[Music] welcome along to taking the beers if you're only just discovering this channel you'll find it a place with resources for a level business students so if that sounds like you definitely think about subscribing in this tutorial we're gonna take a look at a topic known as hard and soft human resource management or as an excel students may have learned it as viewing staff as a cost versus viewing staff as an asset and this really is about two contrasting approaches to utilizing your workforce almost two different philosophies when it comes to utilizing a business's employees so if we start with a hard approach to human resource or what's known as viewing staff as a cost firms that adopt this perspective see their workforce much like they might see other areas of their business as a resource that costs money and some firms are very very acutely aware of costs and cost minimization is a central part to their business model so firms that adopt a hard HR approach approach their workforce from the point of view that they want to try and minimize the costs attached to it and that has some techniques associated to it that my aid the business in trying to minimize its staffing costs so the most fundamental way of doing that is to try and pay your workforce the minimal pay that you can so we might be paying minimum wage rates to manual staff or lower salaries compared to rivals when it comes to managerial staff but because we see our workforce as a resource that we need to try and minimize the cost of we try to achieve a minimal pay rate where we can associated with that we're going to also invest less and money in the very costly shoot of training our workforce so when the business is looking for employees with new skills that they need for the organisation maybe they've got new positions that they need to fill inside the organization there's going to be less of an emphasis of training and developing our existing staff with the obvious cost that's attached to that and as an alternative we would prefer to externally recruit members of staff that we can parachute into positions with the ready-made skills that we're looking for already in abundance now in order to keep cost down with this hard HR approach or where we view our workforce as a cost we're also going to try and stick to the minimum legal obligations that we have to try and achieve when it comes to aspects of our workforce welfare such as Health and Safety or employment rights so we may only pay that the legal minimum obligations when it comes to things like pay time off for holidays or for sickness or maternity or paternity leave we're gonna try and drive staffing costs down by staying within the law and doing what we're legally obligated to do but perhaps not going beyond those minimums one other thing we might try and utilize when we view staff as a cost is giving staff temporary contracts as well which is going to make the workforce more flexible and more responsive to changing patterns of demand so when the firm experiences an increase or a surge in demand they may take on more workers but only on temporary contracts so if that demand were to diminish again the firm is not left with the added cost of workers that they've taken on on a permanent basis instead they can release those temporary staffs that they took on during more prosperous times so we can clearly see the benefits of a hard approach to HR or viewing staff as a cost by driving down the costs of the labor force it allows the firm to experience lower costs overall which might aid them in a strategy of being more price competitive which might allow them to establish a market share in the industry that they operate in now a hard approach is not for all business organizations some may prefer a softer approach to HR where they view their workforce as an asset and with this approach we will see the workforce as a selling point for the organization something that requires nurturing and investing it and developing and as we're doing that there's an emphasis on trying to retain the employees that we have inside our organization rather than losing them to rival businesses and there's a group of techniques that might support us in that philosophy chiefly being more competitive in the terms of financial remuneration that we offer our employees so rather than paying the minimum wage to manual workers we would offer more generous hourly wages when it comes to salaried staff we try and make sure that the salary packages that we offer are more competitive when compared to other firms in our industry and coupled with this we may also try and offer more generous fringe benefits as well so we could be offering greater paid time off or annual leave for our employees more generous sick pay packages other perks such as health insurance for our employees longer or greater pay when it comes to maternity and paternity but we're gonna try and retain our workforce and show them how much we value them by offering them greater financial remuneration which obviously increases the staffing cost of the organization we're also going to invest more in training opportunities for our employees as well so rather than always looking to recruit externally when we have positions to fill in the organ nation we're gonna invest far more funds and time into training and developing the staff that we have so that they can learn new skills that they can gain more qualifications so that when positions open up in our organization we are in the position of being able to look to promote from within rather than always looking to recruit externally so that allows the employees that have invested their own time into developing new skills to find new more advanced positions in the organization where they may be able to add more value for the business find a way that we might try and utilize this philosophy is seeing staff as an asset is to offer employees long-term permanent contracts in the organization as well so although that might make the business less flexible or responsive to changing patterns in demand it's gonna offer employees greater security greater long-term prospects within the organization that they may find motivational and so the greatest benefit of seeing staff as an asset or a softer approach to HR are the benefits that might surround motivation of our workforce they may be more productive because they feel more of a part of the organization they feel invested in they feel valued and how they reward the business with greater rates of productivity and innovation and intrapreneurship that the business can use in order to add value so it's a very common examine to be posed as to which approach a business may be better adopting and often that may depend on the objectives of the business for those are pursuing cost minimization strategies it could well be argued that a hard approach to HR where they view their workforce as a cost might be a better strategy to utilize whereas other organizations that might have different objectives surrounding innovation or surround in quality might be better served using a softer approach to HR where they view staff as an asset often where a business relies on its staff having face-to-face contact with consumers a softer approach to HR may also be beneficial but for firms that are in very price competitive industries that luxury of paying to invest in your staff may not be something that they wish to pursue in order to survive in order to compete in order to operate in a very price competitive market some firms might feel that minimal investment in their workforce is a strategy that they are forced into now one interesting idea when it comes to concluding essays on hard and soft HR is whether hard HR and viewing staff as a cost is as effective in lowering costs as we might first assume and critics of this approach might say that while it lowers cost in the short run in the long run because of the absenteeism and labor turnover that it creates and potentially because of the lower rates of productivity that it might result in it can actually end up increasing the workforce costs of an organization in the long run because they're constantly having to replenish staff that they lose because of their lack of investment in them so it's definitely something that we could think about utilizing in conclusions on that topic hopefully that will help you with your revision we'll see you soon for another tutorial and make sure you keep on taking the Bears you you you