Human resource management – Term Paper

Duties of HR department

Human resource administration is an essential department inside an association in this manner; it ought to be directed viably to make organization’s progress inside the association. The human asset administration office is ordered with the representatives’ administration straightforwardly and managing the individuals is a testing undertaking in firm since the association achievement is specifically identified with the inspiration and satisfaction of the workers. The Human resource department applies particular speculations and methods of insight to help them in dealing with their representatives. Some of these theories incorporate the utilitarianism standard and the joy rule as clarified below.   

Human Resource management is tasked with things such as enrolling, preparing, and coordinating the human capital inside the association. The Human Asset office manages the pay, contracting, correspondence, representative inspiration, benefits, execution, security, organization, and preparing of the workers of the association. The Human Asset administration is a key approach utilized as a part of dealing with the association’s human capital and the working environment culture.

Human resource management is a fundamental unit in the association that directly affects the association achievement. Successful administration of the workers results to improved and viable performance of an orgnization. Compelling administration of the workers’ wins their dependability along these lines prompting to inspiration of the representatives. The Human Resource administration practices are advancing from the conventional practices, that is on the grounds that by and by, the human asset administration practices are exhaustive and are gone for enhancing the workers and guaranteeing that the workers projects are decidedly influencing the firm and can be qualified or quantified. 

Importance of hr management

Modern-day individual’s administration is the arranging, driving, and controlling the association’s workers to accomplish the objectives the company. It is concerned with legitimate use of the workers by the HR office to amplify the yield of the workers likewise. In the contemporary world, the significance of job rotation cannot be overlooked. Human resource managers tend to relocate employees from one subsidiary branch to another or from the parent company to subsidiaries. Those employees are not only relocated to commuting distances, but others are relocated to a foreign country or a different state. This involves employees at all levels ranging from entry to top executive.

Employee relocation is one of the functions of human resources, which supports business organizations, which have operations in a number of locations. The organizations relocate their staffs to meet the workforce demands.

Over the previous years, there has been an increase in the number of companies that are expanding to international market. The international expansion of business has brought along several challenges to human resource department. Up to now, it shows that the current rapid transformation in business will continue to pose a number of issues to human resource managers.;

Considering that a manager is a top executive who is aged enough and qualifies to have a family,; there is a great possibility that he will have a feeling that relocating him/her will disrupt his life as well as his/her family. According to the research conducted by Armstrong and Taylor (2014), it was revealed that these disruptions change with the distance that one is supposed to move. For instance, when a manger is moving from Australia to Canada the disruption is more greater because one will have to transfer his/ her children from one school to another. Further, another cost such as buying and selling houses, settling-in cost and transportation cost will be incurred.

Another reason that makes employees reluctant to move is that they avoid breaking the ties and relations they have established with other members of the community as well as other staffs. The same also applies to the spouse and children of an employee who is being transferred. As explained by Bratton and Gold (2012), the help provided by the employer, or demand placed on employee can make the change difficult or easier.;;

Employee retention strategies

Over the previous decade, there have been cases of employees who have quitted their job due to transfers. In this case, you find that an individual does not want to incur the cost associated with relocation. Australia and Canada are two countries that are located on different continents. This means that the culture in this nation varies significantly. A manager will need time to adapt to the new culture. The same is true of the employee’s children as well as spouse. Summarizing the work of many others claimed that these nations have different climatic conditions thus an employee’s who has a weak health will find it difficult to adapt. Canada is associated with snow and cold weather. Similarly, different nations have different political and economic climate, which will also require time for one to adapt.

; Whenever a manager quits a job because of attempted transfer, it becomes a big blow to the organizations. Firstly, managers are among the top executives who are highly experienced and have a good understanding of the organization culture. Secondly, most of the employees promoted to managers are the best-performing employees. Finally, the extra cost will have to be incurred when recruiting another individual to replace the outgoing.

There exist a number of cultural differences between the people who live in Canada and Australia. Different believes norms and values will make the environment difficult to adapt for a manager transferred from; ;Australia to go and work in Canada. There are some of norms and values that are acceptable in Australia, and they are not acceptable in Canada.

; It will also take time to establish new relationships in a new country. This does not only involve establishing a good relationship with the community but also with other staffs as well as the customers. The managers have to understand the customer’s preference; factors influencing their buying behaviors and how they interact to be able to perform their job efficiently. 

Human resource management practices 

Human resource management practices can be perceived as being most influenced by action within the organization or the firm or at the national level through operation of employment laws, regulations, customs and historical practices (institutions). These two agencies and contexts, firms and institutions, relate to each in contradictory ways.

Firms are constrained by their institutional settings – the national laws forcing firms to behave in certain ways if they operate within the particular national institutional environment (Thelen, 2004). However, firms can also operate in other environments and multinational or transnational organizations have a ‘choice’ of territory, and hence they can seek to change the existing arrangements in their local context with the sanction of ‘exit’ if the change is not forthcoming. Or they can partially exit the national institutional setting and locate part of their operations in other institutional environments (Ferner & Quintanilla, 1998).

The Strength of the relationship between firms and institutions

One way of thinking about the relationship between firms and institutions is to consider the relative strength of the two as they interact. This allows for a number of combinations that can help us consider the relationship between the two. 

As a result, the possibilities on how the National frameworks influence the nature of HRM practice include the following:

Strong Institutions (SI) and Weak Firms (WF)

SI and WF would mean that the national institutional environment exerted more influence over firm level policies, and firms were nationally marked and perhaps tired. To explain the HRM practices within the firm it would be sensible to start at the national institutional level because it is here that policies are enacted which then get imposed on the firms (Chaganti & Damanpour, 1991). 

In this context, it is recommended that HRM was not possible in China because decision-making on HR issues could not be located at the firm level. However, reform has expanded the power of the firm, which in terms of HRM, can now select and pay workers according to internal not external criteria. 

Strong Firms (SF) and Weak Institutions (WI)

SF and WI would refer to environments where the state relative to the MNC(s) is weak, more divided or competitively structured, and therefore the MNC has considerable leverage over institutions. This could be the case in many developing countries that are desperate for foreign direct investment (FDI) and as they are developing, they perceive modernization, technology transfer and con- temporary management practices coming into the country through the MNC. This does not mean that the developing country has no ‘cultural’ or historical practices that have implications for the organization of work and employment relations, or that these will differ between one developing country and an- other (Thelen, 2004). 

One only has to think of Mexico, India, Vietnam, and Indonesia, to see that by religion, politics, size, location, etc there is as much to divide as unite them as industrializing societies. But in all four Special Economic Zones have been established to cater for FDI through MNCs, and provide reduced labor regulation that gives MNCs greater autonomy from the national institutional environment. In addition to developing countries having a weaker institution- al fields, there are also differences between developed countries (Black, 2000).

Strong Firms (SF) and Strong Institutions (SI)

SF and SI are societies in which national institutions and national firms are mutually strong, and in order to identify the sources of HRM practices one would have to look at the institutional and firm level practices when exploring the home country, but just the firm when analyzing the MNC from the strong institutional setting (Thelen, 2004). 

In the more liberal market or laissez-faire economies, such as the UK and US, as well as strong state economies, such as in Germany, Japan, and Scandinavian countries, strong firms and strong institutions are present. American MNCs and Japanese MNCs possess distinctive ownership characteristics that can be traced back to their home territory. In the topics in the first part of the course, we will examine the differences between these countries and the effects this has on HRM practices at the firm, especially MNC, level. 

Utilitarian organization

The utilitarianism principle and the contemporary people management are related since the latter strives to promote the utilitarianism principle in the organization through using and integrating the ethical practices in order to attain the motivation and therefore happiness of the employees. The human resource management ensures that the ethical goals are met in order to attain the utilitarianism that states that a good life is achieved mainly by the pursuit of the happiness and the pleasure by the individual.

Business ethics is a vital element that contributes to the success of the business entities. The utilitarianism principle stresses the application of ethical practices of the organization as it implies that the ethical practices are what results to effective way to apply the utilitarianism principle in the organization. The HR deals with the human capital directly; therefore it faces many ethical threats that could damage the image and reputation of the company or even the financial sustainability of the company in case the threats are not tackled effectively and in time (Peterson, 2005). The following are the importance of ethics in the HR management.

An employer with good reputation would attract the top talent human capital to the company since the employees want the best relationship with the employers to enhance their productivity and working environment (Paliwal, 2006). The company with a good reputation attracts more customers and retains the existing ones therefore, leading to customer loyalty. Moreover, the company with poor reputation would not attract most skilled, creative, and experienced employees which may make the company not perform better as anticipated.

Organizational ethics

A company that holds ethical practices will win the employees loyalty and trust. The company with a long term loyalty and trust has considerable advantages for example; a loyal employee masters the production processes and understanding of the company operations. That leads to maximization of the efficiency and productivity of the employees.  The marketing department also benefits from the loyal employees because it gives easy marketing and sales of the product due to high productivity and quality products and services. 

The HR management should apply the utilitarianism principle in the management of its employees together with other philosophies in order to achieve the most success for the employees. The integration of the ethical practices in the organization management structure results to motivation of the employees and results to considerable advantages that accrue to the organization. There are many advantages that accrue to the organization that upholds the ethical practices when dealing with their employees for example: increased reputation of the company, increased employee loyalty, improvement of the image of the organization, customer loyalty, and employee motivation which results to employee happiness thus application of the utilitarianism principle.