85879 - Transcription: What is the strategic human resource management

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Athina Kehagias

We all more or less know what we mean by human resources and can imagine what human resource management also means. The problem is what is the strategic human resource management. Human resources is not something static, as its name states. We simply need to understand that when we talk about human manpower, we are actually referring to HR, Human Resources. It’s actually human resources. But the issue is, if it’s merely resources and there’s no dynamics, then it goes to say that we don’t have a high level management, it’s just as if it were warehouse management. The question now is whether this item functions like a library, like a database, like something more sophisticated. In order for that to occur, we need to have a very good knowledge of the human resources and to have a management that is even smarter. But for management to become even smarter, it ought to have a strategic dimension. The strategic dimension will give a depth of time to the human resource management and we will actually be able to anticipate problems and solve them before they appear, i.e. wear and tear problems, problems in relation to opponents, with hostilities, with situations which may be critical. Strategic management is an idea which uses the past to help the future, but in fact it will go into a deeper future and it will already be prepared, so that when there is a timing in the present which should be activated, because this opposite depth of time will there in order to prepare and evolve, it will be able to function over a greater depth of time than a classical approach, which will merely be crisis management at that moment. What matters is that there should be protocols, that there are ideas which function prior, and are immediately activated, and not just be ideas which appear at the time of crisis, because then it’s too late. Therefore, we can say in summary that a strategic human resource management is that, which goes beyond the schedule that we usually use, the schedule of the week, the schedule of the year, the five year schedule, and which could arm the organization in such a way that it would be more resilient to crises rather than just looking out for the local optimum. Therefore, in actual fact the strategic human resource management is the one which aims for the optimal, but over depth of time, which means that it must aim for endurance prior.