Quick questions on The role of human resource management (HSC Business Studies Topic 4)

Human resource management is the management of people to achieve the business's objectives. Its strategic role is to ensure the business has the right people, with the right skills, in the right roles, at the right cost, motivated to deliver on the business strategy.

HRM does not run in isolation.

Outsourcing means contracting an external provider to deliver an HR function that was previously done in-house. Common targets:

Contractors are workers engaged on commercial terms rather than as employees. They invoice the business and take their own taxation and superannuation arrangements (subject to ATO and Fair Work tests of genuine independence).

Telstra. Telstra runs in-house strategic HR for its 30,000-plus Australian workforce but outsources significant payroll and routine transactional HR to global providers. Major operational HR projects (the long-running enterprise-agreement renegotiations, the 2024-2025 organisational restructure) are run by in-house HR with external legal and IR advice.

Operations needs people with the right skills - trained baristas, certified pilots, skilled welders, qualified nurses. HRM supplies them through recruitment, training and rostering. When operations changes (a new automated DC at Coles, a fleet renewal at Qantas), HRM must respond with retraining, role redesign and sometimes redundancy.

Marketing's "people" element of the service marketing mix (the 7Ps) is HRM-delivered. The Apple store experience depends on the staff Apple HR recruited and trained. A great marketing campaign fails if the customer-facing staff do not deliver on the brand promise.

Wages are typically the second-largest cost (after COGS) on the income statement. Enterprise-agreement renegotiations have direct financial consequences. HRM budgets must align with finance's overall plan, and HRM is increasingly responsible for cost-per-hire, time-to-fill, and other workforce KPIs that affect the financial result.

Lower cost, specialist expertise, scalability, freeing internal HR for strategic work.

Loss of control over the employee experience, confidentiality risk, atrophy of in-house HR capability, integration friction with internal systems.

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Acts of 2023 and 2024 narrowed the legal scope for treating workers as contractors, introduced regulated minimum standards for "employee-like" gig workers, and expanded penalties for sham contracting. HRM needs to be confident in the legal characterisation of every contractor engagement.

Telstra runs in-house strategic HR for its 30,000-plus Australian workforce but outsources significant payroll and routine transactional HR to global providers. Major operational HR projects (the long-running enterprise-agreement renegotiations, the 2024-2025 organisational restructure) are run by in-house HR with external legal and IR advice.

Qantas uses HR outsourcing through its labour-hire model for ground operations and catering - a practice that became politically contested in 2023-2024 when the Federal Court ruled the 2020 outsourcing of 1,700 baggage handlers had breached the Fair Work Act, with damages awarded to affected workers. The case is the high-profile example of the legal risk in HR-outsourcing strategy.

Atlassian runs in-house HR for its core engineering and product workforce, outsourcing some recruitment-screening services and specialist training. Its strategic HR investment is the differentiator that supports its product velocity.

Pick Atlassian; cover strategic role, three mechanisms, and the contribution to objectives.