By definition, the term ‘strategic human resource management’ (SHRM) refers to the process involving the use of various overarching methods in developing HR strategies, in which such strategies are vertically-integrated with the business strategy and horizontally-integrated with each other (Szlavicz & Berber, 2013; Cania, 2014). Existing literature on SHRM have presented evidences on its importance in an organization. Several studies indicated the positive impacts of SHRM on the organization, pointing out to organizational performance and competitive advantage (Delery & Roumpi, 2017; Mitchell, et al., 2013; Besma, 2014). The relationship between organizational performance and strategic human resource management lies on the latter’s focus on managing employees as a tool in gaining competitive advantage in support for the strategic alignment of the company’s strategies and human resource practices – i.e. HR planning, staffing and recruitment, training and development, performance management, and other HR functions and practices (Cania, 2014).
In light with this, this report will discuss the current strategic human resource strategies and practices of two UAE-based companies – Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminium. First, the report will identify the business and HR strategies and discuss on how these are aligned to their corporate mission, objective and strategies. Second, the report also identifies HR practices that are part of HR strategy, as well as the conditions that contributed to the success of the HR strategy. These discussions will be the bases of the comparative analysis of two companies.
Corporate Profiles: Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminum
Emirates Airlines is one of the fastest growing and profitable airline companies in the world, with a total revenue of AED 85,044 million in 2015-2016. The company was founded by the UAE government in 1985, headquartered in Dubai. The company operates its core business of providing commercial air transportation services to their customers around the world. Last year, the company was able to expand their network to 150 destinations in six continents through their roughly 250 fleet of aircrafts. Since its establishment, the company received several awards and recognitions – a total of over 400 awards from numerous awards giving bodies internationally. Emirates Airlines is one of the two core businesses of Emirates Group, alongside dnata, which operates as a cargo and ramp service provider at Dubai International Airport. The company employs over 28,000 employees, with almost 50 per cent of their workforce are hired as cabin crew members (Emirates Airlines, 2016).
On the other hand, Emirates Aluminium is a subsidiary of Emirates Global Aluminium, which was established in 2009 as a hot metal producer in the UAE. The subsidiary was founded under the joint venture agreement between Dubai Aluminium and Mubadala Investment Company, and was envisioned as the world’s largest single-site primary aluminium smelters. The foundation included the establishment of the EMAL complex, which was located in Al Taweelah, Abu Dhabi. Now, the company has a wide range of aluminium products offered to their customers – foundry alloy, billet, high purity aluminium and rolled products. In addition, the company also operates a Liquid Metal Transfer Facility, that allowed the company to transfer hot molten aluminium directly into their smelter site in Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Emirates Global Aluminium, 2016).
Business and HR strategies and Alignment to Corporate Mission, Objectives and Strategies
Both Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminium boasts outstanding reputation as market dominants in their respective industries. Their success are attributable to their business strategies and their HR strategies, which were integrated and aligned with their overall corporate vision and goals. Firstly, Emirates Airlines’ business strategy involves on aggressive exponential growth. The business growth strategy highlights the company’s focus on taking advantage and capitalizing advanced technologies in order for them to speed up their pace of innovation. In this way, they can be able to sustain their competitive advantages as well as their value proposition. While the aggressive business growth strategy is focused by the company, their fundamentals as an airline remained the same, basing on connecting their customers from all corners of the world through their international hub in Dubai (Emirates Airlines, 2016). On the other hand, Emirates Airlines’ human resource strategy focuses on hiring, engaging and retaining talented workforce from around the world. The company make sure that the workforce they have match with the people capabilities that the airline necessitates (Emirates Group Careers, 2016). Both the aggressive business growth strategy and the HR strategy are aligned with the company’s overall mission and vision.
The company envisioned themselves not just emerging as a profitable airline company in the world but also on becoming an innovative and socially-responsible company. This has been expressed from their vision statement, as well as their core values that guiding their vision and goals. Based on their vision statement, Emirates Airlines does not only places emphasis on ‘a strong and stable leadership team, ambitious yet calculated decision-making and ground-breaking ideas’, but also on gaining and maintaining sustainability through commitment on business ethics (Natarala & Al-Aali, 2011). The company has five core values that determine their mission and vision, as well as their strategies. First core value points out to ‘people’, where the company hires individuals who possess high competency, skill set and knowledge. More so, they provide staff with trainings and career development, enabling their workforce to carry out responsibilities more effectively. These trainings and career development within the company provided to their workforce allow an environment that foster teamwork, commitment and loyalty, which in turn, further help and support corporate growth and success (Emirates Group Careers, 2016). Drawing on this particular core value that guides their vision and mission statement, their strategies, especially their HR strategy, are somewhat aligned to this core value, considering that such core value expresses the same emphasis on hiring and developing a workforce drawn from different countries.
Another core value of Emirates Airlines is service excellence, which highlights on delivery of high-quality products and services while promoting customer loyalty through high-quality customer service demonstrated across internal and external contexts of the organization (Emirates Group Careers, 2016). Their aggressive growth while maintaining the fundamentals of being an airline is based or aligned on the core value of service quality. Another core value that guide their mission, as well as their corporate/business strategy is innovation. To reiterate, their business growth strategy highlights the company’s focus on taking advantage and capitalizing advanced technologies in order for them to speed up their pace of innovation. The company places great emphasis on innovation through introducing profitable and innovative products and services, allowing the company to preserve its leadership in the market (Emirates Group Careers, 2016).
Similarly, Emirates Aluminium (EMAL) expressed a business strategy which focused on global dominance as a producer of aluminium products. Their strategy is well aligned with their vision statement and core values. Accordingly, the company envisioned themselves in providing the global economy with sustainable material of the highest quality, building a legacy of excellence for the UAE and the world. Their vision is validated by their three major core values – protect, provide and perform. Firstly, the core value of protect emphasises on the role and importance of ‘safety first’, as well as the the company operating with integrity, transparency and fairness in order to protect their business. This core value also reflects on the emphasis on environmental sustainability. This is aligned with the company’s corporate strategy, in which safety should be at a core of the business if they want to achieve market dominance. This is also highlighted on the overall HR strategy of the company, in which safety is put into action given the hazardous nature of operations of the company. In addition, the company’s vision is expressed in the company’s ‘provide’ core value, and such core value and vision is where its overall strategy as a company is aligned with. Here, the company make sure that they establish a workplace that foster practices of rewarding career and development opportunities for their people. More so, this core value represent the company’s commitment of sustaining workable relationships with the company’s stakeholders, including their customers worldwide, as well as their suppliers and partners. The last core value of the company revolves around ‘performance’, where the company works in promoting a performance-based work culture, in which people within the company are highly empowered and engaged (Emirates Global Aluminium, 2016). This reflects the company’s HR strategy where workforce collaboration and accountability are key facets.
In a nutshell, both Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminium established their strategies – e.g. corporate strategy and HR strategy – in such a way that they are aligned with their respective vision, mission and core values.
HR practices in HR strategy
Human resources practices are critical component in designing and implementing a company’s human resource strategy. Both Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminium share similar human resource practices domains that are included in their HR strategy. Firstly, both companies carry out international hiring and recruitment, which is facilitated by their respective online recruitment portals. Emirates Airlines’ recruitment are carried out by the company’s Emirates Group Careers. This unit of the Emirates Group is responsible for satisfying the workforce needs of all the businesses of the Group, including Emirates Airlines and dnata. On the other hand, Emirates Aluminium’s workforce needs are satisfied by its parent company’s recruitment unit. Candidates who wish to apply for the two companies will need to fill out forms from their respective career websites. More so, both companies share the same basic process for recruitment and hiring. While the companies value the importance of a diverse workforce, the company’s hiring processes includes or encapsulate their own Emiratization policies. This is in accordance to the companies’ role of hiring and prioritizing Emirati nationals.
Another dimension of HR practices that is included in both company’s HR strategy is training and development. For instance, Emirates Airlines has been vocal on their investment on training their employees. As a matter of fact, the company’s training programme that is still on works is expected to support and complement the company’s existing high-quality training facilities at their own Emirates Aviation College. Likewise, the company also has set up a Group Learning and Development team to deliver about 4,400 programmes to their 25,900 employees in 2015-2016., More so, the team also instigated and provided 65 virtual classroom sessions that involved over 1,800 individuals internationally (Emirates Airlines, 2016).
Similarly, Emirates Aluminium, through its parent company, Emirates Global Aluminium, has invested several training initiatives at various levels, in order to develop the skills of their labour force, especially UAE nationals. Accordingly, these training initiatives are targeting engineering graduates, high school science graduates and certificate holders from technical schools. Such training initiatives play a great role in career growth and succession planning (Emirates Global Aluminium, 2016, p. 17). The company’s Training and Development department works with the human resource unit in coordinating a wide range of technical as well as competency development programs. The company also provide structured management development programmes that are accredited by the UK-based ILM, targeting the professional development of their supervisors and middle managers. Lastly, they also provide executive training opportunities (Emirates Global Aluminium, 2016).
Conditions Contributing to Success of HR strategy
Devising and implementing human resource strategy is a demanding undertaking. This is because of the fact that planning HR strategies require full comprehension of key factors, both internal and external, that can contribute to the success of the strategy implementation. One condition that can contribute to the success of the HR strategy is the financial performance of the company. This is because of the fact that a profitable company mostly can be able to financially back its implementation of their HR strategies. For instance, when a company’s HR strategy involves implementing various training initiatives, then it requires financial support. For both the companies, Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminium, they are profitable companies with high profit margins that can support and sustain the implementation of their HR strategies, including the strategy’s practices and initiatives.
Another condition that helps in supporting HR strategy is leadership. This is because of the fact that HR strategy’s success does not only rely on the financial support but also the level of support the company’s leaders and management has on the strategy. Without the required and sufficient support from their leaders and top management, HR strategy and its subsequent goals and purposes could not be realized. Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminium’s HR strategies have been heavily supported not just financially but by their respective leaders. This is reflected on the companies’ continuous development trainings being implemented that are related to the realization of their HR strategies and goals. The company’s parent companies – Emirates Group for Emirates Airlines and Emirates Global Aluminium for Emirates Aluminium – are committed on leading the pursuit of each of their subsidiaries’ HR needs.
Conclusions
Emirates Airlines and Emirates Aluminium are two UAE-based companies that have developed business strategies and HR strategies to support their pursuit to dominate their respective market. The discussions above indicated that both companies have developed their corporate and HR strategies in alignment with their respective vision, mission and core values. The earlier discussion has indicated that both companies have HR strategies that were guided by their core values. More so, the discussions on the HR practices determined various practices being integrated into the companies’ HR strategies. For instance, both companies has recruitment and staffing practices that allowed the companies in hiring the right people, not just UAE nationals but also those from other countries. The recruitment practices involve the parent companies of both subsidiaries. More so, it was indicated that while the companies value the importance of a diverse workforce, the company’s hiring processes includes or encapsulate their own Emiratization policies. This is in accordance to the companies’ role of hiring and prioritizing Emirati nationals. HR practices were also stressed in relation to training and development of their workforce. It was also discussed that the companies’ profitability and leadership are factors or conditions that helped in supporting the pursuit of their respective HR strategies.
References
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