Strategic human resource management overview

HRM

The company I am going to evaluate for its human resources policies is Google. The company advertises its careers and sells its employer brand at the following address:

http://www.google.com/about/careers/

Right from the outset, the company begins with the tagline "Do cools things that matter," which is a statement of one of the company's key selling points. The company seeks the best, most talented and innovative people, and then tries to give them an environment in which they will thrive. This helps Google to meet its business strategy, which emphasizes innovation as a key to the development of new products and markets, and a pathway to maintaining competitive advantage in the company's existing businesses.

It is important that the human resources strategy the firm employs aligns closely with its business strategy. It has long been established that human resources can play a significant role in the execution of strategy, particularly in knowledge industries or ones where relationships are a key success factor. The idea that having the best people is important lies at the heart of this (Becker & Gerhart, 1996). Knowledge management effectiveness is in particular tied closely to human resource strategy, especially where the HRM strategy is specifically tied to the organization's overall strategic objectives (Shih & Chiang, 2005).

The careers listed on the website fall into two categories -- building and selling, a process known as talent segmentation that seeks to identify the pivotal talent pools from which a company draws its employees (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2005). The positions are broken down by geography as well. Most of the jobs are sales jobs, but there are a number of technical jobs as well. The company's unfilled positions tend to be more senior positions, where they seek candidates with extensive experience in their fields. There are no human resources positions available -- most would be located and the global headquarters but these positions tend to be technical or sales. This is unfortunate, but it also means that the company has a stable HR division with low turnover.

Google can develop HRM strategies that help it gain competitive advantage in a number of different ways. The first is that it needs to have highly trained workers. As one of the biggest advertising companies in the world, its sales staff need to be able to deal with major clients. As a technological leader, Google needs to ensure that its technical staff operate at a higher level than those of its competitors in order to maintain its technological competitive advantage. Google is therefore in a position where HRM can do a few things to attract, train and retain the most talented people. The first thing Google needs to do is to ensure that knowledge of its openings is broad, thereby expanding the base from which it can draw talent. It needs to have a great employer brand, because top talent likes to work only for the best company. Indeed, Google seeks to tap into the intrinsic motivation that top people have in order to attract talent.