Leading Global Workforce - Assignment Example

Leading Global Workforce While considering the 21st century organizations and the way they want to respond to market needsand economic shifts, the concept of diversity would be the key element structuring their workforce. With the emergence of globalization, cross border flow of people increased so as to take advantages of potential job opportunities in the overseas markets. In the current context of intense market competition, modern organizations believe that efficiency, creativity, loyalty, and diversity must be some key characteristics that their workforce need to have.

As Caligiuri, Lepak and Bonache (2010) point out, since most of the modern organizations operate with a global view, they think that maintaining a culturally diverse workplace environment is essential to accomplish their long term objectives (p.na). A global recruitment approach can really benefit the organizations to access human talent and professional expertise effectively. The firms may rely on their permanent employees to perform managerial tasks and other crucial organizational tasks whereas they may use contingent workers to do their less important or monotonous nature of work.

According to Stickney (2008, p.35), cost saving is the major benefit of using contingent workers because organizations do not need to pay temporary workers for downtime. In addition, companies do not want to offer benefits such as vacation time, holiday pay, sick leave, and health insurance to temporary workers. Another advantage is that it provides organizations with a broad talent pool from which they can select during special projects with a short deadline. According to Denisi and Griffin (2005, p.548), decreased loyalty and productivity may be the major demerits of using contingent workers as these people depend on a number of employers to earn income.

High training costs is another risk of this employment strategy because contingent professionals are less likely to work for a single organization in the long term. In order to consider contingent work as beneficial and practical, employers’ and employees’ viewpoints and notions of work and career need to be changed. First, employers should understand that contingent workers can contribute significantly to the organizational productivity even if they work for a temporary period. In addition, they should not consider the training costs for contingent workers as non-productive spending.

Likewise, employees should not think that contingent workers would threaten their job but identify the supporting role the contingent professionals play in the organization. Employees should never consider contingent workers as second-class citizens with low levels of commitment to the organization. A portfolio career can be simply defined as a combination of smaller and more flexible work roles rather than just a single job. Better control over the work is the major benefit of choosing a portfolio career because individuals are in full control of whom they work for under this model.

Hopson and Ledger (2010, p.203) indicate that effective time management is another benefit of this career model as workers can maintain a better balance between different elements of the portfolio. Lack of infrastructure is the prime disadvantage of the portfolio career model because workers do not have either a permanent location or colleagues. The workers’ cash inflow would be affected during off-season and hence non-guaranteed income appears to be another potential challenge of this profession.

However, the portfolio career model greatly fits with the emerging organizational structure, flexible operational environment, and need for talented workers on an ‘as needed basis’.References Caligiuri, P., Lepak, D & Bonache, J. (2010). Managing the Global Workforce. John Wiley & Sons. Denisi, A. S & Griffin, R. W. (2005). Human Resource Management. Dreamtech Press. Hopson, B & Ledger, K. (2010). And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career. A&C Black. Stickney, L. T. (2008). Contingent Workers and Competitive Position: The Effect of Contingent Worker Use on Organizational Performance. ProQuest.