HR in Context Code

 

 

 

 

 

 

HR in Context Code

Table of Contents

Introduction. 3

Company Profile. 3

Organisational Design. 4

Organisational Goals. 4

Reengineering. 5

Globalisation. 5

PESTLE Analysis: Internal and External Factors Affecting These Activities. 6

Political Factors. 6

SWOT Analysis. 8

Conclusion. 9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HR in Context Code

Introduction

Company Profile

IBM is a global technology company that is situated in America. Some of the services they offer are technology and consulting services, software development, outsourcing services, enterprise architecture, and system management (IBM, 2011). It has approximately 430, 000 personnel. The company is able to invest in R&D and has global recognition way ahead any other technology organization.

Personnel and Organisational Success

As time goes by, it becomes apparent that the efficient and effective management of an organisation’s personnel becomes an important pointer to the performance of the enterprise; organisations are changing rapidly for the better due to a number of things that are transforming in them. Organisations have begun realising that their success is reliant upon their ability to attract, advance, and retain skilled and experienced personnel (Personnel Management, n.d.). The personnel in such organisation need to be understood by the managers on how they contribute to organisational success. There are therefore a wide range of activities that personnel do for the success of the organisation.

The staff in IBM played a key role in the business success; the personnel took part in a long period of training before they had to take part in the business as well as their managers. There were several meetings held so as to talk over any form of complains that the customers had concerning their product and solutions to this problem. The staff put in place assistance to buyers through customizing the orders and selling more memory loaded equipment.

Organisational Design	The design of the organisation is more clearly represented in the form of a grid to show that the activities performed by the personnel are intersecting. In instance, the role of the manager of the plant and the product team leader of the IBM Company where they buy chips from other suppliers hence snubbing the Hewlett-Packard (HP) chips that are considered too expensive, created on the basis of a strong independent business (Boudreau, 1996). This stability is established as a result of cooperation, teamwork and planning by the personnel, and a culture that prevents expensive spending by the organisation. Successfully establishing teamwork, vision, and culture requires managers to understand better how to manage people in a more efficient manner. IBM changed the structure of its organisation by downsizing it as way of changing the structure so as to be fitter and more effective in its operations. The organization employed a user centred approach is intended to acquire the user’s expectations. It begins with forming a multidisciplinary team that will accomplish this process.
Organisational Goals	Organisations have set goals and standards attaining those goals will require strong personnel driven by leaders who strive to achieve a vision with the assistance of efficient structures that are able to issue a high level of training that upholds the skills attained by the staff and enhance entrepreneurship (Broad Education, 2008). According to Charles Handy, organisations ought to have their employees perform activities like training, organisational design, and loyalty as they are important aspects in every organisation. The user-centered design applied by the organisation, IBM, was set to follow a certain set of design principles. Each of the principles had the goal of encompassing the user. The organisation goals were to look for the target market, the desired users and primary competition is necessary to all the design and client involvement.
Reengineering	Organisations have employees in place who are involved in reengineering, redesigning tasks to make processes more efficient, as well as integrating several tasks for success in the organisation. In the IBM Company, the managers have developed a better understanding of the implication that comes with reengineering on careers. The success in the organisation is dependent upon the thought and ideology on the part of personnel. Managers should invest in personnel so as to build social contracts; it is a result of this that organisations are able to reconcile and combine ideas from other shareholders, clients, and personnel.
Globalisation	Personnel’s in big companies are able to grow faster and achieve higher sales and profits with the application of global activities. Reports suggest that the sales for companies that are not involved in any foreign activities received half the average sales. The IBM Company applies the use of communications of ‘virtual teams’ that work in coherence with other countries. Headquarters have been moved to other countries. Although it similarly does have its challenges, it is easy to manage it with well-organised personnel.

 

 

PESTLE Analysis: Internal and External Factors Affecting These Activities

 

Political Factors	Globalisation is based on the creation of a market with other countries for the main purpose of developing one’s revenue. Globalisation attributes these activities to major challenges that lie in the managing of finances, marketing, and production procedures (Boudreau, 1996). Such pressing issues are reliant on the management of the personnel. Top European unions hinder organisations from establishing competition with pay cuts and layoffs. Although it is negative, research attributes such measures to compete on quality and well-paid personnel of what is produced. Taxation in the United Kingdom has made the IBM server items to rise hence increasing the weakness on the price aspect more so on the IBM poducts.
Economic Factors	Most of the organisations have developed to focus on the cost of acquiring labour rather than the skills and productivity of the personnel. Most organisations prefer to pay for cheap labour rather than more skilled and efficient personnel. Theories of internal personnel markets and the economics of organisation management take up a bigger perspective that attributes bargains between managers and their personnel are not driven by external markets but are established by managers that assist in coordinating, monitoring, and motivating their personnel. They are affected by economic theories suggesting that educated and trained personnel are necessary for competition rather than on cutting costs. The globalisation dependent on the GDP in the various regions has been stable hence a good market of the products and services of IBM.
Social Factors	More often than not, the psychology of the personnel affects the trend and success of the organisation. The motivations, attitudes, and learning of these personnel can immensely impact the capability and desire of the personnel to act in a number of ways. Studies reveal that employees behave in certain manner that when selected, paid, assessed, and trained that if such trends are understood by the top management can elevate their ability to attain success for the organisation. Globalisation has enabled so many people to be accessed through the internet hence the availability of opportunities goods and services.
Technological factors	IBM Company, highly skilled and fast operations would be required to generate higher revenue. It is in such instances that companies are able to speed up their operations and advance the quality of their operations. IBM workers are able to create 12 items with the help of personal computers that are able to track the parts that require joining together. The computers are able to offer online assembly assistance in the event the personnel are phasing a difficulty. Software, computers, and human personnel have grown to become significant manufacturing factors. The personnel aspect is important in exploiting the rise of these new technologies. However, the computer technology’s significance is quite slow in materialising, considering the relative increase in its speed and power, as the management team and personnel are quite slow in transforming their work practices and correlate the software to cater for the needs of the personnel.
Legal Factors	The personnel resource in organisations has some cost-wise implications to an organisation. The method employed by organisations in selecting their personnel has some significant legal impact. Take for instance organisations that intrude on the privacy trend of their personnel; this is more likely to cost the organisation millions. Like in IBM’s operations, the personnel come into contact with several machines and are exposed to risks. Any personnel that is injured or any way affected by the facilities or trends in the organisation are likely to sue the organisation for violating the safety rules. Organisations therefore should take into consideration the safety rules in place especially when dealing with personnel safety.

 

SWOT Analysis

Strength	In globalisation, IBM has the ability of handling 95 percent of business duties issued to it; the speed that is involved is also high in the main frame and technologies like speech recognition. It also has the best hand facilities.
Weakness	Globalisation tends to take away the jobs from the local individuals who are left unemployed. The foreign personnel in the destination countries are the huge beneficiaries of this. Another weakness is that it is at times proven to be quite costly in the value chain as well as the acquisition of several issues.
Opportunity	With globalisation, the most well-known aspect that is attributed to it is the opportunities that are created. IBM has been in a position to acquire foreign thriving markets and as a result established a strong network of successful companies. The organisation is able to grow and become a leading organisation compared to its other competitors. Other opportunities available are a complex service market and a mature internet market as well as a strong barrier to the server market.
Threats	With globalisation of the services that is offered by IBM is that in the event of the not-so-long-ago financial recession, the organisation suffered a huge loss. The investments made in foreign personnel lose their jobs, which has resulted to mass layoffs. A large number of the personnel having knowledge prior to the mass layoffs are in a good position to sabotage the organisation facilities, as it is already in the global news of several companies laying off their workers. These would leave the organisation weak and helpless. Steps should be taken by the management team to counter these. Another threat that is attributed to globalisation of its services to other countries is the risk of acquiring labour in a non-familiar language speaking country. Though there is the presence of unexploited, well-skilled, and experienced personnel, there is the risk of not being able to maximise this important resource. The IBM has high cost of switching costs, high competition as well as the threat of substitutes and low switching costs for clients.

Information obtained from IBM, 2011. IBM. [online] Available at: <http://www.ibm.com/us/en>

Conclusion

For the success of an organisation, it is mainly dependent on the skills, experience, and availability of the personnel (Sims, 2002). IBM has been able to exploit the local personnel as well as outsourcing its labour to foreign countries in an attempt to achieve organisation success in its goals and visions. There are, however, some recommendations that the company has to keep in mind in order for it to attain maximum success:

First, in the selection of the personnel, the organisation has to be keen on not violating with the worker’s private life; this may be in the form of sexual orientation and religion. This would cause the organisation a lot of money to try and rectify the situation.   The weakness as noted in the SWOT analysis has shown an increase in costs which ought to be managed so as to enable more revenue to be collected. The threat of substitute could be solved by offering a quality product and service to maintain the clients as IBM cannot afford to substitute.

Secondly, with the increase in competition from other companies that offers the same services and products as IBM like Compaq it has become apparent that IBM has to transform the way in which it controls its spending and increase its earnings on research and development.

Thirdly, for a purpose of maintaining the customers, increasing the quality of goods and rising competition from other clients the personnel issue should be addressed. The personnel are an important asset to the company and should be treated the best way possible. They should be accorded the best training and education, as well as offered satisfactory wages; this would be the best method to ensure maximum service delivery by the workers as they are satisfied. Sufficient amount of resources should be accorded for this process like educationist and time for it to grow and become efficient.

Fourthly, the IBM Company should fully utilize its opportunities that it has at its disposal so as to acquire the best market returns and be able to sustain.

 

 

Recommendation Summary

The IBM Company is a renowned company that is able to rise to greater heights if certain issues are addressed relating to the clients and the operations it undertakes. An efficient service delivery mechanism that is affordable to the clients and yet does not in any way drag the company ought to be employed. Competitions arising from the other companies are healthy for the market and hence stringent measures ought to be increase the quality of products and services and sustain its clients.

Reference List

Boudreau, J.W., 1996. Human Resources and Organization Success. [online] Available at:

<http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cahrswp/174> [Accessed 6 September 2011].

Broad Education, 2008. Transforming HR to drive organizational success: Lessons learned

through Home Run at the New York City Department of Education. New York

IBM, 2011. IBM. [online] Available at: <http://www.ibm.com/us/en/> [Accessed 6

September 2011].

Sims, R.R., 2002. Organizational success through effective human resources

management. Westport, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Personnel Management (n.d.) Chapter 16. [online] Available at:

<http://envfor.nic.in/divisions/16-22.pdf> [Accessed 6 September 2011].