Emirates Post Company: Human Resources Strategies

Questionnaire

Communication with an HR manager of Emirates Post is a good chance to understand the peculiar features of strategic HR management and the conditions under which local and global competitions could occur. The creation of new HR strategies could be based on the information got from the offered questionnaire.

Interview Questions

List of Questions

Managers

1. What is your experience as an HR manager in this company or in other companies?
2. Why do you think you are a high-quality worker in the company?
3. Can you recognize your strong and weak characteristics?
4. What are the main duties and responsibilities of HR managers?
5. What mistakes of HR managers could be forgiven and improved and what mistakes are unforgivable?
6. What do you understand under HR management?

HR Management Essentials

1. How can strategic managers develop their skills? What sources should be addressed first of all?
2. In general, what do you think the main issues of strategic HR planning are?
3. What are the major characteristics of an HR strategy?
4. Do you believe that some HR strategies could fail? Why?

HR Management in Emirates Post

1. Is it correct to believe that HR strategies should be connected to the company’s values and missions? What are your company’s mission and values? What are the examples of HR strategies applied to your company?
2. Is your company good at HR management?
3. Do you think you have already introduced a powerful HR strategy in the company? What is it?
4. There are overarching and specific HR strategies? What types of strategies do you find appropriate for your company?
5. There are two types of HR strategies: knowledge management and employee relations. Which one are you going to choose for your company and why?
6. Why are HR strategies important to your company?
7. What personal qualities do you find the most important for you as an HR manager?
8. What are the main effects of HR strategies on the HR outcomes of the company?
9. Are ethical principles important in HR strategies?
10. Can you create a list of HR strategies that have been already implemented by the company and that will be implemented soon?

HR Strategic Planning

1. How is it possible to understand the importance of a new HR strategy?
2. How are you going to implement a new HR strategy in the company?
3. What are the steps to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy?

Peculiarities of an Interview

A certain procedure should occur to use the list of the developed questions and analyze the answers given. An HR manager was asked to participate in the interview. First, the permission of the CEO of the company should be obtained to make sure that no information leak is possible. Second, the intentions of the HR manager should be identified. Two letters should be sent to two representatives of the company. They are attached (Appendix 1 and Appendix 2).

Introduction of the Company: Ultimate Business Goals and Business Objectives

Emirates Post is an official postal company in the United Arab Emirates from the beginning of the 1900s (Emirates post group: Postal history, 2016). It is one of the subsidiaries of the Emirates Post Group. Its aim is to stay strong and sophisticated in order to offer the required portion of postal, logistics, and financial services and keep its customers happy with the qualified workforce.

Taking into consideration the interview findings, Emirates Post has two business goals: to introduce as many high-quality post office services as possible to the citizens of the UAE and to promote customer satisfaction. In other words, there are two main words that lead the majority of employees of Emirates Post: success and satisfaction. However, there is also one more ultimate business goal that cannot be neglected or diminished.

All HR managers take care of the company’s profit. Their main goal is to make sure that employees are chosen properly, and customer satisfaction is observed in the form of a considerable profit. In regards to such ultimate business goals, the company has several business objectives:

• To develop a sophisticated infrastructure and strong organizational culture;
• To choose supportive leaders;
• To promote creativity, excellence, and quality,
• To meet the needs and expectations of customers.

HR Practices, Policies, and Strategies

The importance of HR practices and policies could be explained by the fact that a number of people work at the company, who are in need of powerful strategies, development, communication, and enforcement of their skills. Policies and practices are created to promote effectiveness and efficiency in the company (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2013). The implementation of management processes including appropriate working conditions, training programs, and talent support cannot be neglected in Emirates Post because if employees are not satisfied, they could hardly promote customer satisfaction that is one of the ultimate business goals of the company.

Therefore, the managers of Emirates Post create formal rules and guidelines and make sure ordinary employees follow them. Such practices and policies include the necessity to follow strict working hours, provide customers with the list of services mentioned in the guideline, assist customers in making their postal choices, and create the reports with the help of which the results of the work and the achievements of the company could be observed and compared regarding different years.

During the last several years, the company was focused on the development of various services for its customers and the promotion of team-building. Employees had to understand their roles and complete their duties at a high level using the support and help of other team members. The worth of such HR strategic steps is the possibility to create a union of people with one goal that is customer satisfaction.

Effects of HR Strategies

In the interview, it was mentioned the failure of HR strategies could happen because of different reasons (Aileron, 2011). However, in the majority of cases, HR strategies are taken into consideration in order to promote new ideas, make contributions, and develop the required portion of skills. HR outcomes include employees’ attitudes and behavior (Vermeeren et al., 2014). The effects of HR strategies on the HR outcomes vary considerably.

An ideal HR strategy is usually supported by all employees, positively evaluated by customers, and financially appropriate for leaders. In this situation, such effects as motivation, innovation, creativity, and desire to work could be observed.

There are also situations when strategic steps are beneficial for the company and customers but could be implemented at the expense of employees’ needs and interests. In this case, the effects of HR strategies could be both, negative and positive. If employees accept new rules and values and work in order to meet the goals of the company, the strategy is defined as effective. If employees cannot follow the standards set, get frustrated, and lose interest in their work, they cannot introduce the required volume and quality of work. The company could suffer from financial and moral losses a lot.

Finally, there are HR strategies that are interesting to employees and their leaders but become ineffective and unnecessary for customers. In this situation, a deep investigation is required to clarify if some changes or improvements could be offered in a short period of time to observe some positive outcomes. The majority of HR strategies introduced by Emirates Post are of the first type when leaders, employees, and customers stay satisfied with the results.

Dashboard and HR Metrics

Emirates Post has a clear HR strategy that is based on the development of employee relations and the identification of the roles of each team member. Such attention to the way of how employees should work helps to achieve the required success in customers’ services and leaders’ satisfaction. There are many HR metrics that have to be taken into consideration when strategic planning occurs. The following dashboard provides the analysis of such metrics like the number of employees (by gender and nationality), satisfaction rate (customers and employees), skills development, and job category.

Ethical Implications of HR Strategies

Any sophisticated manager has to understand the importance of ethical issues and moral principles in HR management because ethics is the field where the sense of right and wrong is developed between people (Suresch, 2011). Emirates Post is the company that pays certain attention to the consideration of ethical details and imposes clear standards on labor relations, health and safety issues, training, and development importance.

All employees are familiar with the main rules of the company and their obligations. If people demonstrate good prospects and their desire to work in the company, the Emirates Post team provides such people with the required portion of training and support. The interview with the HR manager of the company shows that a hiring process includes the possibilities of training and improvement of the skills of potential and regular workers.

Besides, the company focuses on such issues as respect, loyalty, and honesty. If the company stays honest with its employees, the employees have to stay honest with the company and its leader and respect all steps and attempts.

At the same time, the ethical responsibilities of the Emirate Post employees may have positive and negative outcomes on the quality of work. For example, there is a need to take into consideration the opinions of all employees, their needs, and expectations. At the same time, conflicts of interest could appear and affect the work of the company. People use their chances to demonstrate and promote their interests and become unable to come to the same conclusions. Therefore, the search for alternatives that could be made by leaders and supervisors is a crucial ethical aspect in Emirates Post. HR strategies also help to motivate the employees, and ethically appropriate motivation should be supported. It means that blackmails, financial offers, and frauds are not appreciated in the company.

Recommendations

Taking into consideration the achievements of the company and the analysis of the HR strategies offered by managers, it is possible to say that Emirates Post is a successful organization where employees, managers, and leaders understand their functions and try to improve the results regularly. Each year, a new strategy is offered in regards to the current missions, values, and goals.

Emirates Post has already succeeded in developing a variety of services for its customers in the UAE and team-building in order to make people work in the same direction. Now, it is high time to focus on employee relations. It is suggested to define the intentions of the company about the classification of employees’ needs and changes. It is not enough to make people work properly. It is more important to make people get fascinated with their work and their possibilities. The relations between employees and the relations between an employee and a company should be different, and HR managers have to understand the difference. The following recommendations could be offered to the HR manager of Emirates Post:

1. Provide employees with information about the importance of communication and development of trustful relations in the company;
2. Introduce the initiatives during which employees could spend more time together and use their skills;
3. Investigate employees, their weaknesses and strengths, and the resources of the current environment, and
4. Promote training programs for employees to make them communicate with each other, discuss the missions of the company, and share personal views.

In general, all recommendations should be based on the idea to improve the relations employees could develop within the company.

References

Aileron. (2011). 10 reasons why strategic plans fail. Forbes. Web.

Boudreau, J.W., & Ramstad, P.M. (2013). Beyond HR: The new science of human capital. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Emirates post group: Postal history. (2016). Web.

Suresch, S. (2011). Ethical issues in human resource management. Management and Labour Studies, 36(4), 367-370.

Vermeeren, B., Steijn, B., Tummers, L., Lankhaar, M., Poerstamper, R.J., & van Beek, S. (2014). HRM and its effect on employee, organizational and financial outcomes in health care organizations. Human Resources for Health, 12(35). Web.