Human Resource Managers of Multinational Enterprises

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Key Issues
Solutions
Reference List

Introduction

The objective of global work force planning is to estimate employment needs of the multinational enterprises and to develop plans for meeting those needs. In all multinational enterprises, human resource management is a key to success; for the vast majority of organizations, the cost of the people who do the work is the largest single item of operating costs that can be controlled and adapted to circumstances.

Increasingly, in the modern world the capabilities and the knowledge incorporated in an organization’s human resources are the key to success. On both the cost and benefits sides’ of the equation, human resource management is crucial to the survival, performance, and success of the enterprise.

For international organizations, the additional complications of dealing with multicultural assumptions about the way people should be managed become important contributors to the chances of that success. The international context adds extra complexity to the management of people beyond that found in a purely national setting.

The organization managing people in different institutions, legal, and cultural circumstances has to be aware not only of what is allowed and not allowed in the different nations and regions of the world, but also of what makes for cost-effective management practices.

This paper looks at the key issues faced by human resource managers of multinational enterprises, the possible solutions to deal with these issues, and the ethical implications of the problem and the solution

Key Issues

The quality of a firms’ talent is central to its ability to learn and perform. Today, this is a global issue for every enterprise. One of the problems faced by managers of multinational enterprises is in relation to staffing and planning the work force. The challenge of staffing the global enterprise is both complex and difficult.

In addition to normal home country hiring responsibilities, staffing in multi-national enterprises include staffing in all foreign operations plus the highly challenging responsibilities connected to relocation of employees from one country to another. In today’s talent shortage environment, staffing multinational enterprises has truly become a problem of a global talent management.

For many years, staffing policies and practices of multinational enterprises were developed from the perspective of headquarters and the culture of the parent country, involving primarily concerns about employees sent on expatriate assignments to foreign subsidiaries and the staffing of local employees at home and in host country subsidiaries (Holland & De Cieri 2006).

But today’s staffing policies and practices have become more complex, involving a mobile, global work force, located in acquired enterprises in foreign locales and those located in traditional subsidiaries. Partially as a result of this globalization of staffing, one of the recent trends has included a shift in the numbers of workers in multinational enterprises from western countries to emerging markets.

Even though the use of expatriates has seemed to be the logical choice for staffing international operations, at least for startups, technology transfer, and major managerial positions, such as director and sales manager, several problems with the use of expatriates have led multinational enterprise to seek other options for achieving their objectives in their foreign operations.

Some of these issues include making mistakes in the choice of employees for international assignments, and the high cost of these assignments, difficulties in providing adequate training and support for employees and their families on international assignments and the resulting problems with their adjustment to the foreign situation.

One of the results of increased globalization, modern technology, and global communications on the global labor market is that people with the education and skills needed in today’s global economy are increasingly available everywhere, making potential employees available from all racial and ethnic origins and nationalities. This has the effect of dramatically increasing the level of employee diversity which global firms must cope.

In addition, employees in the global firm come from many groups that in the past and in many countries did not participate much in the labor market, including the young and the old, male and female, disabled, married or single, and people from diverse religious affiliations.

As the number of employees increase, the rate of job turn over rises as employees move from one enterprise to the other in search of better opportunities. There is need for organizations and enterprise to ensure that employees with the best skills and qualifications are retained (Storey 1998).

Solutions

Business Strategies

Multinational enterprises, in order to be successful in the global marketplace, must develop business strategies that take advantage of global resources and markets, including their human resources functions. In order for human resources managers to make an effective contribution to that success, they have to learn how to contribute to the global strategic management of the enterprise.

Since firms differ in their levels of international development and in the scope of their international operations, managers must be able to assist in the development of those global operations, no matter their scope. In an ideal world, firms will regularly analyze their external environments and their internal capabilities and resources in order to develop strategies for competitive advantage and continuing success.

This can be achieved through training and counseling. Training is an ongoing process to develop internal consistency within the firm and adjustments to the external environment. At jet star Airways, the HR is responsible for the day to day activities and is usually motivated through incentive schemes and trainings. It is composed of talented personnel who go through a period of training before being assigned any responsibility.

Selection and recruitment of staff normally take place during the peak season when there is a high demand for its services. Employees’ duties and responsibilities are stipulated by the organization structure and workers work in teams and they are empowered to nurture a culture of innovation.

Human Resource Planning

Among all the things managers do, nothing affects a company’s ultimate success or failure more fundamentally than how well its management team charts the company’s long-term direction, develops competitively effective strategic moves and business approaches, and implements what needs to be done internally to produce good strategy execution. This can be accomplished with a well developed plan for managing human resources.

This is the establishment of approaches that are to be used in matching the workforce skills to the needs of an organization. It is the procedure that is used in recruitment, employee retention, and optimization of human resources employment that is needed to achieve organization goal.

Human resource planning involves analysis of skills of current workforce, forecasting manpower, and being responsive of customers demand (Holland & De Cieri 2006).

Human resource planning is important in every organization because it helps the top management to view HR practices in relation to business decision.

The lack of it makes human resources expensive because HRM cannot foresee future problems in order to solve them before they become uncontrollable. It should therefore be incorporated because it guarantees that the relevant individuals are absorbed, in the right position and at the precise time (Harris, et al 2003).

Motivation

Motivation is the act of encouraging an employee to carry out a task better than he intended to. It is common for employees to take up jobs because of the motivation they get. Failure to motivate employees may result in poor performance for a company.

There are generally many forms of motivation; some employees are motivated by the challenges they encounter while carrying out their tasks, others are motivated by the attention they attract, while majority are motivated by the amount of money they expect to earn.

According to Taylor (2008), the expectancy theory is concerned with the mental processes that an employee goes through before making a choice. It tries to describe the relation between rewards and performance. Employees perceive that they should be given rewards that consummate with their organizational performance. This motivation theory was proposed by Victor Vroom, a management specialist in Yale.

It predicts that majority of employees seem to be motivated if they suppose the reward they expect to get to be directly proportional to the work done, and if they value the rewards expected from the organization (Swamson 2009). This theory emphasizes on the need to base reward on an individual’s performance.

At Wal-mart stores the HR is responsible for the day to day activities and is usually motivated through incentive schemes and trainings. Strong leadership is the cornerstone of any organization’s success and Wal-Mart is no different.

Managers’ direct involvement in the day to day running of the company, particularly, the organization of teams fosters an informal top management style, which promotes upward feedback and effective deployment of human resources according to proficiency. The CEO’s tactical leadership and the ingeniousness of Wal-Mart’s HRM are reflected in the conglomerate’s strategic expansion.

Ethical Implication

Human Resource Management is an indispensable element in the performance of a corporate organization and works together with other departments to achieve the organization’s goals. The tasks of the human resources manager are centralized on the advancement of the labor force in a corporate organization. His strategies should be in line with the needs of the organization.

Today, HR practitioners are the strategic partners to an organization. They assist in the improvement of strategies used to realize the organization’s arrangements and aims. Their responsibilities include: selection and recruitment, recognition and rewarding, development of performance contracts and appraisal, employee development and succession planning.

Cultural work practices include sharing of knowledge and information freely, risk taking, and tendency to promote and follow rules. For a methodical discussion of these practices, they have been grouped into support, rules, innovation, and coordination orientation (Smith & Mazin 2004). Support aspect in the model is related to the help or support an employee gets from an organization.

For instance, by providing different training and counseling services to employees. Innovation is the introduction and implementation of new ideas that positively benefit the organization and its members.

Thus, managers should consider innovation as the major source of competitive advantage and employees’ suggestions should be put into consideration. Coordination refers to amalgamation of efforts to ensure successful attainment of objectives. Coordination can be achieved by means of planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling

Reference List

Harris, H. et al., 2003. International Human Resource Management. London, CIPD Publishing.

Holland, P. & De Cieri, H. (Eds.) 2006. Contemporary Issues in Human Resource Development. Sydney, Pearson Education.

Smith, A. Shawn & Mazin, A. Rebecca. 2004. The HR Answer Book: An Indispensable Guide for Managers and Human Resources Professionals. New York, Amacom Div American Mgmt Assn.

Storey, J. 1998. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management. London, Cengage Learning EMEA.

Swamson, R. 2009. Foundations of Human Resource Development: Easy Read Large Edition. San Francisco: ReadHowYouWant.com

Taylor, M. 2008. Employee Recognition Schemes- Do They Work? China Staff. Vol. 14 Issue 6 p117

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