Relationship Between Strategic Organizational Planning And Human Resource Planning: A Case Study Of Westpac Bank

LO1 Analyse the inter-relationship between human resource planning and strategic organisational planning.

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The significance of strategic objective planning

The strategic objective planning refers to the formulation of the blue print of the means to achieve the long term and short term objectives of an enterprise to guide the company towards growth and success (Albrecht, Bakker, Gruman, Macey, & Saks, 2015). The planning further outlines the identification of the environment of the company, specifics of the objectives, ways to means the success and failures of the strategies and the identification of the key stakeholders of the entity.

One of the chief stakeholders of the company is the human resource personnel. The planning for the human resource begins at the top management level. It is significant to note that the human resource planning is a complex set of practices which further involves forecasting, environmental scanning, training and development, operational planning and others (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2017).

The work is attempted to explore the various facets of the relationship between the Strategic Organisational Planning and Human Resource Planning in first segment, the methods and processes involved together in the second section, followed by the means and challenges involved in developing high performing and global mind set employees and managers in last part. The work will evaluate the above listed taking into account the case study of the entity Westpac bank.

It is important to note that when a strategic plan is considered at the top level of the management, the same is floated in the various departments of the enterprise involving the middle line managers (Bailey, Mankin, Kelliher & Garavan, 2018). The human resource manager of the entity is entrusted with the responsibility of the management of the one of the primary departments of the entity that is the human resources department. The human resource manager is being delegated the authority to work with the various departments to discuss the demands and supply of the employees as required for the particular departments and as per the desired qualifications. In addition, the department is responsible for recruiting, training, addressing issues of the existing personnel and other incidental activities (Binder, 2016). In addition, the functions of the human resource department is to manage the human and social capital of the entity (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2017). The management activities include the consideration of abilities and knowledge of the employees, enhancing their technical and social skills, driving their motivation levels, and boosting their self-confidence and capabilities to take initiative. In addition, these include inducing team work, collaboration, participation, empowerment, capacity to volunteer and other social values.

The role of human resource planning

The evidence of strongly aligned relationship of the strategic objective planning and the human resource planning in the entity is explained as follows.

Reason 1

Firstly, in the given case study, it is evident that the entity has a wide base of 1.5 million customers and 3000 shareholders to be served worldwide through its 197 branches across the globe. Thus, the chief aim of the HR planning is the successful determination of the demand and supply of workforce and the filling of the gaps in the organisation. In order to carry its strategic objectives of serving the customers in the varied business areas of banking services, wealth management, wealth administration and insurance services; at New Zealand, Australia and the regions, Westpac has employed whopping 40,000 employees worldwide. Thus, the HR planning is done taking into account the vision of company.

Reason 2

The second objective of the company is the workforce revolution that is to create an innovative policies and efficient working place. Further, to state that company has taken the same into account in HR planning, valuing the individual requirements of the employees and attempts to address the same in the form of provision of flexible working hours, working from home, mobile working, variety of leaves as a means of support to human and social values.

Thus, it can be stated that there is a strong alignment of the strategic objective planning and the human resource planning.

It is important to note that that as the managers of the Westpac align the strategic objectives and the human resource planning, they may be faced by a number of challenges, some of which are listed as follows.

Challenge 1

The first challenge that can be faced by the HR professionals is the external business factors of the Westpac. In terms of external factors that affect the integration of strategic planning and human resource planning are the global competition in terms of pay scale, incentives; changing employee expectations, budgetary constraints of the entity, legislative impacts such as abidance by concerned statutes of industry and region; and other social and political factors (Griffin, Phillips & Gully, 2017). An example of the same is that as per the requirement of the law, the entity makes sure to balance the diversity and gender empowerment in its organisational structure.

Challenge 2

The second challenge can be posed by the internal factors that is in the form of the management style and organisational structure. In addition, the proper selection, training, recruitment, solving conflicts, and devising a proper reward systems are also vital challenges (Chowhan, 2016). For instance in Westpac, in the 2014 Westpac Group Diversity & Flexibility Survey, 25 percent of the employees desired workplace flexibility and 23 percent of the employees desired for the change in the work place locations. Thus, taking into account the need of flexibility the company devised various strategies.

Alignment of strategic objective planning and human resource planning

The process for human resource planning is comprehensive in a way that it requires a number of activities to be undertaken on the part of the managers of the enterprise. The first stage of the process is to forecast the demand of the labour that is drawing an estimation of quality and quantity of the employees needed at the organisation (Dessler, 2017). The second step calls for the forecasting of the internal labour supply by the collection of the qualitative and quantitative data. The last stage is to fill up the gaps of the demand and supply in order to achieve a balanced level of human resource within the entity (DeCenzo, Robbins & Verhulst, 2016). Some of the incidental activities that form the part of the framework of the analysis of the future plans of the entity, assess the employee needs, review the need on the lines of the internal resources and external resources and finally devising the organisational employee plan (Rudman, 2017). There is a very effective set of HR planning process at Westpac, the reasons for the same are listed as follows.

Reason 1: Comprehensive HR planning structure

At Westpac, the eight key elements together constitute the workforce planning model of the company. The first key element is the assessment of the vision, mission and purpose of the entity. The second key element is understanding of the organisational goals, followed by the third key element of knowledge of the current workforce. The fourth key element is identification of future business need scenarios and capabilities needed in the workforce. This is followed by the fifth and sixth prime elements that are the assessing the gaps in the existing capabilities and needs, together with a blue print of means to fill the gaps. The seventh key element is to implementation and investment in the key strategies and changes, and the same is followed by the last key element that is the evaluation and review of the strategies and process.

Reason 2: Enhancing the skills to retain the employees

Westpac confers a number of rewards and recognition to its employees such as the Professional Qualifications Programme under the Best Banker Strategy is aimed at enabling professional qualifications and training to the for the skill enhancement of employees.

Thus, it is quite evident that the workforce planning practices are quite systematic and follows a step by step procedure to fill the human resource gaps. Further, the skills are enhanced to fill the skill gaps. Thus, it would be right to state that a very effective set of policies and processes at Westpac in terms of human resources.

Challenges in aligning strategic objective planning and human resource planning

Challenge 1

The first challenge that may be faced can be in the form of resistance from employees and trade unions. For instance, in the given case study of the Westpac Bank, one of the chief strategic objective of the entity is digital transformation. Thus, with new emerging technologies in the range of operations of Westpac, managers are faced with challenge to acclimatize the employees with the same. The employees may be required to go through training to work in line with the innovations.

Challenge 2

The second set of challenges can be in the form of the uncertainties in the internal and external environment leading to inadequacy of resources such as the budget, HR tools and techniques, HR expertise and HR information systems (Robbins & Coulter, 2012). For example, Westpac has five key divisions on the lines of its vision, as stated in the case study, if there is a modification in the vision of the entity, the impact would trickle down to key divisions and the departments as well. Hence, integration of the human resources plans with the organisational plans is a key challenge for the managers, in terms of processes and methodologies (Rudman, 2013).

As a part of the high performance model, some of the factors that influence the effectiveness of the teams are the adequate resources, abilities of members, size and diversity of teams, common and specific goals of the team members, conflict levels and others. In addition, the entity consider the cultural differences of the composition of the employees. The employees must be individually and in the groups, driven to reach a target or the goal as decided by the management on account of his capability and job requirements.

In case of the employees it is necessary for the managers for the clear identification of the goals and that are measurable in order to track the performances. In order to develop a global mind set workforce in terms of the multicultural context in the entity, it is essential for the entity to become cross culturally competent. The strategic goal for the managerial context can be in the form of training of employees focussed towards area studies, critical appraisal of international performance and to recruit managers from international domain. Some of the challenges can be in the form of minimization of the cultural shocks, and streamlining the benchmarking performance over all the branches.

In addition, for the managers it is necessary that the same motivate and train their subordinates in order to achieve their goals. This can be ensured by setting up the meaningful goals from the end of the managers.

The HR planning process at Westpac

Thus, applying the principles of global mind set employees development model on the functions of Westpac, following points are noteworthy. The departmental goals can be set by the department managers of the company Westpac. It is significant to note that job design plays a phenomenal role in the development of a high performing team. One of the instance where the entity Westpac can apply and implement a high performing work team is by the clear description of tasks, duties and responsibilities to the employees in accordance with their knowledge, skills, abilities and other factors. The second means of the said development of the high performing team is by conducting survey of the targets achieved through HR information systems and rewarding the ones who achieved their goals.

In addition, the company Westpac must be willing to invest the time and money in order to enhance the skills and resources for the employees. Further, the feedback must be seek. The managers of the Westpac must indulge into the activities on the lines of the management of work schedules, job sharing among employees, devising of the flexible workplace programmes for the subordinates.

The Westpac can organise workshops for its managers on best practices for communication, reporting, seeking feedback, motivating and recognising the subordinates on a consistent basis. In addition, a code of conduct can be formulated for the managers and employees to regulate the practices and operations of the employees and managers. The code of conduct can determine the common and specific departmental objectives. Hence, the global mind set workforce can be established following the above.

Conclusion

The discussions conducted in the previous parts enable us to conclude that human resource personnel are one of the chief assets of an enterprise and are known to be driving the entity towards growth, success and competitive edge. It can further be concluded that it is vital to align the overall objectives of the entity with the human resource planning practice, to ensure that the said goals and objectives of the entity are achieved.

Further, it would be right to state that the human resource planning is a comprehensive and detailed procedure and requires dedicated efforts, time and investment from the top managers as seen from the case study of the Westpac, as explained in the first segment of the work. Further, as seen in the case study there are a number of challenges faced by the managers at various stages of the human resources planning, its integration with the organisational goals and the establishment of a global mind set culture at workplace, the same has been described in the second and third segment of the work. The entity must consistently review its strategies and amend the same.  The effective utilisation of human resources is key to success for an enterprise.

References

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Binder, J. (2016). Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge.

Chowhan, J. (2016). Unpacking the black box: understanding the relationship between strategy, HRM practices, innovation and organizational performance. Human Resource Management Journal, 26(2), 112-133.

DeCenzo, D. A., Robbins, S. P., & Verhulst, S. L. (2016). Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, Binder Ready Version. John Wiley & Sons.

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Huczynski, A. A., & Buchanan, D. A. (2017). Organisational Behaviour (9th ed.). United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited.

Robbins, S. P. & Coulter, M. (2012). Management. 11th ed. Prentice-Hall International.

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