Strategic Human Resources Essay

Submitted By krismohan
Words: 2825
Pages: 12

1. Background
Brisbane City Council is the largest local government in the southern hemisphere and employs close to nine thousand staff and have multitude of products and services. Brisbane city Council objective is to serve the people of Brisbane. With this in mind, the Councils nature of the business has evolved since 1859. Although Brisbane City Council still provides the basic services such as roads, waste services and water, the business has recognised that as the population grows so must the types of services. Today Brisbane city Council provides a range of services such as library, transport, buildings, parks and other recreational facilities. As with many businesses, the organisation must have the capabilities in order to deliver the products and services to meet the growing demand. Over the years Brisbane City Council has expanded operationally to be able to provide the multitude of products and services. Brisbane City Council has various divisions to efficiently manage the employees, products and service. Some of the major divisions include, Risk management, Technology, Project Management, Occupational Health and Safety, Administration, Engineering and Human Resources.
Brisbane City Council has strategically created separate divisions within the organisation to manage each products and services. The corporate is the head of the Council and is responsible for establishing polices and developing strategies to attract the right employee and retain them. As for any organisation the key to success is employing and retaining highly skilled employees. This is more so in Brisbane City Council, value for money outcomes must be provided to the ratepayers. As with any organisation, it’s a HR challenge to hire an employee who is the right fit for the organisation and capable of achieving the responsibilities of the role.

2. Human Resource Management in Brisbane City Council
Brisbane City Council has many strategies in place to cater for the growing demand of the products and services. The HR policies and strategies are aligned with the business strategy and aim to deliver political promises to the public. Each roles created within the Council has a direct or in-direct contribution to achieving value for money outcomes for the rate payers. Effective human recourse management (HRM) in general adds value to company and achieving satisfactory outcome to the ratepayer by contributing to the employee role design, selection, ongoing training and performance reviews (Raymond, A, Noe 2010). The Council recognises the importance of hiring quality employees and therefore have created a very vigorous selection process. There is a position description for each position that created and key selection criteria for that position which must be addressed in an application. This is also coupled by performance indicators and targets. As with majority of the businesses in Australia, providing an equal employment opportunity and a safe work environment is the foundation of the HR framework. Brisbane City Council has a zero harm policy for not only the staff but to all who interact with the products and services. This includes contractors, other businesses and the general public. Due to Brisbane is a multi cultural diverse city, the Council encourage people from different backgrounds and attributes to apply for positions within the Council. Brisbane City Council’s HR department also has a strategy to create jobs in order to meet diversity targets. This might seem counterproductive but being a local government this strategy creates confidence in the general public. However there is an issue within the human resource management that plagues almost every company and that is retaining key employees. ‘The hiring and retention of key human resource is a critical issue for organisations’ (Sahoo, C, Das, S & Sundaray, B 2012). In the recent Queensland mining boom created a big demand for engineers. This was a problem for Brisbane City Council as the