Shadowing Practice: #01 The strategic Side of Human Resources Management - Learn English Speaking with Video

Music Hello

and a warm welcome.

I'm Armin Troost, professor at the Fortwangen University in Germany.

And this is my series on Human Resources Strategies,

a real master course for advanced HR students, professionals and executives.

This series is available on YouTube and on all podcatchers like iTunes or Spotify.

All slides that support this series are available on my website.

For more information, please read the description to this YouTube or podcast.

I'd also like to refer to my book, Human Resources Strategies, available at most online bookstores.

So, again, thanks for listening.

Have fun and gain valuable insights into the fascinating world of HR strategies.

So let's assume you are a regular employee in a regular company.

Whatever it is.

You are an engineer.

You are a lawyer.

You are a salesman, a saleswoman.

You are a nurse.

You are whatever, right?

And I ask you, what is your first thought when thinking about HR?

human resources.

What is your first thought?

What comes to your mind?

I had the chance to ask these questions to hundreds of people in the last 15 years since I'm a professor.

For instance in my MBA courses, the master courses, I asked this question in the beginning of my course

and in this round I meet people from all over the world, really.

It's a very international group.

I meet people from various professions.

I have engineers, lawyers, everything of different ages.

And all of them are professionals.

They are all experienced.

And then I ask exactly this question.

What do you think of HR?

What comes to your mind?

And, you know, the last thing I hear as a response is something like,

oh, yeah, HR, that's very cool.

I mean, HR, that's probably the most important function in any organization.

I mean, yeah, that's about people.

You know, it's about people and our business is about people.

It's about their creativity and their capabilities and their motivation and that's why HR is so incredibly important.

I don't hear this.

I hear this sometimes and probably decide that the person who says this is an HR person.

Well, I don't hear this.

What I hear very often sounds a bit more like this.

Yeah, HR, let me think.

In my organization I was working with, there was also an HR department, I suppose.

I don't have too much experience with what they did.

Of course I had to deal with nice colleagues from the HR department during the recruiting process.

I guess there was one person in the interview, did not say too much.

Well, yeah, in the beginning I had to share some information with HR, but that was not so much.

What I also hear sometimes is something like this.

Yeah, HR, my organization, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We have an HR department and what they do is crazy.

I mean what they do is they run employee surveys

so we're supposed to respond to satisfaction questionnaires every year where

I'm being asked about my satisfaction about a lot of different things

but actually I do not know what happens to the results

I guess we were asked to do some workshops with the results

but in fact I've never seen them so yeah that's HR I sometimes hear something like this up yeah HR

I remember that one time HR came across saying we have to do this performance abrasion every year.

They wanted to do this.

Well, yeah, so we did, yeah, because there was this rule, don't mess with HR.

So we did it, but it did not work out.

Not really.

It was more a mess.

It was ridiculous.

But okay, we did it, and HR was happy.

Keep HR happy.

Anyway, HR department, it's a department where you have nice people.

Mostly women, love to go there, it's nice.

Something like this.

Well, that's bad, you know, that's bad.

And really, I recently had a little debate with a great Dave Ulrich,

and he shared with me his empirical evidence saying that that the competences of the HR department constantly grow.

And you also assume that the acceptance of HR is constantly growing.

I don't see this, really.

I don't see this.

What I share here is not an empirical evidence.

It's just what I hear from hundreds, hundreds of people I were asking over the course of the last 15 years.

Well, that's not really valid, I know.

So, to sum it up, what I hear very often is,

HR is seen very often as an administrative function.

It's about administration.

And HR administration, of course,

deals with the daily operational issues and topics all around people in your organization.

So when we think about these daily operational things, of course, we think about payroll, for instance.

Make sure that the people get their salaries on time and in a correct way.

Making sure that the people, the new hires, get their job offers, their contract or whatsoever.

If somebody quits, you prepare the reference letter or if you fire somebody, I mean, that might be an administrative process.

So there are a lot of things to be done in a very operational way.

And probably this is where HR came from, a time when we named it personnel.

And this is, of course, important.

I mean, somebody has to take care for all this stuff.

That's absolutely sure.

So this is HR administration.

But before I progress and talk about HR strategy, I would like to make something clear here.

When we talk about HR in this series, I do not talk about the HR department.

This is not a series, this is not a course about HR department.

Not at all.

Yeah, of course, there might be an HR department, but that's not the point here.

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HR is not a department.

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HR is, how do I name it?

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It's a bundle of activities and strategies and things we do, of course,

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along with certain priorities but the responsibility for human resources is not primarily or mainly in the hands of the HR department.

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That must not necessarily be the case.

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And we will talk about this over this series.

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I mean, let's have a short example here.

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Let's assume there is an employee in an organization, maybe you, and you want to learn something.

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They would say, yes, that's a great idea.

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You better learn.

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Learning is good especially these days and the fast -changing world

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so you better learn that's cool yeah learn

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so okay learning professional learning who is responsible for that is

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that the HR department I mean you you might say yeah yeah that's about learning learning is a people thing

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so HR must be responsible

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so I knock at the HR department's door is hey guys hey I want to learn something

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so So what do I have to do?

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Yeah, maybe in some companies that works that way, but I see many companies, or the majority of companies, that don't handle it that way.

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You want to learn?

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Okay, go ahead and learn.

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Take over responsibility for learning.

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You as the learner, you are responsible for your learning.

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It's your job.

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It's not the HR department's job.

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And this can go on and on and on.

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We're gonna talk about this.

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So HR is not the main responsibility of the HR department.

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So let's put that right here, okay?

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So, this entire series will not be about HR administration, not at all.

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I mean, this course is named HR Strategy.

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So, what we will not talk about here is how to create a job ad.

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We will talk about it in the context of employer branding, it would make sense, but that's a strategic point of view, as you will see.

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We will not talk about how to create a job offer.

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We will not talk about how to organize an interview.

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We will not talk about how a payslip is supposed to be structured or how to read a payslip.

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We will not talk about this.

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We will not even talk about things like label law or something like this.

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Not at all.

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We will only talk about strategic things.

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Strategic.

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So, now comes the question, what does that mean, being strategic in HR?

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What is that, strategic HR?

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That's an important question, and I would like to clarify this in this very first episode.

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What makes HR strategic?

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What is the strategic side of human resources management?

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Well, I've mentioned it already.

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HR administration is about the daily operational issues and topics related to people.

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What is HR strategy?

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HR strategy affects the future business of the company.

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Yeah, you got it right.

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It affects the future business of the company.

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It affects its competitive advantage, its competitive position in the market.

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It affects its overall strength.

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That's what HR strategy is all about.

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Of course, it's long -term.

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Of course, it's big.

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And it does not change daily,

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of course and decisions upon HR strategies are very often made on the top of an organizational hierarchy,

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very often, even though they are decided upon democratic procedures, might be.

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So HR strategy again is also about people,

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But it's about all those things that affect the future business of the company.

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Now, that sounds weird.

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That sounds a little bit like this typical MBA stuff.

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But let's be specific.

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Let's be specific.

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In the next few minutes,

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I would like to share with you some real cases some real cases that I found when working with companies.

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And let me start with the first one, okay?

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And it goes like this.

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There is a small and medium enterprise operating as a supplier in the automotive industry.

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We talk about 3 ,500 employees.

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This enterprise is desperately looking for software developers.

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They want to hire software developers.

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They need them because digitization, you know.

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Relying on job ads only doesn't seem to lead to expected results anymore.

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Engaging an executive search consultancy turns out to be too expensive.

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What to do?

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Do you see the case?

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Do you see it?

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When I share this case with companies, most of them these days would say, yeah, that's my case.

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That exactly describes my problem.

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In some companies, it's about software developers.

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In some other companies, it's about nurses,

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about truck drivers, about teachers, about engineers, about doctors.

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Here we talk about talent shortage and talent shortage affects the future of a company's business.

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I mean, look at various studies that were conducted in the last few months around the globe when CEOs were asked,

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okay, what are the major limitations for your business?

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Most of them say it's the shortage of talent. But Paul...

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Isn't that something that affects your business?

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Isn't that a big question?

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Isn't that something that is supposed to be solved by any mean?

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Yes, of course.

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And this is not something where we talk about daily operational administrative things.

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No, not at all.

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This requires a big answer.

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Okay, this is strategic.

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So, here's the next case.

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In recent years, a company had to deal with an increasing turnover among its most talented and most motivated people.

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This company obviously has a retention issue.

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Further research and discussions made clear that there is a lack of career prospects among most talented employees.

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You can imagine this.

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And very often my MBA students report the same thing.

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They don't see perspectives for their career in their own company.

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At the same time, key positions mainly have been filled with external candidates.

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What to do?

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Now, look, this is a problem.

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This is a problem.

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And we're going to talk about this more intensively.

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When you lose your most talented, most qualified, most motivated people,

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you have a serious problem, really.

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And as we're going to learn over this series,

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we know that the top 10 % of your employees provide a significant extent of total contribution.

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If you lose them, you are in serious trouble.

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And here's the thing now.

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Very often the very talented people, I mean they want to grow.

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Every talented person wants to grow, wants to leverage his or her talent.

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They want to see a perspective, of course.

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And if they don't see it and at the same time see that the company is constantly hiring people from the outside, you might leave.

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Because every time a company hires a person from the outside for a senior position,

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this is a loud and clear message to the existing people, you are not good enough.

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And how many times do you as a talented person want to hear this?

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How many times do you want to hear that you are not good enough?

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I mean, that's a serious problem.

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And if a company is facing exactly this case, and I saw it all too often in many companies,

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they obviously don't have something in place,

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what we name a systematic talent development program or system or however you name it.

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They simply don't care.

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Okay, what to do?

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I mean, really, what to do?

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That is crying for action.

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I mean, you could pause now for a minute and think about, okay, what would you propose now?

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What would you propose?

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What is it? So, okay.

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So here is the case number three.

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The new externally hired CEO at an insurance company became instantly aware after lacking ambition

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and try for performance in almost all areas and functions.

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That sounds dramatic, right?

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Not so ambitious workforce.

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A strong appeal to all managers and employees probably might not be enough.

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The company is thinking about a new kind of performance management system. Does this make sense?

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If yes, how could it look like?

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I mean, if you have a little bit of experience, practical experience, you know what this case is all about.

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That's very often the case, that in a company, ambition level is low, performance is low.

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The people who follow this is not my job mindset, they just stick to their job description, are not really hungry for success,

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are not really hungry for growth.

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So you miss innovation, you miss new ideas, you miss everything.

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And that's bad and that sometimes could be a matter also of the culture.

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And sometimes I also personally can feel it when I deal with companies.

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I have this feeling, well, these people are not hungry.

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They are not really driven.

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And in this case, the newly hired CEO instantly see this.

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And now this is crying for a solution.

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And of course, many companies think about a performance management system.

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What is a performance management system?

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We're going to talk about this extensively.

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A performance management system is something where you constantly agree on objectives.

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Really.

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Okay, what do we want to achieve in the upcoming weeks, months, years?

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And what is your role on this, John?

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What are your objectives?

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What is your specific contribution?

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And it's not only that we define these objectives, that we agree on them.

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We're also gonna track progress constantly.

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And you better meet expectations.

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Because if you don't, you're gonna face some serious personal trouble.

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So, performance management is a system that tries to align the people's individual contribution towards an overall goal.

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it has its roots in something

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that we're also going to talk about something like management by objectives now here's the thing

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if you as a company think about a new performance management system you can

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just take a textbook and do it as it is described in the textbook

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or you could look at your competitors and ask yourself how are they doing these things and then you simply copy it.

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Okay, good luck with it.

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Good luck with it.

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Probability is high that whenever you develop a performance management system, it probably won't work.

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As we have seen since many decades in hundreds, thousands of organizations.

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It's sometimes tragic.

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Most performance management systems don't work.

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So, the question is, okay,

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if we need to do something and let's agree this company needs to do something what is the right way of going?

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What might be the right strategy?

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Is it more this kind of performance management system or that kind of performance management system?

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Or is it about a performance management system?

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Anyway, what is the problem?

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What's the real problem?

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That's the first question.

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What is the problem?

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What are the reasons for lacking ambition?

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Maybe you don't need a performance management system.

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Maybe you need something else.

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Maybe you need a new CEO again.

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So it's not so easy.

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And again, this case is big and the problem is big.

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And again, this is not about HR administration.

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Not at all.

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That's a big problem.

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And that big problem requires a bigger strategic answer.

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Okay.

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So, here's the final case.

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A company in the retail sector sees a decline in sales and is continuously losing market share.

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The new corporate strategy now consistently focuses on digitizing the supply and distribution channels,

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as well as all related business processes.

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An analysis has shown that the workforce has little knowledge of digitization and is rather reluctant to deal with this topic.

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What is to be done?

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That's our last case for the moment.

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Again, these days you see a lot of companies out there where at least the executives have understood that digitization really matters.

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If you don't digitize, then you become obsolete maybe.

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whenever you talk about digitization in your organization the response is

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come on digitization you know come on that's not that's not the real thing

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and the people are worried they're worried that they that they lose their job, they are worried that they have to change their job,

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they are worried about the need to learn new things, and they are worried whether they can really cope with the new situation,

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that they can keep up with this fast development.

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And of course they are resistant.

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I mean, not everybody, of course, sure, but maybe a vast majority.

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And this is a problem, this is really a problem a serious problem.

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If this company, in this case, if this company does not overcome this particular problem, then this company is in serious trouble.

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So again, this is not administrative.

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Not at all.

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This is about people and this is about strategy.

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So this one, again, requires a powerful human resource strategy.

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And, you know, we're going to talk about all those cases and many more.

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And in this series, I will guide you stepwise through the different steps required to develop an HR strategy.

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We're going to talk about all those things

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and you will see it's very very fascinating sometimes a little bit complex

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but but still very very cool

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and you can do a lot of things right also as

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as as the HR department now yeah you can contribute so much really I mean really

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but at the same time you could do so many things wrong and you just have one bullet very often.

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If you look at one of these cases I just were sharing, if you trigger the wrong bullet or if you one single bullet does not meet the goal,

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you will not be asked twice.

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So you better be right in the first place.

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Okay, so this is...

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I hope that these cases, along with the explanation of the difference between HR strategy and HR administration,

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you get a little bit of an idea about how HR could be strategic.

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And now for every course, in particular for any academic course, I have to start with a little definition.

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This is how courses like this are supposed to start.

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And I would like to give you a little definition on what is an HR strategy.

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Okay, and I will walk through a definition stepwise and let me first read it to you.

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I have to read it by myself.

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Actually, I don't know this definition by heart.

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I did not do my homework.

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So I just read it and then I will walk through this stepwise and will explain it.

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And in the end, it's going to be clear to you, I'm pretty sure.

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So here's the definition about HR strategy.

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A company's HR strategy refers to all people -related approaches

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that address both strategic business challenges and purpose in order to strengthen a company's competitive advantage.

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Moreover, the HR strategy defines how all critical approaches are aligned to the structural and cultural context.

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So, that was big and probably you didn't get it right away.

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I mean, of course, it's a long and ugly definition.

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So, let me walk through this stepwise.

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So the first part of the definition is it's a company's HR strategy refers to all people -related approaches.

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I mean people -related, that's clear.

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That's the human part, right?

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It's about people -related approaches.

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What is approach?

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The things that you do, okay?

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Approaches.

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The way to do things, right?

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Approaches.

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A company's HR strategy refers to all people -related approaches that address both strategic business challenges and purpose.

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Okay, this is the business part.

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And of course, we'll talk about business challenges, business purpose, why is the company there,

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what is the ultimate reason why the company exists,

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and all those people related approaches must address these things otherwise they are not strategic.

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Okay?

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Got it?

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Okay.

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So let's go further.

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So, we already agreed.

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All approaches that address both strategic business challenges and purpose in order to strengthen a company's competitive advantage.

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That's the ultimate goal.

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Okay?

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That's the ultimate goal.

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The HR strategy is about strengthening a company's competitive advantage.

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Being good in the market, being better than the competitors.

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That's your ultimate goal.

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Okay.

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Moreover, the HR strategy defines how all critical approaches are aligned to the structural and cultural context.

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The context.

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The context matters.

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So what we're going to do very intensively is we're going

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to look at different things you might do in your company to strengthen competitive advantage.

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But the way how you do it,

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that must fit to your structural context and to your cultural context.

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That's absolutely necessary and that might sound a little bit weird or vague,

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vague, better word, a little bit vague now in the moment, but I promise you in the end of this course you will understand,

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you will clearly understand what that means.

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The same approach might work, one and the same approach might work in one company, but not in the other. But in which way?

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So you have to make strategic decisions upon how you do your talent development, if this is a necessary approach.

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How you set up your compensation strategy.

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You have to make strategic decisions.

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And the way you do things really depends on who you are as a company.

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how you are in structural terms and how you are in cultural terms.

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And we will have a couple of episodes where we just talk about the context, really.

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Okay?

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So that was the start for today.

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And I hope that you now take home the difference between HR strategy and HR administration.

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This course will be about HR strategy

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and based on these few cases I was sharing with you I hope that you got a little bit of understanding

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what that actually means and it's serious,

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really it's serious I hope that you understood this that was the first thing and in the next episode

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I will start talking about common pitfalls when building an HR strategy

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and it will be a good start a funny start maybe talking about the pitfalls first.

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Hope you can enjoy.

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So, see you.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: #01 The strategic Side of Human Resources Management - Learn English Speaking with Video

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