The Procter & Gamble Company - Managing People in the Global Context - Example

Managing People - Global Context Managing People - Global Context INTRODUCTION The Procter & Gamble Company is aimed at offering packaged goods to customers, which are of greater quality and value in a way that improve their lives. In fact, the company has been a leader in the retail goods with their goods being sold in more than one hundred and eighty countries. Moreover, they are focused on mass merchandisers, e-commerce, grocery stores, membership and club stores, drug stores, department stores. Nevertheless, this paper focuses on discussing the way Human Resource policies in Procter & Gamble Company fit with the five-factor framework, which entails; strategy, workforce, culture, technology and environment. In addition, each of the five factors has a high influence on the Human Resource policies in any organization. In fact, an organization without congruence between these factors and the HR polices can result to failure in sustainability of employees. HUMAN RESOURCE POLICIES 1. Compliance with regulation and business conduct policies in P&G All employees around the world are expected to conform to the laws and business conduct policies in P&G. In this case, employees are charged with the responsibility of understanding these policies and their requirement in order to apply them to their job. Moreover, they are expected to inform the management in a situation where there is a violation of these laws in the organization (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 12). 2. Policy regarding their personal behaviours in the workplace The company has a basic policy that facilitates treatment of all employees with respect (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 13). Moreover, the company strives to offer a safe and productive working environment, which entails lack of violence for employees, visitors or contractors. In this case, each employee is charged with a personal responsibility to other employees in the company. Therefore, this policy contributes to elimination of action and situation that undermine favourable working environment. 3. Prohibition of Child Labour and Worker Exploitation The Company prohibits use of forced labour or underage in their global operations or facilities, whereby they do not accept mistreatment of workers (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 13). Moreover, the company prohibits exploitation of children, physical punishment on employees, abuse, or instinctive servitude. Therefore, the company focuses on upholding respect for all the employees in terms of the right to freedom and interaction with third parties, consultants, and engaging in collective bargaining. In addition, there are expectations by the Company for the suppliers and contractors to maintain the same standards. However, in case the pattern of violation of the policies is identified by the Company, the consequence is discontinuation of business relationship. 4. Wage and Hour Practices Employees in this Company are highly compensated through competitive wages; in fact, this has become a benchmark with other leading companies (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 13). The Company encourages a form of consistency with their principles through which personal mastery is evaluated and employees are rewarded due to improvement of their skills and capabilities. Moreover, the company focuses on complying with applicable wage and hour laws, rules and regulations, which entail a minimum wage, overtime and maximum hours. 5. Health, Safety and Environmental Policies The Company focuses on upholding health, safety, and environmental policies, which are derived from the principles, values and legal requirements for the regulatory agencies and government (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 14). Moreover, compliance with laws in P&G relates to the core values focusing on a single priority for the company health, safety, and environment programs. 6. HIV/AIDS Policy The Company’s employees including those affected by HIV or AIDS receive health care services consistently as a requirement of the Company’s Purpose, Values & Principles (PVP). Therefore, these employees are treated through the dignity and respect, which prohibits discrimination against individuals based on the differences in terms of performance. In this case, employees suffering from HIV/AIDS receive similar treatment as those with other serious illnesses (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 14). 7. Conflict of Interest The employee engaging in any form of relationship based on business, financial or personal relationship are bound to act in the best interest of the company. Therefore, interference of this obligation from the personal or financial relationship leads to a conflict of interest, which arises in the organization (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 14). Moreover, this relates to a situation, where a person uses their position in the Company for the purpose of personal gain. On the other hand, there are requirements by the company for employees to disclose conflicts of interest in order to take necessary measures for eliminating them. 8. Employee Privacy Employees’ privacy and dignity is highly upheld in the Company, whereby they collect and retain their personal information, which is required in other effective operations or law (Procter & Gamble, 2009, 14). Therefore, personal information gathered from employees has to be kept confidential and it is disseminated due to a legitimate reason and with the consent of employees. FIVE-FACTORS FRAMEWORK 1. Strategy Human resource policies are based on the organizations distinct competence and consideration of their long-term goals. Moreover, there should be a consideration of the strategies in the organization that can support implementation of the HR polices. In fact, HR policies are recognized to be a part of organization’s core strategy and a crucial part of decision-making process in Human Resource department. Moreover, these HR policies are based on the plans and operations through a substantial focus on the objectivity, integrity, and judgment in the organization. In order to achieve a successful implementation of HR policies there is need to establish the conditions that satisfy needs of the decision makers in the organization. Therefore, HR policies are applied as significant tool for making decisions regarding the welfare of employees. In this case, HR policies offer effective means of identifying employee concerns in the organization. Without managerial support through formulation and implementation of HR policies, there can be a significant setback in organization and a reason for failure to achieving their objectives. Moreover, lack of managerial support in the organization is attributed to other factors, whereby they may lack necessary knowledge to facilitate implementation of these policies, while others lack knowledge for interpretation of the policies. On the other hand, managers lack information on ways to apply the HR polices in various situations in their department. Lastly, other managers’ possess preconceived notions, which may lead to obstruction of their perceptions of implementing these policies. 2. Workforce Workforce being one of the constituent of in five-factor framework, and it relates to demographics features such as social homogeneity in terms of consistency based on education and work experience. Moreover, workforce homogeneity entails the skills, which are incorporated in the process of implementing HR policies. In fact, these demographic factors can contribute to impediment of strategies, which promote the implementation of these policies. The HR managers are expected to possess a set of skills that can facilitate implementation of HR policies. Moreover, there is need for increasing the degree of understanding HR policies, which are required by the organization to meet the needs of the workforce. However, there are situations, where these policies may be ambiguous in nature and the HR manager is expected to identify steps of directing the workforce to finding their own resolutions. In addition, there are chances of Micro-management to undermine the effort made to increase effectiveness of the workforce. In fact, this can also contribute to inhibition of performance, whereby employees become dependent on the guidance of resentful interference. If the HR manager offers insignificant direction to the workforce, there are increased chances of misleading employees due to confusion concerning composition of team deliverables. There is need for a level of directives in a situation where there is no project structure since there are chances of reduced effectiveness. On the other hand, HR policies require effective planning aimed at enhancing the performance of employees in a way that facilitate acquiring of necessary understanding of thought process and concerns of their colleagues. Therefore, with proper planning HR managers are able to ensure that products are aligned with customers’ requirements; thus, creating a strategy for satisfying their needs. HR policies are formulated in a way that they offer support to the workforce in order to explore their full potential by employing their skills. Moreover, this promote their creativeness; thus, making them resourceful and promote their passion for delving into problems faced by the organization. In fact, this facilitates delivery of goods in a form that is utilizable by customers. HR polices facilitates acquisition and deployment of skills and resources in a way that invariably interlinks a broad array of expertise. These policies encourage creation of working teams, which does not entail members with similar skills or education background. 3. Culture Organization’s culture refers to norms of behaviour, work attitude and morals and postulation, which oversees behaviours in the organization (Baron & Kreps, 1999, 45). Moreover, it is considered structural and cultural feature of the organization, upon which implementation of HR polices can be based. In this case, despite declaration of HR policies to be an integral component of its structure, there is need to encourage acceptance and appropriate utilization of the HR policies it the organization. There are chances that some department in organization fail to understand the need for implementing HR policies. This can lead to deluging of HR policies implementation process. On the other hand, there are requests to reform policies that lead to wastage of valuable time and resources in the organization. In fact, this may involve request of information, which is redundant and with unreasonable results after implementation. In this case, the policies should be formulated in a way that they conform to organization culture in order to avoid confusion among employees. Moreover, formulations of HR policies compatible with organization’s culture can facilitate implementation process. Issues regarding reforms, implementation and removal of certain HR policies in the organization are communicated in terms of the employee needs. However, there are situations where there are uncertainties of requirements in the organization. Therefore, this creates a need for building extensive information network within the organization. In fact, these information networks are expected to offer a way of meeting employees’ needs based on the organization culture. On the other hand, there are situations where employees are polarized by their perceptions towards the HR policies in the organization. Therefore, the only aspect of the organization that contributes to implementation of the policies is the culture. Nevertheless, there are cultural obstacles in the process of implementing the HR policies. These cultural obstacles are overcome through the effort to achieve set objectives in the organization and involvement of employees. 4. Technology Technology has one of the elements of the five-factor framework relate to a broader spectrum of information. There are HR policies are that are based on the concerns with available technology, which is focused on the labour inputs that are to be converted to outputs. There are elements that are concerned with tasks organization and coordination in order to facilitate full utilization. This situation requires effective application of HR policies, whereby employees are able to understand thing that they are required to do in order to remain orderly. In this case, HR policies are based on contemplation of skill requirement of employees, monitoring and task uncertainty and originality. Recruitment of employees in the organization for vacancies in the Information System department is based on HR policies based on skills requirement. In fact, this increases the organization competence in undertaking various projects in the information system department. Moreover, HR policies are utilized through investment aimed offering relevant and extensive training for employees, which is necessary for facilitating success in various projects. In addition, the HR policies facilitate maintenance of practices of selective hiring, whereby only individuals with proper talents and aptitudes can be hired for a certain job. For instance, employees are expected to posses’ relevant technological skills in order to meet the needs of the organization. 5. Environment Environment is one of the elements in five factor framework forces of social, political, legal and economic forces. In this case, social forces relates to the society’s prevalent custom and appreciation of various social responsibilities of the firm. Political forces relates to enforcement and expectation by the corporations and government. Legal forces focus on various concerns relating to lawful responsibilities in the organization and rights upheld by individual and group of workers. On the other hand, economical forces relates to conditions prevailing in the local market and those that entail degree of mobility and competitive economic pressures faced by the organization (Baron & Kreps, 1999, 46). Moreover, the social, political and legal forces have a substantial influence on the implementation of HR policies based on the measures taken to address the concerns of corporate ethics and maintaining ethical standards. a. Social Forces The public may have misconception towards the HR policies in the organization, thereby considering these policies to be an illegitimate collection of business practices copied from competitors. On the other hand, others can consider the policies to involve a form of espionage or unethical requirements imposed on employees. In this case, members of the society who are misinformed may have a negative attitude towards the organization’s HR policies. However, there are reduced chances that these misconceptions can lead to consequences on the organization since the organization is highly dependent on employee performance. Nevertheless, there is need to develop an internal code of conduct, which is based on an outline of ethical obligations proposed by the HR policies. b. Political and Legal Forces There are situations where an organization decides to enforce application of unethical methodology in a way that offers guidance to support ethical conduct. Nevertheless, no matter the strategy applied by the organization, there is a direct impact involved in terms of the employee performance. On the other hand, adoption of unethical practices can exert pressure on employees whereby they appease due to fear of punishment. In fact, this can result to compromising their ethical standards. Therefore, a rifting of obligations and loyalty in the organization can lead to employees depart on negative terms. c. Economic Forces The economic force relates to competitive industry, which encourage maintenance of relevant information for the organizations operations. In fact, this information is vital when the organization has plans to make additional investment to offer sufficient training to employees. On the other hand, the job mobility and turnover increases in the industry to favourable HR policies. In addition, the HR policies facilitate effective development of expertise in the field in order to reduce chances of luring employees away to competitors. Nevertheless, there are situation where HR policies based on the economic forces can to negative consequences to the organization. However, in case this problem occurs, the organization seek invest resources in a way that replaces and trains new staff. References Baron, J.N. & Kreps. D.M., (1999), Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers, New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, Inc Porter, M. (1980), Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, New York, NY: Free Press Procter & Gamble, (2009), Our Values and Policies, P&G Global Sustainability, Retrieved from: http://www.pg.com/images/company/who_we_are/pdf/values_and_policies907.pdf Read More