HRM Class Summary
The best thing I have learned in class was the six major steps in strategic planning. Step one: mission, vision, and values. Step two: environmental analysis. Step three: internal analysis. Step four: formulating strategy. Step five: strategy implementation. Step six: evaluation and assessment. Step one consists of creating a mission, vision, and values for the organization. The mission statement is what the organization is about. A vision is where you want to see the organization in the future. Do you plan on expanding? Where would you open another office? What other products or services would you like to offer? What are your company’s values? A few good examples are: having a positive work environment, to make a profit each year, or wanting your employees to succeed. Step two environmental analysis you need to research where you want your company located. Environmental scanning means you need to pay attention to what’s going on around you. Is there a competitor opening up shop down the street? How about your customers? How soon can they receive your product or service? Without proper customer service your company can go downhill fast. Word of mouth experience travels fast. Even if one customer is dissatisfied within a day they could tell three other people. Those people can say, “Oh, I’ve heard about that company from a friend and they wouldn’t recommend using them.” So on and so forth. Step three is internal analysis. Not only do you need to look at your company on the outside you need to pay special attention to what’s going on internally. In order for your company to succeed you need employees. The success of keeping employees is making sure they are happy because happy employees boosts overall moral which increases production. While making sure everyone is happy you also need to keep an eye on how they are spending their time. Key things to check on is monitoring computer/internet usage, how long of a break is everyone taking, and how is everyone getting along? You want a happy company but employees need to be productive in order to produce results. Step four you need to formulate a strategy. Corporate strategy is needs to be determined before any other strategy can be created. Determine what kind of market you want your product or service in. For example General Motors (GM) originally only made cars. Later on they sold car insurance, made their way into the mortgage industry, along with homeowners insurance. In order for them to accomplish all these things there were mergers and acquisitions, alliances and joint ventures. GM made sure to keep a low cost but still high in the rankings with the competition. Step five is strategy implementation. Let’s face it, if you don’t have some sort of strategy when taking on or starting a project you’ll find yourself frustrated and upset. Companies need to be prepared for anything. Whether its downsizing, outsourcing, or offshoring there needs to be some sort of game plan on what to do to keep the company afloat. Making any of these decisions is hard especially on how to tell associates one way or another they are going to lose their job. Step six: evaluation and assessment needs to be in place as a guideline on how you want the company to run. Benchmarking is another key to ensure you are keeping up with or doing better than the competition. It is crucial that you determine what areas you are succeeding at and where more training and development needs to be done. I’ve always thought about opening a small computer business and with the information I’ve learned I’m one step closer to making that thought a reality.