DHL Strategic Human Resource Management

The human workforce is the most crucial resource that any organization may ever have. An entity can lack any form of reserve and yet be considered to be a business, but not if there are no people involved. Organizations are made up of people, which is why managing employees is an important component of management. The company's core operations include hiring, choosing employees, managing employee relations, learning and development, and rewarding and managing talent. It deals with any aspect of the business that is concerned or affects employees including benefits, training, administration, incentives and safety procedure information (Webcache.googleusercontent.com 2017).
On the other hand, Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) is, as the name suggests, a branch of HR. It has been a foreign term in many associations and unions for many decades since few personnel realised its fundamentality. SHRM involves the integration of strategic goals or objectives of the organisation in general into the human resource management.
Since a strategy refers to a course of action or the firm's long-term plan of how it will strike a balance between its internal strengths and weaknesses with its external opportunities and threats, then strategic management entails the entire process of identifying and executing the group's mission by matching its competences with the demands of its environment (SHRM 2017, p.35).
It is, therefore, a matter of fact that SHRM is a core activity that either enhances performance of the organisation or plays a major role in the contribution of revenue growth. The strategic decisions made by the Human Resource department extend far beyond the doors of the HR function. Money is useful not only to the finance department but the whole organisation. Likewise, all steps and choices made by the HR department have an impact on the entire firm.
Despite the fact that an efficient management would result to a thriving business and vice versa, very seldom have strategic HR resource management decisions been classified to be a source of value creation. The segment has been traditionally painted as a major cost that needs to be minimised and a potential basis of efficiency advances (Truss, Mankin and Kelliher 2012, p.54). As labour costs remain the key expenses in many entities, reduction in employment continues to be a principal strategy of restructuring the operations and cutting down the costs.
The decisions made create value and not merely serve the need of slicing the costs. Practically, the challenge at hand is to draw a clear line between staffing reductions that are entirely downsizing measures and reforms which require only few employees but create value addition since the new structures are more suitable for the company's strategies (SHRM 2017, p.39). However, the new focus of human resource management is looking at it as a strategic lever that propels the firm economically and directly contributes to the implementation of not only strategic but also operating objectives of the business (Teena and Sanjay 2014, p.14).
Therefore, in order to translate strategy into Human Resource policy and practice, the business strategy needs to be formulated first. In doing so, the strategic goals of the firm are clearly defined. Secondly, the workforce requirement is identified through stating the skills, competencies and behaviour that the human resource needs to deliver for the corporation to attain its objectives. The above stated steps set the stage for the formulation of Human Resource strategies and practices that will enable for the development of the required competencies and abilities. Ultimately, a mechanism should be created for the purpose of checking whether the HR is executing well for the enterprise. A detailed scorecard measure is developed. It helps in marching what should be done against what has actually been done.
With respect to DHL, we will categorically consider the various Human Resource Management practices that the company has adopted. We will then match them with the business strategies of the firm. A consideration of the connection between the two aspects will help discern the required workforce to attain the goals. Similarly, the practices and strategies the firm needs to adopt in order to develop the needed competencies will be deliberated.
Overview of DHL
DHL is a fast-growing global logistics company. It exists in over 220 territories and countries across the sphere, it is the most universal group on in the world. With a human resource of over 350,000 staff, it provides solutions for nearly an uncountable logistics needs. The entity is part of Deutsche Post DHL Group, the leading logistics and postal corporation globally, comprised of business units such as DHL Global Forwarding, DHL Supply Chain, DHL e-commerce, DHL Express, DHL Parcel, and DHL Freight (Dhl.co.ke 2017).
The solitary purpose for DHL's existence is to connect people and improve their living standards. It is believed that a strong link exists between business and prosperity. Intercontinental trade makes the world a better place, and the entity adds value to the community as a logistics company. The interchange of goods is extremely powerful, since a shipment or consignment handed over by clients may contain life-saving medication or priceless prototypes for organisations. Thus, the deliveries made are of more than parcels and luggage, but joy, health as well as powering growth (Dhl.co.ke, 2017).
DHL Vision and Mission
According to DHL's 2011 report (Dhl.co.ke, 2017)., the vision and mission are stipulated as follows:
Vision: To be the logistics company for the world in the five years' time.
Mission: Excellence. Simply Delivered - is our guiding light.
Strategy 2020: Focus. Connect. Grow. It is a simple policy without necessarily being simplistic. Founded on the three pillars, the establishment has laid out a clear blueprint for achieving the ambitious yet feasible goals (Dhl.co.ke 2017).
DHL's Human Resource
The forte of the organisation lies ultimately on the over 35,000 personnel working with and for the corporation. To provide customers the best service possible, the staffs are collaborated into in single teams in which each one is attuned to the other. At HR, a keen eye is maintained on the business goals, and ascertaining that the most appropriate person is placed in the precise position in all places which in turn helps them grow (dhl.co.ke 2017).
SHRM Practices
Talent Management
Talent management is a vital aspect of SHRM responsible for ensuring that capable, well-motivated, and skilled people needed for achievement of the strategic objectives of the company are available. It reflects the level of commitment that the organisation has towards recruiting, retaining, and developing the employees who are essentially the most talented, competent, and superior in the job market.
A lot of work processes and systems are contained in ensuring that the abilities and skills of the workforce are not brought to a still. Operations encompass positive interaction between a manager and the employees that report to him. The system makes it not only a role but a central responsibility of the manager to make certain that the skills of his workforce are improved each working day. In order to achieve talent management, the focus should not only be on the core employees but every member of the organisation (IMD Business School 2017, p.56). The reason behind talent management is that all stakeholders have a role in the attainment of the strategic objectives of the business. Improving of their talents amplifies their productivity and, in turn, results in increased production, reduced turnover rates, and boosted financial standings of the firm.
DHL is taking advantage of the practice. The company portrays itself as an employee-centred organisation. This strategy is highly commendable, but more can be done to enhance the abilities of the thousands of dedicated personnel. Application of the practice will pose many potential challenges since the workforce is spread across different geographical and cultural regions. Nevertheless, talent management needs to be fully integrated into all the employee-related processes of the establishment.
The corporation needs to accept that attracting as well as retaining gifted employees is the duty of every member, but more precisely managers and superiors. It would be effective also to share across the organisation information concerning the most capable employees and their potential career trails in order to enable various departments to easily identify and point out available skill in case opportunities arise or are made available. Taking such a fundamental step allows DHL to ensure that the best personnel across different capacities are trained and prepared to undertake the next position of their profession. In the meantime, the Human Resource department can think of developing a Human Resources Information System (HRIS). Such an automated structure can make it possible to track the workers' career paths while managing the available opportunities for superior employees (SHRM 2017, p.12).
Resourcing
Even though the term resourcing is closely linked to recruiting, this strategy is not merely concerned with recruitment and selection. They are not simply practices for filling jobs. They are, correspondingly, levers for structural changes, sustaining member commitment, and realising high performance (Millmore et al. 2007, p.34). While recruiting is the whole process of attracting, screening, picking as well as on-boarding a competent person for a job, resourcing is focused on any methods and avenues available for meeting the business' needs for specific skills and behaviour. Of course, expanding the skill base begins with recruitment and selection but it goes beyond the borders of learning and development programs to improve the current personnel rewarding techniques.
One component of this strategy is Human Resource planning. It involves the careful analysis and planning of the people to work with in the future. The element is closely linked with the overall achievement of the goals of the firm, since the lack of it results in increased production costs, lack of progress in the production process in addition to other negative ramifications. Analysis of the external environment - while taking into consideration fundamental elements such as fluctuations in the business - will help the company maintain flexibility to face any kinds of uncertainties.
Such planning would help DHL recognise upcoming deficits or surpluses and, thus, see the need of action planning - formulating plans to handle deficits through training, internal promotions, or external staffing, evolving retention, and flexibility strategies. Also, resourcing plans by organising strategies for finding people from within the group and from the external environment, or for training platforms to assist people acquire new skills (Millmore et al. 2007, p. 23). The analysis must also establish how many individuals are to be recruited in the shortage of experienced employees within the firm or the impracticality of planning for training of workers with new skills in time.
Developing a Distinctive Organisation Culture
A business culture gives the firm the proper identity needed for its activities and organisational purposes. It can be thought of as the glue that holds an organisation together through a sharing of patterns of meaning. The facet focuses on the values, beliefs, and expectations that members come to share (Schein 1984, p.64). It can also be described as the complex mixture of myths, assumptions, stories, behaviours, metaphors, and other ideas that fit together to outline what it means to be a member of a particular society (Millmore et al. 2007, p.75).
Unlike corporate values that are deliberately stipulated by top management by setting the expected standards and behaviours, organisational philosophy is unconsciously and organically developed in the various functions of the firm (Gold, Thorpe, and Mumford 2010, p.48). Organizational culture has a tremendous impact on the performance and productivity of the business since it has an influence on the decision-making process, motivation, job satisfaction, and management control as well as work organisation. It is quite a challenge to establish such a philosophy, especially on a multinational organisation like DHL. Beliefs, values, and behaviours vary from one geographical region to another making the development of uniform policies to be a challenge.
In spite of the various setbacks encountered in developing and incredibly etching specific principles in an organisational setting, the benefits always outweigh the challenges. Many firms have recorded a lower turnover rate as a result of satisfaction of the human resource (Boxall and Purcell 2015, p.277). A higher performance and stronger commitment of the workforce with a clear direction portray the company as a consistent and reliable establishment. On the other hand, entrenched beliefs that have been in existence for decades might be difficult to uproot when the need for change is realised hence being an impediment for the mixture of workers to experience diversity in the workplace. Due to the great impact of organization culture on the morale of the human resource, it definitely has a cumulative effect on the productivity and overall achievement of the strategic goals of the organisation.
Employee Retention
Retention of talented employees is another principle concern of the HR department. It involves a firm's strategic actions to maintain the motivation and focus of the workers with the aim of making them elect to continue with their employment and being fully productive for the company's overall benefit. Such a comprehensive program makes a tremendous contribution to a corporation's productivity and performance by reducing turnover as well as its related costs (Boxall and Purcell 2015, p.672).
The majority of employees consider the immediate relationship between them and the immediate managers or supervisors to be very important and affect their level of satisfaction. A mutual trust and respect affiliation as well as job security, compensation and benefits, and recognition are also considered to be key components of an employee retention package. In order, therefore, to retain motivated and capable personnel who truly yearn to carry on being part of the establishment, both in good and bad times, executives should continually be concerned with proper management of the workforce. Quality workers, who have stuck with the company when circumstances were meagre, may bolt as soon as opportunities arise elsewhere.
As significant as it is to understand the reasons behind turnover of employees, it is just vital to recognise what makes key staff stay. Recent studies have proved that people become embedded in their employment and communities (Lin and Shih 2008, p.859). As they actively participate in their professional and social life, they end up creating a web of connection, mutually on and off work. Therefore, a company can enhance such engagements by nurturing team cohesions, providing mentors, boosting employee referrals, designing work in groups, and providing clear socialisation and communication concerning the values and culture of the company, as well as financial incentives that may not be common anywhere else. It is worthy of noting that satisfaction plus pay levels are only modest predictors of a person's decision to detach from the organisation. Since it is more efficient to retain an excellent employee than recruiting, training and orienting another, the HR department needs to maintain strategic actions in order to preserve talented workers.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The organisation has set high but achievable goals for the near future. Its ambition is to be the logistics company for the world in the next five years as it strives to expand its boundaries to reach the whole inhabited earth. The objective is attainable but some steps need to be taken to enhance its service delivery currently. For instance, conformity culture that prevails across the nations should be replaced with individualism. The needs and expectations of employees, clients and all stakeholders have to be addressed not as a group but as an individual (Boxall and Purcell 2015, p.98). A much more positive attitude and enhanced working morale result from such treatment.
The following steps are to be provided in order to change the current culture in the organisation. First, it should be adequately communicated to all employees why there is need for modification. The management should be ready to receive the opinions of the participants concerning the current culture, the various loopholes present, and the necessity for taking the major drastic step (Burke 2003, p.71). Holding discussion forums on the different branches all over the world, which will be properly coordinated by the C.E.O in the headquarters, will make it possible. The length and nature of the meetings should be conducive for the employees to air their grievances and views. Since this information from the human resource is of vital significance to the going concern of the business, the feedback from these forums should be well documented and communicated as fast as possible to the senior management.
The board of directors then needs to analyse the opinions and requests of the nearly 35,000 employees and address them with urgency (Boxall and Purcell 2015, p.270). Some of the issues to be put into consideration are whether they will involve making necessary changes in the organisation hierarchy, move personnel from one role, responsibility or department to another; provide more ongoing training and development of the staff or the need to reconsider the practices adopted to manage and resolve conflicts.
Additionally, with the changing business environment, it would be essential for the firm to match itself with the fast technological advancements (Armstrong 2016, p. 28). The modes of communication have been tremendously improved from traditional to modern. For instance, the sending of physical letters is quickly substituted by faster electronic means like e-mail and fax along with phone calls and video conferencing. Organisations as well as individuals are making the shift for more efficient and cost-effective communication. Therefore, in order to keep up with the trend, DHL has to change its way of doing business too. Keeping in mind that the main source of revenue accrues from logistics and communication, failing to adapt might result in the failure of the corporation (Truss, Mankin and Kelliher 2012, p.59).
As far as technology is concerned, DHL e-commerce section of the organisation has taken commendable steps to be at par with the changing environment. Having an active website where communication with customers is done has helped the firm address the needs of clients as soon as they pop up (Millmore 2007, p.58). More needs to be done though. For example, having more online communication platforms in the social media, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, might result in a higher competitive advantage. Such media can be beneficial for more than mere communication but can easily be used in creation of awareness of the available products and services provided by DHL.
Social media has proved to be an almost perfect tool for advertisement purposes (Lin and Shih 2008, p.861). Unlike the traditional modes used, where one has to use a million words to express a commercial idea, the modern forms of transmission seem to be more efficient for a multitude of users. With the use of illustrations in pictorial form, businesses, individuals as well as interested consumers can easily access the company portal and understand in a nutshell the promotions and offers made for their benefit. The outcome of such a step can never be overestimated since internet connection has moved from being a luxury to a basic necessity. Most if not all individuals, who are willing and able to subscribe to the company services, own electronic gadgets like smartphones, laptops, tablets as well as portable devices that can easily connect to the internet and access information at the tip of their hands.
In order to attain that and really achieve the goal of being the logistics company for the world in the next five years, thoughtful investments on the human resource ought to be made with urgency. The skills of employees need to be more tailored to be able to adopt the electronic form of conducting business. It will involve first awareness creation on the part of the workforce on the need to use the new commercial platforms (Burke 2003, p.36). As soon as acceptance is achieved, training should immediately follow. The management may see fit not only equipping the staff with the knowledge as a group, but also attending to the individual needs of the personnel. Such a program may not be a one-time event but an ongoing process. This measure may be necessary to help keeping in mind the present level of customer awareness (Armstrong 2016, p. 28). The firm's clients are well informed of alternative service providers that can be a quick substitute to DHL. Its competitors are taking advantage of the social media and website communication as well as the personal touch resulting from a direct phone call by the organisation. Adapting to the changing environment has made it possible for the corporations to lower their cost of production and service delivery (Boxall and Purcell 2015, p.261). For that reason, DHL needs not only to meet but also exceed the expectations of the clients.
Moreover, there exists the issue of globalisation. For an international organisation like DHL, various factors determine the globalisation of its activities. The typology currently in force gives extremely little powers to overseas subsidiaries of the company in making strategic decisions (Burke 2003, p.221). The ethnocentricity makes the decisions, values, and culture to be dominated and dictated by the organisation's headquarters. As a consequence, the benefits of essential local knowledge are limited and restrict the prospects of expanding and promoting the company activities (Lin and Shih 2008, p.858). In order to adopt global thinking while working locally, DHL needs to be geocentric through sharing of values across the organisation, establishing global centres of excellence, multidirectional communication besides mobility between managers and staff. Including such vital policies in the Strategic Human Resource Management plan will not only put the firm at a better competitive advantage but help achieve its strategic goals of the subsequent five years.

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