Strategic human resource management (strategic HRM, or SHRM) is an approach to managing human resources that supports long-term business goals and outcomes with a strategic framework. The approach focuses on longer-term people issues, matching resources to future needs, and macro-concerns about structure, quality, culture, values and commitment. It is necessarily dependent on the evolving nature of work itself, which is explored in our Megatrends series and our Profession for the Future strategy.
Strategic HRM: the key to improved business performance explains in detail the various definitions and approaches to HRM, strategy and strategic HRM. It states that strategic human resource management is a complex process that is constantly evolving and the subject of ongoing discussion by academics and other commentators. Its definition and relationships with other aspects of business planning and strategy are not absolute and opinions vary.
The issue of strategic HRM initially came to prominence around the early 1990s, at which time academics developed definitions of strategic HRM as:
- The undertaking of all those activities affecting the behavior of individuals in their efforts to formulate and implement the strategic needs of business.
- The pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable the organization to achieve its goals.
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- What is strategic human resource management?
- Strategic HRM and business strategy
- Strategic HRM and human capital management
- Strategic HRM and business performance
- CIPD viewpoint
- References
- Further reading
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