Creating competitive advantage through HR
Different organisations may define competitive advantage in different. It can be identified as the advantage, a particular company has over their competitors by offering the customer a better product service or a cost benefit. There are many ways to achieve this. This is often identified as a responsibility of the marketing department. They are the ones who market and sell it, so it has to be done by them isn’t it? But many experts in the industry state that human resources of any organisation have a significant role to play in achieving a competitive advantage.
The human resources department of the organisation has crucial part to be played in handling their HR to gain a competitive edge over others in the market. It is essential for an organisation to be innovative, efficient and productive in the current high competition prevailing in the market. Creating a workforce working together towards a common goal makes an orgnaisation extremely competitive and being successful business in the market.
The HR team
Firstly it is important to have a competent HR department comprising of well experienced and skilled set of HR professionals. These professionals possess various kinds of skills and expertise. Many in the HR industry has hands on experience on administration, payroll, benefit management, performance etc. It is critical to have expert recruitment professionals who can identify the strategic need of the organisation and recruit accordingly. Basically it means that the HR staff should include people who can make effective recruitment in order to make an organisation competitive.
It all starts with effective recruitment
Effective recruitment strategy would help an organisation hire and retain the best talent available in the market. It is important to identify the need of the organisation and then recruit the best for the particular job role. Recruitment process could influence the overall competitiveness of the organisation at large. People who are well experienced and have specific skills to do a job will increase the organisations’ competitiveness in the market.
Training and development
This is also a responsibility of the HR department. The recruited individuals could be from various skills and expertise. An effective training program would ensure that the employees would have a better knowledge on the organisation and its objectives. This would further increase the capabilities of the workforce and help them to be more productive in the work place.
Evaluate and monitor employee performance
Evaluation of employee performance is carried out by almost all the organisations in the worlds. But monitoring is not conducted in an effective manner mainly due to unavailability of proper monitoring tools. However an effective performance monitoring system would add more value to the organisation’s competitive advantage.
