Strategic Human Resource Management

Strategic Human Resource Management

January 19, 2012

1. Discuss the strategies that Mountain Bank should implement to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

When establishing a strategy, one would need to know what a strategy is in order to achieve that goal. A strategy is look at as being “a set of coordinated choices and actions” (Stewart & Brown, 2009, p.66). So to come up with a competitive business strategy, we would need to take a look at certain factors. This would determine what strategy or choice and action we would need to take in order to make the most of our resources in order to achieve a profit. We would need to take a look at the organization and take into consideration its strengths and weaknesses. We would need to take a look at what type customer we are actually serving and what their needs are. Last, we would need to take a look at our current resources and see if we would need to either add, subtract or manipulate and change in order achieve our goal. I think with Mountain Bank, I think our strength would be our capability to provide a personal touch with our tellers. If you look at the banks business demographics, Mountain Bank has 50% of the market on retail banking. That’s half of the banking business for that part of the United States. Mountain Bank would need to find a way to extend that type of service and customer touch to the other markets.

I feel in order to provide that type of consistent service and benefit from it, Mountain Bank will need to invest in its employees. With investing in its number one resource, Mountain Bank will reap the benefits of consistent number one service regardless of the market place they serve.

2. Describe the types of practices a human resource professional should recommend for Mountain Bank with respect to its tellers, based on the universalistic approach and commitment strategy.

Mountain Bank is trying to implement the idea of cross-selling to its customers from the retail bank market in order to make up for the difference in other areas of Mountain Bank such as consumer lending, corporate banking and real estate and mortgage banking. With having tellers in the retail bank market trying to cross-sell, it would be more advantageous for H.R. to take the Universalistic approach and commitment strategy. This way we (Mountain Bank) will make sure that we are getting the type caliber employee we need, trained and retained in order to meet our needs (Phatak, Bhagat, & Kashlak 2009). With the Universalistic approach, we want to make sure we are not only getting the type employee we need but also compensating them fairly for what they know. Employees tend to respond better to incentives (monetary) based on knowledge and skill set for the appropriate position. Mountain