Introduction
Broken hill proprietary company was first incorporated in 1885. Its major operations included mining of silver and lead at the broken hill in Australia. The current BHP Billiton Company was established in 2001 by merging broken hill proprietary company and Dutch Billiton plc. This resulted in the formation of a dual-listed company in the Australian stock exchange (Meredith, 1990).
BHP Billiton registered in the United Kingdom is listed as a primary company on the London stock exchange. In the following paper, the major BHP Billiton Company in Australia will be discussed.
Extend of the HRM strategy/policy
BHP Company offers opportunities for the employees to grow and develop additional skills to perform their duties effectively. The company has a strong high-performance culture, is results-driven, and recognizes the need for individual respect, community, and the environment. The company’s core values include; integrity, competitiveness, honesty, cooperation, inclusion, and respect (Shields, 2007).
BHP offers good remuneration, fringe benefits, and other rewards depending on employee performance. It also caters to the sick and maternity leaves for all its employees in the World (Nelson, 2003).
The company’s strategies include; having and operating big, long-lasting, low costly, and upstream assets expanded by geography, commodity, and market. The human resource strategies emphasize having a pool of trained workforce which reflects the company’s values in the communities where the company operates. BHP aims to recruit its workforce from host communities and attract competent people strongly committed to the overall success of the organization (Phillips, 2008).
The company’s success is based on proper selection, recruitment, training, and retention of highly motivated individuals. Employees are able to further their academic knowledge by studying through graduate programs established by the company. Training opportunities are available to its employees after the end of the orientation process (Thompson, 1996).
The company offers promotion opportunities to its employees during the course of their employment irrespective of race, religion, sex, and gender. The company organizes career development programs that help to develop the employees psychologically before retirement. Through these programs, employees are able to invest their retirement benefits wisely and adapt to retirement life (Sims, 2002).
The management aims at escalating the company’s success by reviewing employees’ salaries and performance after a short period of time to determine those that are to be promoted, fired, and transferred in order to remain with a competitive workforce (Phillips, 2008).
Techniques that contribute to the performance of the organization
Leadership
BHP has competent managers who have contributed to the success of the organization by carrying out effective recruitment, selection, and training of the employees. Management of human and material resources has also helped the company to diversify its operations to different locations in the world. Through proper accounting and auditing of its financial records, BHP has emerged as a reputed company in the world in the mining of gas, lead, silver, energy coal, nickel, manganese, metallurgical coal among other minerals (Shields, 2007).
The company has positive corporate social responsibility that recognizes the environment and the community around its business. It does this by reducing carbon emissions and water usage across all its businesses through monitoring and annual reporting (Thompson, 1996).
People
BHP recognizes its employees as valuable assets that have contributed to organizational growth and sustainability. The company hires its employees discriminatively, offers good remuneration and training opportunities for improving employees’ skills. Currently, the company has over 100,000 employees and miners located at various points in the world. The company offers occupational health and safety management courses to its employees so as to ensure the safety of its workers and the community (Thompson, 1996).
Employee bonus and salary system
The workers are to be offered a flexible system of bonuses in case the results of their work are better than in the previous periods. This system is to be graded from 0 to 15%, from 15 to 30%, from 30 to 45%, from 45 to 60%, and finally from 60% and above. In all these categories, a different bonus is to be offered beginning from 5% of the total sales turnover and then with the step of 5% more for each category respectively.
Innovation
BHP carries out massive prospecting of potential sites that possesses mineral components. Geological surveys are carried by the company’s engineers to locate, mine, and transport the mineral ores. The company has adopted the latest mining technology that helps in reducing hazards to its workers and the communities living near mining sites. Sophisticated equipment is used in order to facilitate the successful mining of mineral ores (Fisse, 1983).
Capital
BHP invests in its operations and has a good record of delivering high shareholder returns. This is done through the restricted implementation of unmovable strategies of operation owing to low cost, long life, upstream assets expanded by market, geography, and commodity (Meredith, 1990).
The company’s assets are controlled by a scalable and simple organizational structure which is sustained by standardized processes that allow employees to focus on important matters only (Phillips, 2008).
Conclusion
In conclusion, BHP Company’s success is attributed to good leadership techniques, availability of human and material resources. New innovations and proper utilization of modern technology have also lifted the company to high levels of economic prosperity. The company’s human resource strategies that include; employee training, management development, health and safety, fair remuneration, fringe benefits, and graduate programs have helped in building a competitive workforce.
Reference List
First, B 1983, The Impact of Publicity on Corporate Offenders, Suny Press, California.
Meredith, D 1990, Australia in the International Economy, in the Twentieth Century, Cup Archive, Melbourne.
Nelson, B 2003, The 1001 Rewards & Recognition Field book: The Complete Guide, Workman Publishing, New York.
Phillips, J 2008, Managing Talent Retention: A Roi Approach, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Shields, J 2007, Managing Employee Performance and Reward: Concepts, Practices, Strategies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sims, R 2002, Organizational Success through Effective Human Resources Management, Greenwood, New York.
Thompson, D 1996, Motivating Others: Creating the Conditions, Eye on Education, California.