Profile of Sohar's Company and the HR Strategies They Use

Introduction

Sohar Aluminum is a company that was formed in 2004. It is an Omani Company and was the first every aluminum smelter company to be established in the Country. It is co-owned by Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA) and Rio Tinto Alcan. The company ensures that it promotes efficiency and is known for protecting the environment and the maximizing the safety of its workers (Sohar Aluminium, 2017). It achieves all these through the application of the expertise of the aluminum industry in all their designs, and construction works. Sohar Aluminum produces more than 380,000 tons of very high-quality aluminum every year. The vision of the company is "Passion for Excellence, Be the BEST" (Sohar Aluminium, 2017).

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The vision is based on three main pillars. The first one is the environment, health, and safety that ensures that there are zero injuries to its workers and there is total workforce engagement. It also promotes committed leadership that reduces and eliminates all risks to workers. The second pillar is on people and it ensures that the workforce is engaged and empowered. It uses a talent development system and continuous competency improvements and there are competitive benefits for the workers (Sohar Aluminium, 2017). There is strong internal communication within the company and a wide business literacy for the entire workforce. The third pillar focuses on productivity and this is achieved using world-class practices for maintenance, reliability and asset management (Sohar Aluminium, 2017). Innovation and continuous process improvement on efficiency gains are highly encouraged.

It can, therefore, be observed that Sohar Company uses the high commitment management HR strategy. This strategy focuses on orienting the employees towards their employers and seeing them as company assets that have to be developed instead of disposable factors of production (Sohar Aluminium, 2017). Additionally, this HR strategy incorporates concepts such as team working, job flexibility, minimal or zero status differences, job redesign and creation of problem-solving groups.

HR Strategies And Practices Being Implemented By Sohar Aluminium And Their Company Policies

One of the essential policies of Sohar Company is the development of its younger employees. This has been achieved through the establishment of a training center that trains its employees and helps them to be more skilled (Bloxsome, 2016). Other policies include acting on employee feedback, competency assessments, employee attrition, and supporting national employment. Sohar Aluminium strategies are as provided below (Bulletin, 2017):

Human capital management: The Company achieves this by obtaining, analyzing and reporting on data that helps in providing direction towards value-adding people management, operational decisions, strategic and investment decisions.

Corporate social responsibility: Sohar Company is committed to ensuring that they conduct their business ethically and they protect the environment. This helps them to make a positive impact not only on the society but also on the environment.

Organization development: Sohar ensures that it enhances and increases the effectiveness and speed through which it carries out its activities and how it responds to any changes. This is done through the planning and implementation of programs that work appropriately for the company.

Engagement: Sohar tries its best to increase the level of engagement and satisfaction of their workers. As such, they develop implement and implement policies that motivate their workers, increase their engagement levels and their satisfaction levels.

Knowledge management: Learning, training, and performance of workers are achieved through the creation, acquisition, capture, sharing and use of knowledge.

Resourcing: Sohar Company ensures that it attracts and retains high quality and high performing employees by treating them in the best way possible.

Talent management: Sohar Company ensures that it gets talented employees who are able to help it achieve its goals, objectives, and success.

Learning and development: Sohar Company provides an environment that encourages its employees to learn and develop.

Reward: Sohar Company defines what it wants and needs to do in the long term so that reward policies can be developed and implemented. The Company also formulates practices and systems that enhance the achievement of Sohar's goals and ensures that all the respective needs of their customers and stakeholders are met.

Employee relations: Sohar Company defines its intentions and action plan on what should be done and everything that has to be changed in the current ways of running things and how the company manages its relationship with all their workers and respective trade unions that their employees belong.

Employee well-being: Sohar ensures it meets the needs of all its workers in the creation of a healthy, safe, secure and positive working environment where the workers are highly motivated and love their job.

All the company's HR strategies are in line with their policies. In 2013, the company carried out a comprehensive and detailed employee satisfaction and feedback survey. Some of the successes obtained from the survey were community reputation, pride in employment and team spirit. The company was also able to get suggestions on how they would improve employee satisfaction. Some of these suggestions include training of employees, career development and providing benefits and companies (Solar Aluminium, 2017). The company swiftly acted on these recommendations by forming an internal committee that developed action plans needed. The company keeps embarking on several employee survey activities. This ensures that the commitment of the employees is cemented and maintained at a high level.

From 2009, Sohar has been using a detailed competency framework that ensures the development needs of all its employees are supported. The purpose of the framework is to set objectives that have to be achieved by all the employees at each functional level and in every individual task. Sohar formulates a work performance plan (WWP) that is established at the beginning of every year (Solar Aluminium, 2017). The plan is reviewed at mid-year with interim reviews and it helps the employees to set their goals, realize the expectations of the company, formulate appropriate measures and chart progress together with their respective leaders. The plan is important in setting the right expectations and providing a platform for objective performance appraisal.

In line with their policy of employee attrition, Sohar highly values their employees and considers them to be their most valuable assets. As such, they invest finances and resources in training and developing them thus raising the retention levels. Sohar ensures that its employee lifecycle, right from recruitment to exit, is managed effectively and efficiently (Solar Aluminium 2017). All the different HR strategies applied by the company and its policies are in tandem with one another.

The Relationship between Sohar HR Strategies and the Company's Overall Performance.

As stated below, the company's vision is "Passion for Excellence, Be the BEST." Its mission, goals, and objectives are to retain the first position in the Aluminium and power businesses. Sohar aims to meet the highest customer expectations in product quality and supply reliability while increasing the value of their shareholders. Their values and principles include building sustainable growth through invention and innovation, being transparent in all their actions, promotion of an environment of open communication, enhancing corporate citizenship and continued integration of world-class quality management (Solar Aluminium, 2017). The company focuses on corporate citizenship as well through the maximization of the positive effect in community services while supporting and encouraging employees into community volunteering.

The company's sales and profitability from 2012 to 2016 is as shown below.

The company has been continuously making profits over the years. The production of Aluminium has also been increasing over the years. In 2015, Sohar produced 377,186 tons of Aluminium; this was the highest output production since the company was formed. Sohar attributes most of its success in enhancing its operational efficiencies, its team of employees, and constant improvement.

Human Resources is associated with skill, knowledge, values, agility, commitment, and motivation in addition to the person chosen to be hired. The main concern of human resources planning is the achievement of organizational objectives, but that the personal aspirations of the people involved are also of equal importance (Paauwe, Wright, & Guest, 2012, p.54). In fact, the main objective and work of the HR department must be the humanization of the workplace environment.

The current environment to retain talent is highly competitive. The most interesting profiles are very important when it comes to improving the competitiveness of companies and, therefore, making the best employees stay in a company is paramount (Gerhart, 2012, p. 163). High-quality employees have played a significant role in ensuring that Sohar is successful and continuously makes profits.

Processes of continuous improvement: Sohar facilitates access to training for employees. In this way, specialized profiles become achievable, without having to fight in the current labor market. The human resources department of Sohar is always involved in the search of courses and workshops that interest the workers of the companies and that improve the perspectives of the employees in the workplace.

More and more companies are using this HR strategy with their employees: for example, the figure of "employee of the month" is a way to gamify in the workplace. There is also the achievement of objectives and meetings and events outside the office, which often reward skills that do not correspond to the job, such as careers and preparation of recipes among others (Guest, 2011, p. 8). All these are done to ensure that Sohar employees have a good time, get involved in the activities of the company and improve their job prospects. This makes the company make more sales since happy, motivated, and highly engaged employees result in high performance, which consequently results in increased sales.

Fostering emotions of Employees: Marketing plays with the emotions of customers. That an employee feels an important part of the company, that sees their achievements as their own, is fundamental in the marketing of human resources (Campbell, Coff, & Kryscynski, 2012, p. 380). Sohar fosters the emotions of employees by rewarding their employees and formulating performance appraisal techniques. Consequently, encourages employees to work harder to make more sales and improve the performance of the company.

Each employee of an organization is different and precisely because they know their concerns and preparation very well, in addition to their sociocultural level, Sohar addresses each one as expected, making sure that everyone understands the messages (Company Overview of Sohar Aluminium, 2017). Addressing a manager who has been with the company working for years is not the same as addressing as an employee who is newly employed by the company.

Build a philosophy that has remained same over the years: When talking about sales, it is essential that customers are steeped in the philosophy of the brand and identify it with certain values (Chadwick & Dabu, 2009, p. 260). To achieve this same with employees, the company cannot change every tim...