typically, the Mountain bank needs to study the components of labor in the external environment and devise a strategy to obtain the high quality labor to achieve competitive advantages. Mountain could obtain cost reduction by hiring skilled labor from the region. Typically, Mountain bank will incur low costs in the training of skilled labor and this HR strategy will allow the bank to lower the costs.

(Seyedjavadin & Zadeh 2008).

One of the simple HR strategies is differentiation strategy, and the strategy assists managers to provide distinctive level of service and make the customers to distinguish the service of an organization from the service of the competitors. By providing distinctive level of service within the same industry, customer will be prepared to pay a premium price. Using differentiation strategy could assist firm to lower costs (Bratton, 2005). Mountain bank could use differentiation strategy by focusing on exceptional retail banking and customer service. The bank should also differentiate their mortgage and corporate banking. One of the methods to achieve differentiation strategy is to leverage the strong retail banking into the gain of corporate and real estate. The Mountain bank could achieve advantage by cross selling. The strategy is to use tellers and customer representatives to convince customers having retail bank accounts to open mortgage or corporate accounts from Mountain Bank.

HR Strategy Recommendation with respect to Mountain Bank Tellers

Mountain Bank should increase the staff that would handle the teller jobs. The banks should employ part-timers or floating tellers to handle the banking activities during the launch hours and pay day. This HR strategy will improve the service of the bank. Experience has shown that bank tellers are very critical to the success of Mountain bank. Customers experience with tellers is the driver to the customer's satisfaction. With improvement in the technological development, tellers have become strategic importance to banks. Thus, Mountain bank could enhance its competitive market strategy by increase the number of tellers.