Segments of Corporate and Industrial Business - Case Study Example

Human Resources Management It is a fact that those companies which are ready to upgrade their human resources regimes are indeed the ones that have found success in different segments of corporate and industrial business. With minor changes here and there, these companies have taken giant strides in their respective human resources fields and thus made a mark for their own selves. It is a common phenomenon that a business can move away from a stand of firmness and consistency to one of a comprehensive weak one as the same is willing to grab hold of the varied means present within the market as well as the driving factors. Thus for this reason a business needs to tilt its position every now and then in order to live up with the changing times under different conditions considering the presence of its competitors and importantly the customers. United Kingdom has witnessed a lot of change within the economical shifts of late. What this echoes is the fact that people and more so the companies have started to move out of UK in the wake of achieving different goals for their own selves and in a quest to achieve what they have not been able to, in the yesteryears. As far as companies are concerned, they do so in order to achieve long term profits and maximum earning on their invested capital. They want to achieve figures which have not been attained thus far and in order to meet their objectives, they think of leaving their country and moving out. [Sims, 2002] The motivation in such a circumstance would be to move out of the country and thus make these companies available for other economies and not for the UK economy which would be a huge loss for the country nonetheless. Thus if anything to go by the recent trends, one could expect a lot of changes to happen in the coming times and there would be shifts in the economic bases and settings if seen purely from an economic standpoint. The society might lose out on its share of different companies and businesses and they would experience their economy to slide as a result as the top organizations of the country decide to move overseas and thus make for a better business regime. As far as the United Kingdom human resources culture is concerned, we find that the work culture there has been developed in a way which actually suits the basis of the interests of the organization in the best possible manner. One needs to know that he lives in an ever changing world where human resources has played a significant role whereby the changes have pretty much been dramatic to state the least. When one speaks of the human resources function within a company’s cultural setting, he finds out that presently the business world really requires an uplift within different facets in order to adopt the procedure related with working towards the establishment of different performance management systems. These are linked closely with the human resources’ ever changing regimes and would continue to be the case in the immediate future as well. [Bishop, 1991] This ensures the organization a lot of incentives as they find that their employees start putting in their best efforts which eventually helps the very fabric of the organization and does good for their personal achievements as well. What these performance management systems do is to give a proper idea regarding the check and balance mechanism which is linked with the people who are the employees and workers of the organization. Without a shadow of a doubt, an organization can literally change from a state of dominance to a position of inferiority in the wake of gathering the share of the market and its different forces making their mark in the related contexts. What this means is the fact that a firm needs to amend its ways and thus alter its position every now and then in order to remain in line with the changing regimes so that it does not vanish from the market altogether and has its individual self restored as well. In order to reach the top, it is of paramount importance to comprehend the fact that skilled employees and workers form the key to an organization’s success in the long run and the human resources department needs to play its active role all said and done. The companies which have moved out of United Kingdom in the recent times include mainly the call centers and related industries which indeed gives an idea as to what the company owners have in their mind and how best they have tried to re-position their strategies and tactics with the passage of time. Hence the companies which have their sole focus on technology and its different shades have moved out of United Kingdom or outsourced their business to third world countries like India, Pakistan and so on because the labor in these countries is cheap and the operating expenses are minimal as compared to running a business within United Kingdom. There is the aspect of moving the company completely by such owners as well, as stated before and at times, the outsourcing paves the way for their business to succeed, operating it from an offshore campus and thus earning money sitting from a distance. The latter is also an exercise which reaps huge dividends in the related scheme of things. The offshore movement of jobs has become an issue not only in travel but also in other industries. Two such nations which stand out in this scenario are India and the Philippines that appear to be the most popular locations for setting up call centers as these countries offer a pond of civilized, scholarly English-speaking personnel who will do the same amount of work as their American counterparts for much lesser money. Shifting jobs to lower-wage countries is a form of what is known as offshore outsourcing and is indeed an increasingly popular practice among UK businesses seeking to cut operating costs. Outsourcing in the field of Information Technology is nothing new as in recent years it has changed shape several times to reflect new, and arguably better-planned, organizational objectives. And best practices for creating contracts are now evolving that promise to move outsourcing from a road often pockmarked with potholes and lawsuit-bound to a more reliable relationship for both provider and customer. There has been a general perception that outsourcing means taking jobs away from a region, particularly if we talk about the United Kingdom. When one speaks of the tenet of employee motivation at workplace, he must understand that the same becomes a plus point for the employee and/or the worker to perform to his best possible levels and thus provide the productivity that is need from him, both in the crunch times and under normal circumstances. [Green, 1999] It facilitates to the working basis of the organization as well as the people who are on the top – they come to know of the employee’s potentials as well as their organization’s strengths. Also they get assured of the commitment levels of the employees on a proactive basis as well as the intensity of the hard work that they will put in day in day out. This would also include the most strenuous of circumstances. Human motivation seems to exist only if the top management understands the concerns of the employees and tries its best to allay them with the passage of time. However this motivation seems to fade out sooner rather than later if the top hierarchies present within the organizations do not take any note of the basic needs and requirements of the employees and start giving them a tough time all said and done. A conflict within an organization can take place due to differing personalities of the employees or in their attitudes that lead in their linkage with each other. This could also happen due to their norms and behaviors which might not be liked by any one party (person) and thus lead to a conflict of thoughts, ideas, actions and eventual behaviors towards each other. There is a degree of power when we speak of the manager in terms of the same over his subordinate or the employee who is working under him in a direct or an indirect capacity. [Fulton, 1998] Different conflict handling styles include avoidance of the conflict in the first place which will ensure that the two persons within the organizational set up remain at peace and understand each other’s personalities. The second one is that of accommodating where each of these persons would accommodate the personality traits of each other and thus listen to one another. This can lead to understanding which can be reached between the two of them. The third conflict handling style encompasses collaboration which asks them to shed their differences and work in unison with a common goal, preferably of the company, in mind. The fourth conflict handling mannerism is that of compromising where each of these can just forgive and forget and thus move on for the betterment of each other’s relationship amongst the organizational set up. [Killian, 2003] The last one is forcing which can make matters even worse since it could even be of physical and at times verbal nature. This is the least desired of the five conflict handling measures. At most of the times the top echelon within an organization delegates tasks and jobs to their sub-ordinates without even coming to think of the correct way in which to assign a sub-ordinate work and responsibilities. Often this becomes a problem for the employee who in all goodwill wants to make his mark and prove to his senior his worth but falls short of the expectation and thus has a bad repute within the relevant circles. This, in no way undermines the amount of work that he gives in but if taken in a realistic setting, the same happens for all the wrong reasons. Employers are of the view that this form of delegation and assignment of tasks and duties would benefit the organization as well as provide their own selves relief from the work which lies pending on their shoulders and forget the fact that the sub-ordinates have a lot of work of their own that they need to get completed and out of the way. [Hacker, 1990] Therefore this is regarded as the wrong approach if seen in the proper contexts and is one of the reasons why human resources departments and indeed the organizations find a lot of their worthy and skilled staff leaving them on an early level. An alternative in such a situation is to recruit top level managers who understand the psyche of the people working under them so that they better utilize the resources and thus get the best possible result for the organization. However, on the part of an employee, being able to do more amount of work is considered a plus as well as an added advantage but it must not exceed his undertaking levels at any point in time. As far as United Kingdom is concerned, diversity is established in the area of managing the people in an effective manner with the help of a manager. [Galang, 1993] This manager not only takes care of the people working under him but also acts as a person who is professional and knows how to get work done from them, be it the specialists, the technicians or other sub-ordinates which are there within the different echelons of the organization. When one fathoms about the aspect of recruitment and selection within the United Kingdom, there is an interesting presentation in the related contexts. What is significant here to understand is the fact that the aspects of selection demand rigid and hard challenges to be made by the recruiters - the organization’s human resources department as well as the top management as they have to take the best man possible on the job, coming from different professional backdrops. The workers need to be taken as human beings first and foremost and then they should be assigned work in a way that is equivalent with their job capacities and focus. In other words, the amount of work which must be given to them should be commensurate with their management skills and capacity measures. Merely getting work completed through them is an exercise in futility since the end result is one which does not help anyone and the organization suffers as a result of the same. Organizational diversity means what kind of organizational working a company usually has within its folds. This could be in the form of a centralized fashion or a company which has a decentralized approach as far as its working methodologies are concerned. The centralized diversity of an organization understands the fact that the supreme basis of instructions and commands rests with only one single party and all the other staff members encircle this post of authority. It might also be true that an organization has different departments and within those different units, there is either the provision of centralized or decentralized approach. The decentralized form of diversity takes its basis from the rationale that more the number of staff members or employees within the organization, more distributed are the chain of command and authority within them. This means that there is little check and balance mechanism on their part and they are their own bosses. The organizational diversity thus stems from the ideology that the more complex the working systems of the organization, the more likely there would be problems within the whole organization and thus check and control would be less minimized. As far as United Kingdom is concerned, this could be made appropriate if the human rights policies and strategies are proportionate with the policies that have been laid down in the companies’ act of United Kingdom. What this means is that the laws that allow for the effective handling of employees as well as the workers within United Kingdom need to be followed so that the top management understands what is best for them and how they can contribute in an effective manner to the well being of the employees and the workers as well. The end result should be one that benefits all and sundry and not only that but also the UK government and its related departments. BIBLIOGRAPHY BISHOP, Terence R. (1991). Functional Requisites of Human Resources: Personnel Professionals’ and Line Managers’ Criteria for Effectiveness. Public Personnel Management, Vol. 20 FULTON, Richard L. (1998). Motivation, Emotions and Leadership: The Silent Side of Management. Quorum Books GALANG, M. Carmen. (1993). Diversity in the Workplace: The Human Resources Management Challenges. Human Resource Planning, Vol. 16 GREEN, Thad B. (1999). Motivation, Beliefs and Organizational Transformation. Quorum Books HACKER, Hartmut. (1990). Work Motivation. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates KILLIAN, Jerri. (2003). Handbook of Conflict Management. Marcel Dekker SIMS, Ronald R. (2002). Organizational Success through Effective Human Resources Management. Quorum Books Word Count: 2,405 Read More