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IBM Global HR Management Case
The new HR will change the necessary qualifications for future leaders in the HR function of the ict firm. This need is created by the expanded scope of knowledge that the new structure presents to both the current and the future HR leaders. Because of the new structure, HR leaders will be required to have abilities in handling both the centralized roles and traditional departmental roles. According to Boudreau (2010), the management leaders under the new structure will learn skills that will equip them to be deployed to support management functions globally. Therefore, it will also be their qualification to understand diverse organizational structures and managing global business.
The new structure will also change the roles and qualifications of the management leaders away from the HR function. Administrators will require incorporation of new talent management skills that reflects global labor diversities. In addition, the decision making process will need to incorporate all the centralized requirements such as the sharing of resources as well as budget making. The production and distribution experts will be required to understand and incorporate the diversities of the global business in their design and development of product and chains of distribution (Dowling, et al, 2012). Moreover, the planners will be required to establish new planning tools that reflect the global perspective of the business in terms of capital and human resources.
In regard to fundamental principles of learning, business leaders should have the skills of evaluating events, employees and organizational circumstances. This will help them to learn from every eventuality in an organization. In regard to engagement, business leaders require recruitment skills in order to evaluate and engage the most suited employees to specific tasks. According to Dowling et al (2012), business leaders will require good communication skills to ensure a motivated workforce in an organization. These skills will allow managers to understand, communicate and motivate employees based on the prevailing circumstances. Moreover, the leaders will use the communication skills to establish and maintain healthy employee relations in the firm.
IBM leaders should not only be as informed about supply chains, customers and technology. Instead, they should be informed of talent markets and decision-making principles. This is because the new structure presents more changes to the decision making process and the talent markets than it leads to changes to the former. The new structure will be applicable even with the current technology and will address the same customer base using the current talents at the firm (Boudreau, 2010). However, changes in the market environment require new decision making frameworks that IBM leaders should be informed of.
IBM can directly leverage the functionality and success of the WMI into its products, operational services like customer service and revenue. This can be done by integrating the principles of process excellence to its human resource. Such integration will make IBM customer service to be focused on the goals of the firm in terms of revenues. To achieve the targeted revenue, the company will have to integrate the principles of success behind wmi to the production and distribution of its products. In this way, the company will work towards achieving the success of the wmi in all its departments and services.
The human resource can retain an optimum balance between the soft benefits and hard benefits of the new structure. Both benefits are necessary for the company to grow, especially in the global perspective. The balance can be retained by enhancing the use of the new structure to facilitate the current role of employees by enhancing their data driven methodologies. The soft benefits of the human resource reflect the advanced functions that are presented by the new structure, which will help the firm to adjust to the market and achieve the targeted performance (Dowling, et al, 2012). Therefore, the new structure should treat employees as the most important in its success. On the other hand, the hard HR benefits are instrumental in the development of the basic functions of the organization through the new structure.
The focus of the IBM on the operational frameworks of equations, numbers and optimization rules does not significantly consider the intangible benefits that accrue to the organization from human relationships. If not restructured well, IBM risks losing the intangible aspects of employee relationship that are unquantifiable. According to Dowling et al (2012), the HR should enjoy the benefits of employee relationships when working together especially from departments and other horizontal relations. Therefore, proper restructuring of employees to the new structure should be done to gain the benefits of relationships. If well implemented, the benefits will enhanced for better performance than before.
However, the job of retaining intangible benefits and values for IBM as well as the employment brand need not be assigned to assigned in express terms. This is a result of organizational principles and general accountability of the members of the organization. Therefore, for IBM, these two responsibilities should be specific accountability for the members of the organization, especially HR and business leaders. This will make it a general role of all people that emanates from the organizational culture, which will attract long-term performance of the organization.
References
Boudreau, J. W. (2011). IBM’s Global Talent Management Strategy: The Vision of the Globally Integrated Enterprise. Society for Human Resource Management. Alexandria, VA 22314-3499
Dowling, P., Festing, M., & Engle, A. (2012). International Human Resource Management: Managing People in a Multinational Context. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning EMEA