Individual Assignment
Name: Akil Belton
Student ID: 816031030
Course Code and Title: MGMT 3017, Human Resource Management
Semester 1 2023/2024
Question: Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the pattern of planned HR
activities and deployments intended to enable an organization to achieve its strategic goals.
Critically analyse how organizations, through its various SHRM practices and approaches,
can prepare for and respond to a pandemic like COVID-19, a novel coronavirus.
Table of Contents
What is Human Resource Management? ................................................................................ 2
What is Strategic Human Resource Management? ................................................................ 2
Continuity of the Business.......................................................................................................... 3
Practices/Approaches: ............................................................................................................... 4
Monitor Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Changes................................................................. 4
Workforce Safety and Health................................................................................................. 5
Adaptive Policies .................................................................................................................... 8
Workforce Planning ..............................................................................................................10
Recruitment and Training.....................................................................................................12
Employee Mental Health......................................................................................................13
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................15
References................................................................................................................................15
What is Human Resource Management?
Human Resource Management plays a crucial role in an organization’s overall plan. Before
analyzing ways in which organizations, through its practices and approaches, can prepare for
and respond to a pandemic like Covid-19 , we need to understand what Strategic Human
Resource Management is and what Human Resource management is.
Human Resource Management can be defined as the various policies, practices, and
approaches that influence employees’ behaviour, attitudes, and performance in an
organisation. According to (Haak-Saheem, Washika, and Marion Festing,2020), Human
resource management can be defined as the management of human resources such as
policies, practices and systems and is critical for the success of the organisation. HR’s role is
also to ensure that the organisation is balancing its practices with the governmental laws and
regulations. HRM is concerned with other duties such as employee recruitment, training, and
development, and communication.
According to the Article, Human Resource Management is not a one-size fits all approach to
effective people management. It is quite distinct depending on what part of the world you are
living in. According to their own research, factors such as national context, Geographical
location and even advancements in your country can affect what kinds of practices your
business has.
What is Strategic Human Resource Management?
The term “Strategic Human Resource Management” takes what we have discussed already
about Human Resource Management a step further by aligning its human resource practices
and strategies with the overall organizational goals and objectives. According to (Wright,
Patrick M., and Gary C. McMahan,2011), “strategic human resource management (HRM)
can be defined as ‘the pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities
intended to enable the firm to achieve its goals’ (p. 298)”. They stated that strategic HRM
consisted of decisions about HR practices, the composition of human capital resource pool,
the specification of the required human resource behaviours, and the effectiveness of these
decisions given various business strategies and/or competitive situations. SHRM focused
more on aligning its practices and strategies to the organization’s goals, developing talents
within the organization, and managing changes in the organization.
In conclusion, HRM deals with the day-to-day operational aspects of managing employees,
while SHRM takes a more strategic and future-oriented perspective, ensuring that HR
practices align and contribute to the organization's strategic goals.
The Covid -19 pandemic, changed the culture of all organizations in one way or another as
Organizations specifically the HR Department had to quickly find ways to switich from a FaceFace environment to a virtual setting.
Continuity of the Business
The term “Strategic Human Resource Management” is heavily involved with ensuring the
continuity of the business throughout a pandemic like Covid-19. Through the action of
aligning HR strategies and practices with the overall organization’s goals and objectives,
Organizations can survive through a pandemic like Covid-19 .Strategic Human Resource
Management can prepare and respond to a pandemic like Covid-19 through practices and
approaches such as Monitor Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Changes, Workforce Safety and
Health, Adaptive Policies, Workforce Planning, Recruitment and Training and Employee
Mental Health.
Practices/Approaches:
Monitor Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Changes
The first strategic human resource management practice/approach that can help businesses
respond or prepare for a pandemic like Covid-19 is by monitoring the legal, ethical and
regulatory changes in the laws.
In preparation for a pandemic such as Covid-19, SHRM should monitor and interpret relevant
laws and regulations closely involved with Human Resource. This includes the monitoring of
employment laws, health and safety regulations, leave policies and any other laws that can
affect business operations.
When a pandemic like Covid-19 arrives, SHRM first action should be to monitor the changes
in the legal laws such as new legislation relating to pandemic response, public health, and
economic stimuli. During the Pandemic in Trinidad and Tobago, the government passed the
law that only businesses deemed essential were allowed to operate physically. All other
businesses deemed non-essential, had to either shut down for the majority of the pandemic
or operate online. In terms of Business’s deemed essential, we can use my family-owned
Gas Station. Business’s such as Groceries, Hospitals and Gas stations. In terms of our Gas
station, we were only allowed to operate during the changing curfew stated by the
government.
In preparation, Strategic Human Resource Management should create a strategy that
adheres to the existing employment laws but is prepared for flexibility for the upcoming
pandemic that can drastically change the existing laws. In response to the pandemic, HR
must make sure the organization has changed from the old employment laws to the new
legal laws pertaining to for example employee rights. According to an article by (Stevenson,
R.J, and Sapphire M Andersen. 2022), based on the United States, “Employers have been
forced to constantly adapt to changing legal obligations and keep up with the latest
developments.” During this article, businesses have been affected by different laws such as
“The Families First Coronavirus Response Act” which is a legislation enacted by the United
states government that required employers to provide their employees with paid sick leave
and expanded family and medical leave for reasons related to Covid-19.This Act allowed
employees to take up to 80 hours paid sick leave which in turn will leave a financial burden on
the business in terms of revenue.
SHRM should also incorporate ethical considerations into their legal changes. This is to
ensure that the organization’s response to legal changes is not only legally but ethical as well.
They should also the ethical effects of decisions such as layoffs. During the Covid-19
pandemic, Human Resource managers were not prepared and as a result the employment
rate in the world dropped considerably.
Lasting in preparation for a pandemic should develop systems that can be used to keep
documentation of the legal and regulatory changes affecting businesses. In responding to a
pandemic, HR must document all actions taken in response to legal and regulatory changes.
This can help businesses collect more data and devise new ways to prepare for a pandemic
like Covid-19.
Workforce Safety and Health
The second practice/approach that can help businesses respond or prepare for a pandemic
like Covid-19 is by focusing on ensuring that the organization’s workforce is protected from
the pandemic through its different measures.
In preparing for a pandemic like Covid-19, Strategic HRM should identify the risks that a
pandemic like Covid-19 can cause that will affect an organization such as public health issues
and reduction of workforce. An example of a risk is the rate at which the Covid-19 virus
spread across the country and by extension the world. Hundreds of cases were found
approximately each throughout the peak of Covid-19. The human resource manager had to
deal with great numbers of employees falling ill due to covid-19 and needed to be quarantined
due to this.
On an organizational level, there was a risk of supply chain shortages as workers were falling
ill, slowing production. SHRM should assess the risks and determine how great of an impact
they could be to the organization. After SHRM should develop contingency plans that outline
the strategies and actions that are to be taken in response to the risk identified and ensure
that they ensure the health and safety of your workforce.
In an instance where your business is deemed Essential such as my family business,
Strategic Human Resource Management must implement safety protocols such as social
distancing, sanitation, personal protective equipment. During Covid-19, my family business
operated under such safety protocols and had to install stations for employees and customers
to wash their hands and Sanitation. Markers were also placed on the ground, for social
distancing and there were employees enforcing this protocol. We also provided transportation
to get the vaccines to all employees. We made it mandatory for employees to get vaccinated
as cashiers work in a confined space together for the timeframe given by the government
regarding non-essential businesses. Lastly, it was made mandatory that employees wear
their masks for both their own safety and to show customers who couldn’t comply. This uses
the “Monkey see, Monkey do” approach so customers will follow the lead of employees with
the end goal of ensuring public safety. SHRM must effectively communicate the changed
safety protocols and what their response towards Covid-19 is regarding workforce safety.
According to (Dubey, Praveen, Garima Singh, G. Nagaraju, Kailash Gharat, S. D. Bharambe,
and Anant Vajarekar, 2020), Organizations, specifically had to rearrange the work
environment to reduce the spread of Covid-19 virus to its employees as seen in Figure 1
below. According to this article, in a complex work place with many employees,changing the
layout of the office is important to reduce the spread of the virus.
According to this article, “In this pandemic situation, it is an essential task to communicate
appropriate information to workforce so as to build the confidence among them”.
SHRM must inform its entire workforce of the newly developed policies and new procedures
and initiate actions in the case of an employee contracting the virus such as isolation and
sanitation of workplace to ensure employee safety. Strategic HR Managers need to
continuously be updating themselves on new information and what is going on in the world to
best ensure workforce health and safety. In this article it was also outlined that some
objectives of SHRM should be to prevent entry of potential Covid-19 affected persons,
minimise the possibility of cross-contamination in the workplace and community and ensure a
healthy working environment is provided and kept at the workplace.
According to another article by (Hou, Huiying, Hilde Remøy, Tuuli Jylhä, and Herman Vande
Putte,2021), that goes more in depth to changing of the workplace, “Current office workplace
layout may be an obstacle to maintaining social distancing due to the limited space.” SHRM
responded to this by adopting workplace redesign. HRM must develop a strategy for
workplace redesign so that it implements social distancing which serves to mitigate the
spreading of the Covid-19 virus.
SHRM plays a critical role in preparing and responding to a pandemic like Covid-19 through
its risk assessments, contingency planning, clear communication of the responses to
pandemics. By focusing on these areas, Human Resource managers can strategically
safeguard the well being of their employees and ensure business continuity during a
pandemic.
Adaptive Policies
Another Strategic HRM practice/approach that can help organizations prepare for and
respond to a pandemic like Covid-19 is Adaptive Human Resource Policies. Adaptive HR
policies are essential for dealing with unpredictable challenges of Covid-19. Through the risk
assessment done, identifying possible threats to the business, SHRM must make sure their
HR policies include protocols for continuously monitoring global trends.
The pandemic changed businesses by suddenly shifting from what the norm is today to
Remote Work policies. Adaptive HR policies should consider factors such as the needs of the
employees and their mental health. These policies should provide guidelines for remote work
arrangements. SHRM, in order to prepare for and respond to a pandemic must first clearly
identify the roles and job functions that can be performed remotely, outline the equipment
required for this new policy e.g. laptops and secure network access. Human resource
managers must make sure these policies are aligned with the relevant labor laws and
regulations.
Human resource managers must communicate with their employees on the remote work
policies and ensure that they have the proper training for the adjustment to remote work and
to understand the level of performance required throughout this time. Training in the
necessary technology and infrastructure to work securely from home. These policies must
also take into consideration the need for mental health. Mental Health should be prioritized,
and adaptive policies should provide access to the relevant material such as counseling
services, stress management and flexible working hours.
In the article Kähkönen, Tiina. 2023, according to previous research, social interactions,
technical support, and physical work environments are factors that are missing from remote
work, and this affects employee productivity. Other research suggests that demographic
characteristics are linked to employee performance. This basically means that it all depends
on the environment and businesses because everyone has a different view such as some
view remote work as a positive way to evolution and some are just not fond of change. They
have also stated that employee trust is determined by some of the factors and terms
mentioned in this section already such as support systems, training, and communication.
SHRM must make sure that employee engagement strategies which can improve the
performance of the organization are part of these policies such as regular check-ins and team
-building activities.
Adaptive HR policies should be dynamic, flexible, and proactive, focusing on employee wellbeing, business continuity, and maintaining organizational resilience. By doing so, HR
managers can ensure that the organization is better equipped to navigate and recover from
such unprecedented events as a pandemic.
According to Kähkönen, Tiina. 2023 “An important consideration, however, is that in working
remotely, employees should ensure that their organization’s information remains confidential
even during online meetings and discussions. Attention should also be paid to the handling of
an organization’s documents.” SHRM must make sure to train employees carefully in the
case of handling the organizations documents. This article also outlined that organizations
use ICT tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet which employees must be
shown how they are used to communicate with the organizations.
Workforce Planning
Another SHRM practice/approach that can help organizations prepare for and respond to is
Workforce Planning. Workforce Planning is important in ensuring that organizations have the
right people with the right skills in the right places at the right time. It basically deals with the
strategies HRM uses to ensure continuity of the business.
In preparing for a pandemic like Covid-19. SHRM must work with other departments in the
organization to forecast workforce demands. During a pandemic like Covid-19, the demands
drastically changed as the work environment changed. HRM’s workforce planning must be
able to adapt to changes in workforce demands such as specific skills and roles.
In terms of Workforce planning, SHRM must prepare for a pandemic like Covid-19 by
adapting recruitment strategies that take into consideration remote hiring and virtual
onboarding. As mentioned before, workforce planning must be able to adapt to workforce
demands like specific skills. SHRM must identify what employees are essential to the
organization’s success in a pandemic and use incentives to retain them. They can also
choose to upgrade the current skills of the employees. With a pandemic comes change such
as Virtual work so SHRM must upskill or reskill its employees it adapts to the new roles,
responsibilities as well as technologies. With remote work becoming more important,
workforce planning should address the technology needs and support for remote employees
such as training programs for the new virtual work environment and cybersecurity measures.
Workforce planning also deals with factors such as guidelines for workforce safety and social
distancing, addressing employee well-being through mental health support.
Succession Planning is also an important part of workforce planning. Succession planning is
Identifying and grooming potential leaders in case employees fall ill due to the virus.
Succession planning helps to put strategies in place to ensure continuity of key leadership
roles in case of disruptions due to the pandemic. According to (Groves, Kevin S., and Ann E.
Feyerherm, 2022), “The ongoing COVID-19 crisis, the current forces calling for racial justice,
equity and inclusion and the likelihood of future “black swan” events suggest that leaders will
be called upon to demonstrate a unique set of competencies such as foresight, cognitive
complexity via navigation across mental models, scenario planning, environmental scanning,
and resilience”. This suggests that SHRM must identify the leaders with the skills outlined in
this article such as foresight as to the coming challenges of a pandemic and scenario
planning. Leaders with these skills along with others will be able to ensure the continuity of the
business in a pandemic like Covid-19. In the article, Schoemaker et al. (2018) that leaders
should possess a specific set of strategic skills which can be useful in succession planning.
These skills will enable organizations to have a sense of direction when looking for potential
leaders to ensure continuity of the business. The six skills are 1. anticipate (thinking outside
the box, detect and act on ambiguous signals); 2. challenge (critical thinking,); 3. interpret
(engage others to develop insights); 4. decide (, balance speed and quality”); 5.align (foster
open dialogue, engage key stakeholders) and 6.learn (embrace and encourage feedback,
view success and failure as sources of insight).
In summary, Workforce planning in terms of SHRM during a pandemic can help an
organization prepare for and respond through succession planning, adapting to workforce
demands in terms of skills, adapting recruitment strategies and guidelines for workforce safety
Successful workforce planning during the pandemic required HR professionals to be agile
and responsive to the rapidly changing business environment.
Recruitment and Training
Another SHRM practice/approach that can help organizations prepare for and respond to a
pandemic like Covid-19 is Recruitment and Training. SHRM must first ensure that the
recruitment strategy is flexible and adaptable to changes in the organization’s environment in
a pandemic. During a pandemic, the need to hire employees that have the require specific
skill sets such as remote work capabilities, technological skills, and leadership skills as
outlined in succession planning. The pandemic shifted the work environment to remote work.
SHRM should use technology in its recruitment process such as virtual interviews, virtual
onboarding, and assessments. This enables you to assess their competencies and ability to
work in the new environment and technology. The economic impact of the pandemic may
require HR to be cost-conscious which may involve alternate staffing options such as
temporary workers, using AI for candidate screening and streamlining recruitment process.
SHRM should then identify what positions are deemed essential to the organization during a
pandemic and hire people beforehand who can adapt to changes in the environment.
To respond to a pandemic like Covid-19, after recruiting employees using new technologies
and strategies, HR should have strategies in place to provide training and resources for
employees to work effectively from home. This may include virtual training programs,
cybersecurity training and technical support. The pandemic also acerated the need for
upskilling and reskilling of employees in terms of the new work environment and changing job
roles in a pandemic. By analyzing the skill gaps in the workforce, HRM can provide relevant
training to employees. Another important part of the training is making sure employees get
training in terms of safety protocols, social distancing, hygiene practices and mental health
support.
According to (Ciupitu, Maria Florentina, Georgiana Moiceanu, and Andrei Niculescu, 2022),
Virtual interviews “saves time but minimizes the connection between candidates and
recruiters, being difficult for both parties to correctly identify the perceptions and desires.
Virtual Interviews save time because the HR manager can do more interviews during the
same day than on-site interviews. Because of the shift to virtual interviews, it presented new
challenges such as internet connection, the recruiter and candidate not being able to hear
each other properly and web camera not working properly. Other problems such as
demographic factors such as age.An example is that Younger candidates may have more
access and technical skills to operate virtual platforms than older candidates.
In terms of Training, the article by, “The key advantage of incorporating collaborative
technologies into the learning environment is that users can have constant accessibility on the
training materials (on-demand) from anywhere using various devices. This means that some
businesses allow candidates to access training materials whenever they want from any
device.
In conclusion, Recruitment and Training is an important practice in terms of how to prepare
for and respond to a pandemic because it helps to understand the need to train employees to
be able to adapt to new technologies and environments. The adaptability, cost-efficiency, and
alignment of these strategies with the changing landscape are critical for organizational
resilience.
Employee Mental Health
The last SHRM approach/practice that can be used to prepare for and respond to a
pandemic like Covid-19 is Employee Mental health. In preparation for a pandemic like
situation, SHRM should develop mental health initiatives such as employee assistance
programs, stress management workshops and access to mental health professionals. During
a pandemic like Covid-19, lots of people went through mental health issues that greatly
affected how they worked. This is because they were forced to endure a extending isolation
away from their co-workers and family. This is an important practice because Mental health is
a big issue that is often overlooked.
Human resource is geared partly to ensure an employee’s well being so they must ensure
that their employees are getting the proper assistance through different initiatives. In response
to a pandemic, these initiatives should have been adapted to address the sudden stress and
anxiety among employees. Communication is important in terms of mental health as SHRM
must establish clear communication channels to information regarding mental health
resources.
Adaptive Policies is also another tied point as employees should develop policies that
address the mental health issues such as isolation, burnout, and work-life balance. During a
pandemic, SHRM should assess the effectiveness of these policies and make necessary
adjustments based on employee feedback.
According to (Tulk, Christine, Mary Bartram, Kathleen Leslie, Jelena Atanackovic, Caroline
Chamberland-Rowe, and Ivy Lynn Bourgeault,2023), the Covid-19 pandemic has increased
stressor such as social isolation, disrupted childcare and worries of contracting the virus.
According to this article, most health care systems around the world are not built to deal with
Mental Health issues. As I stated before, Mental Health is a major problem that is often
overlooked or unprepared for. SHRM must be able to provide relevant mental health
resources to it employees. Other key aspects of this are Remote work, Job insecurity and
uncertainty, workload and burnout and Leadership and managerial support. In terms of
Remote work, SHRM must be flexible with working hours as working from home brings a lot
of challenges. These include isolation, blurred work life boundaries and lack of social
interaction. Leadership and Managerial support deals with human resource managers’ ability
for fostering a mentally healthy workplace. Leaders should be trained to recognize signs of
distress and provide the relevant support or resources to help.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic outlined the importance of Strategic Human
Resource Management in preparing organizations to navigate unprecedented crises like a
pandemic. The practices outlined are monitoring legal, ethical, and regulatory laws, adaptive
policies, workforce health and safety, Employee mental health, Training and Recruitment and
Workforce planning. Through the approaches outlined in this assignment, organizations will
now be able to prepare and respond to a pandemic like situation. Organizations through the
effective application of these practices/approaches can handle and ensure business
continuity throughout a pandemic like Covid-19.
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