Role of HR Function in Developing Strategy That Ensures Cost Cutting w Literature review

Essays on Role of HR Function in Developing Strategy That Ensures Cost Cutting while Maintaining the Desired Level of Human Capital Literature review The paper â€Å"Role of HR Function in Developing Strategy That Ensures Cost Cutting while Maintaining the Desired Level of Human Capital† is an outstanding version of a literature review on human resources. Modern business environments are characterized by increased competition within and across organizations and industries, financial and economic meltdowns, rising pressures to minimize costs, increased expectations from customers, changing consumer needs, tastes and preferences, the invariable pressure to achieve global competitive challenges and capitalizing on opportunities presented by progress in information technology systems. With such dynamics, the function of the HR has transformed greatly in ways not envisaged a decade ago which includes centralizing and decentralizing the HR functions, redefining roles, business needs getting more priority in delivery of HR services and more significantly, automation, streamlining and reengineering of majority of regular transactio nal activities of HR functions (Armstrong, 2006).Concomitantly, considerations such as reducing costs, satisfying customers and the increased need for flexibility, efficiency and quality remain the critical success factors for players in the global business arena, which has in effect, generated change in human resource planning. More often than not, economic and financial recessions generate negative attitudes about HR since they are charged with the responsibility of laying people off and cutting programs in line with the organizational directives as noted by Lussier (2011). In times of recessions, the management is usually too preoccupied with organizational survival and the need to reduce costs considerably that there is limited time allocated to strategic development efforts. Snell Bohlander (2012) indicates that what is oblivious to the management is that margins are inadvertently reduced in the haste to generate satisfying expense line items that have an impact of minimizing the short to the long-term competitiveness of the organization. Therefore, HR is accountable for ensuring that the organization is able to strike the balance in cost-cutting and maintaining the desired level of human capital without necessarily threatening the long-term competitive advantage and sustainability of the organization.Role of the HR function in developing strategy that ensures cost-cutting while maintaining the desired level of human capitalIn regards to GCMS, the main challenge is striking the right balance in ensuring that it preserves its committed, reliable and productive human capital while ensuring that there is sufficient cash flow during the recession period and after the recession period has passed. The role of the HR function, therefore, is to develop programs, which will generate fast behavioral effect on costs and margins since development of programs that do not offer quicker solutions in relation to cutting costs will not generate sufficient support from th e management who are focused and interested in fast impact initiatives as suggested by Snell Bohlander (2012).The HR is accountable for ensuring that the developed programs have the elements of ownership where all stakeholders including the management and the labor force within GCMS are accountable for the financial results of their decisions and performance respectively. This will entail developing systems to establish business acumen where the labor force and the management see the connection between their actions and financial results in order for them to modify their actions and decisions accordingly and appropriately (Lussier, 2011). The HR’s role in the situation also would entail designing programs that promote innovation through the allocation of low budget. These have the potential to stimulate enhanced creativity and innovation among workers as they seek ways in which they can improve their performance and increase their outputs using limited/ low budgets hence, su rviving the harsh economic times with no one being laid off (Snell Bohlander, 2012).