Strategic Management Research - Essay Example

The Professional Placement Resources is an employment agency or a Human Resource Company that deals with placement medical professions, especially nurses in various places where they may be needed. It is located near Jacksonville Beach, Florida. It has around employees. Its principal purpose is to create and identify employment opportunities and provide a platform where employers can look for employees and professions can seek jobs. It acts as the middle person on the job market search. The company has diversified its services focusing on providing what they call Travel nurses whereby the nurses they recruit and place get to go and work in different places across the country. This, it has been doing since it began in 1996. The company has since grown as is ranked as one of the best Small and Medium-Sized companies (SMEs) in the United States. Moreover, the Great Places to Work Institute has recognized it as one among the 25 best places to work in the U.S. for 12 consecutive years (PPR Travel Nursing, 2015).

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Most of its success can be owed to the fundamental values on which the company was built upon. Trust tops this list; the first thing the company does upon recruitment is to build trust with the recruits and ensure that they are trustworthy enough to place into the various homes, hospitals, institutions or individuals that the company has also build trust with. This is followed by other values such as a friendship, the spirit of adventure (for the travelling nurses), commitment to the cause, professionalism and of course, fun, all in equilibrium. It aims at loving all the recruit nurses and constantly reminding them of the reasons why they became nurses in the first place. This in turn ensures that the nurses take great care of their assigned patients and their families (Professional Placement Resources, 2015).

This seemingly fool-proof system and the companys enviable position have not come easy. Moreover, it has not been without much hard work, planning and strategizing. The selection and evaluation of their core value, their coordination and working systems all stem from a good strategy. Such a strategy has to include all the participants involved the company starting from the leaders, the recruiters to the nurses then eventually to the customer. High integrity, communication and understanding has to cut across the entire company hierarchy down to each employee especially because of the fact that it is human resource, which can be particularly difficult to deal with. Therefore, despite the fact that the company is doing quite well for itself, there are several avenues where a fault line or a minor weakness could be exploited and result to devastating results according to my observations and based on the analysis of the macro environment. There are also fronts that can be strengthened while others are continually upheld to maintain the integrity of the company.

Some of the most apparent macro environment challenges include competition. In human resource, the customer looks for people they can fully trust, especially when it comes to as sensitive subject such as entrusting the care of a human being to a given individual. The recognition and very well established nursing homes and hospitals especially in the state (Florida) give a great deal of competition to this company mainly because these institutions have already established this as their field of expertise. Thus

most people would prefer hiring nurses from the nursing homes or hospitals as their own personal caregivers if need arises, or go to these institutions to receive the care from there. What the company can do about this is to ensure that they are always the first to find out if there are any vacancies in any of their competition and refer their nurses to the jobs. This way the nurses will be identified with the Professional Placement Resources company PPR, have the values that the company preaches and stand out from all the rest. It is also a good way to establish trust with both the competition and customers that belong to the competition hence widening the market base. Moreover, this could be an investment opportunity whereby deals can be struck with these institutions to provide nurses whenever there is a vacancy or when they are looking to employ. This, coupled with the diversification of travel nurses where a nurse from one state can go work in different places would ensure an even wider market base.

Another observation from the macro environment that the company could improve on would be the customer, in terms of their preference for PPR nurses. This is again built on how much an individual would trust a nurse to be a caregiver to their loved one. This is the basis behind trust being on of PPRs core values. However, the building of trust never really ends. It is a constant, never ending process. First, the recruiters have to enlist the right kind of people, the kind that can be trusted or learn trust. Then they have to earn their trust too and make them feel like part of a team so that when they get their various jobs, they represent the company in the best way. And since they directly relate to the customer, and if the customer can trust them, means that they can trust the company; making PPR a preferred company human resource company. All this should be incorporated in the companys strategic plan.

The human resource business continues to be a good investment as long as the demand for labor is high. Nurses are required as long as there are people who need to be cared for; whether ill, old or helpless in one way or the other. In my opinion, it is not a very bad business to be in because convalescents and people who need help in the various ways that they do will always exist. However, there might be a problem with the high number of caregivers with paper credentials or professional qualifications and the quality of care given. In order to really sell, emphasis must be laid on the quality of care. The market always places a high demand on quality products so if a company produces high quality goods, then there is always going to be a ready market. Since PPR emphasizes on the quality of care given, I would say that they are safe when it comes to the market. The company has also tried to diversity the trade by way of the travelling nurse initiative. Both of these strategies have worked in the companys favor. Further diversification, which is what I would suggest, would do a lot more good to PPR. They could, for example, find a way to deliver their product in sort of packages with customer benefits. For instance, if a nurse from PPR is placed with a family, she could give her employers first aid lessons or a course on how to perform life-saving procedures for no extra cost. They could also do more than placement of nurses. The company should consider the placement of other professions as well such as chefs, the help in homes, nannies among others. The industry leaves much to be exploited, and since PPR has the tools and the capability, it can monopolize the human resource sector in the state of Florida and even across the rest of the States

The kind of a strategy that an organization adopts is very essential when it comes to analyzing its success. Business level strategy enabled an organization to represent its plans and to conduct different functions in their business operations. For small companies such as Professional Placement Resource Company, strategies may be adopted to their operations and assigned to different employees. These strategies serve as guidelines for the company; its owners, managers and the nurses who are the major employees when working in the business (Root, 2015).

Different strategies can be applied by a company such as; coordinate activities, utilization of human resources, developing distinctive advantages and identifying of market niches (Vitez, 2015). One of the strategies that Professional Placement Resource Company has made use of is human resources. The fact that the company falls under the human resource industry makes effective utilization of human resources the number one strategy in planning and conducting different business operations. The organizations pays keen attention in the recruitment of labor force that is qualified for different roles requires in the company. Nurses that are assigned to certain homes to offer health care services need to be well qualified before being picked by the organizations.

Due to the fact that nurses will always be required, another business level strategy that has been adopted by this organization is identification of market niches. Identification of market niches involves the process of discovery of unmet or unsatisfied need of a customer. PRR has identified the need for customers to receive good healthcare from trustworthy individuals. It is due to this that the company recruits qualified nurses that are capable of offering the best health care for individuals. Trust being one of its fundamental foundations, has led to most of the individuals or homes that receive health care from nurses recruited by this organization, to prefer the services of the company rather than looking for health care nurses elsewhere. To increased there market basis, Professional Placement Resource company has also partnered with other health care organizations such as well-known hospitals so they can provide them with nurses if they ever require nurses. The fact that PRR uses Travel nurses also widens their market from just Jacksonville Beach, Florida to every other part of the state. I believe this is a strategy that can also be used by the company for expansion from just a medium size enterprise to global company.

The development of trust among the employees of this company has been exploited to encourage coordinate unit activities as another strategy of the company. Coordinate unit activities are part of a strategy where unit activities are broken down according to different departments, sections that make up the department and individual employees. Trust is essential in order for such a strategy to be effective. The presence of trust in this organization promotes teamwork among the different colleagues. It also makes it easier for employees of low rank to be able to approach their superiors with much ease. This fosters good communication skills among the superiors and those who are under them and hence activities in the company can be divided into smaller tasks between the employees. At the end of it all, the company still gets to offer effective human resource placement despite the fact that the tasks are divided among different individuals. This has played a crucial role in enabling the company to identify the needs of its customer and meet them to the satisfaction of the customer (Root, 2015).

In the field of human resource, the competition is usually stiff. Competition intensifies especial if a company ventures into a section of this industry that has already well-established and well-known organizations (Hunter, 1995). This is the predicament that faces PRR Company as there are other organizations that are placing medical professionals where they are required. PRR has been facing competition from hospitals and other professional placement companies due to the fact that individuals might opt to get health care nurses from hospitals due to common believes that nurses from hospitals might be more qualified and experienced when it comes to offering health services. This might be true to some extent, but PRR has put a lot effort in ensuring the medical professionals that it places in homes or other places are qualified for the service required by the company. During recruitment of nurses, the company assesses them to ensure that they are trustworthy and qualified for the job (Vitez, 2015...