The Impacts of Human Resources Management - Research Paper Example

Explain how diversity generally impacts human resource management and development in an organization. Then, describe two or three (2 or 3) specific issues or challenges that diversity can pose for hiring, management, development, and/or retention practices, and explain how each might be addresses. The case highlights Racial and Ethnic Diversity. HR diversity practices have broadened its range beyond the Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity staffing efforts. The additional best practices involves establishing visible “Diversity Advisory Committee” that is required to conduct mandatory training and target communication to different affinity group members. For example Goodman, Fields and Blum surveyed the HR managers and found out a positive relation between emphasizing employment development and promotion and representation of women. In a cross sectional study of more than 100 organizations Konrad and Linnehan found out that HRM structures that are identity conscious and explicitly address demographic group representation in the HR decision making process are linked to greater representation of minorities and women in management. It was also found out that organizations with formalized HR practices have higher percentage of women in the management. Canada`s Employment Equity Act is that legislation which has increased workplace representation of women, minorities and disabled persons. It was fond out that employers who had formalized programs hired more women. When the effectiveness of the Employment Equity Program was measured, it was found out that the regression analysis showed strongest effect between representation of managerial women and Employment Equity Program Compliance (Examining ‘The Business Case’, Kossek, Lobel, Brown, 2005, P.58). Therefore by hiring more female candidates, minority board or staff member a cascade effect follows as these hiring make the subsequent recruitment easier through their access to a wide network of talent pool which also makes retention easier. In some of the researches by Society of Human Resource Management it was found out that the adaptation of diversity training correlated with top management diversity have little effect on increase in workforce diversity. Konrad and Linnehan found out that no there is no link between formalized HR structures and percentage of minorities at the higher ranks of management. Blum, Fields and Goodman also found out that companies that had more women and black were actually the worst places to work because in these places there were problems of lower salary, turnover which highlighted the issue that demographic diversities are not proxy for diversity initiatives. In spite of the hope that academicians and practitioners portray that diversity initiatives will lead to positive outcomes, there are occasionally undesirable impacts as well like perpetuate disparate treatment of minorities and women. Cox and Blake found out that organizations that value diversity have greater marketing capability since they mirror increasingly diverse markets. Again Brief pointed out that 75% of the black employees working in Shoney`s restaurant held jobs in lower paying and non customer contact positions because the restaurant`s white customers preferred being served by the white employees. Collin interviewed 76 black executives who were most successful in Chicago. She examined their job descriptions and coded the same into `rationalized ` if the position had some link to the African American issues or `mainstream` if the job involved roles that were without any racial implication. She found out that these executives were relegated to rationalized roles in the organizations such as the job of equal employment officer or marketing to the black people. The executives with racialized roles had lower mobility and advancement rates and their skills were less developed than those with mixed or mainstream job histories (Paul Collier, 2004, P.6) Leading corporations have been effective in hiring women and the minority but have been less successful in retaining and promoting those that have been hired. An intervention should be designed to increase the representation of women and minorities in the top level management specially in the line function that have direct profit and loss responsibility or in the functions in which they have been under represented such as engineering. Thomas and Gabarro recommended that firms should address specific racial barriers to the advancement at each stage of the career. Effectiveness can only be obtained by linking diversity to performance outcomes. Cox Lobel and McLeod formed the term ‘value in diversity’ where diversity creates benefits and values for team outcomes. The general assumption that underlines the theory is that increase in racial or ethnic diversity will help the work group in experiencing more positive outcomes such as increased information constructive conflict and debate, enhanced problem solving ability and increased understanding of different cultures and ethnicities and higher quality decisions. It also assumes that surface level diversity such as race is indicative of deeper level differences such as differential knowledge base, different sets of experience, cognitive process and schemas and different views of the world. Sackett and Dubois found out that Black ratees always received lower ratings than White ratees from both Black and White ratees. Black and White also meant difference in job performance and group differences. Other findings for the effects of race and ethnicity also suggest that individual who are different from the majority in an organization are more likely to leave, be less satisfied, and less psychologically committed. Leadership differences between Black and White are the effect of the race or ethnicity on subordinate reaction and leader behavior. Black supervisors are less directive and initiate less interaction than the White when working with subordinates who are Whites. Black leaders initiate more leader behavior when they are dealing with mixed subordinate groups. The leadership is being compared on specific dimension such as behaviors, styles, conflict management and prototypes. The case study also highlights Cultural and National Diversity. Individuals have preference in their own group (Shore, Herrera, Dean, Ehrhart, Jung, Randel, Singh, 2009, P.124). Cultural diversity generates distractions and in group alliance which can be detrimental to group performance. Again cultural diversity facilitates learning, problem solving capacities, information processing and it reduces groupthink. It acts as a moral end to correct historic discrimination and fairness. It also helps to gain access to the markets of a national or cultural group. Ely and Thomes also found out that integration and learning paradigm was the superior form of managing cultural diversity in an organization. For example Cox et al argued that Hispanic, Black Americans and Asians have a collectivist culture and Anglo Americans have a individualist culture. He also found out that Hispanic, Black Americans and Asians can engage in higher level cooperative behavior than the Anglo Americans. However such operationalization often creates potential problem of over generalization and over simplification. Hence it can be concluded that cultural differences influence organizational outcomes and the effect is positive and negative. Diversity poses a great problem on recruitment. In spite of the fact that big companies adopt Diversity Recruiting Programs (DPR), it has failed time and again to meet their goals. Businesses today are faced with greater challenges so the ability to leverage the benefits of effective DPR strategically provides a firm with competitive advantages. The global business arena faces tremendous pressure for constant reinvention and innovation. Successful DPR is essential for providing the firms the ability to acquire effective human resources. However the firms have failed to recognize the importance of DPR in achieving a recruiting program or have failed to devote money, time and personnel required to produce such program. Like most recruiting programs DPR`s are also developed on an ad hoc trial and error basis. Organizations and the program directors often do not articulate explicit goals for their programs. It is extremely difficult to assess the effectiveness of any program if the purposes and goals are not clear. Sometimes the recruiting team fails make a convincing business case to individual managers about the direct economic impact that diversity has on their ability to produce results. DPR`s also underutilize referrals as the primary source of identifying potential candidates. The underutilization is the result of the unfounded fear that referrals will not be able to produce diversity candidates and that targeted referral programs constitute discrimination. Lack of significant rewards for recruiting diverse candidates also proves that diversity recruitment is not a priority and recruiters and managers fail to focus on it. DPR administrators often fail to use the latest market research and sales technique for improving the existing diversity recruiting systems. They fail to do the necessary market research for identifying the specific decision criteria that are used by diverse candidates to select new job opportunity. DPR`s also lack performance metrics or numerical measures that are needed for continuous improvement of the process. DPR`s also fail because they focus on active candidates than currently employed diverse people from several other firms. Even if the DPR`s succeed in attracting and hiring candidates, it is impossible to achieve overall objectives without giving serious attention to orientation and retention of diverse candidates. Retaining people in predominantly White organizations is very difficult and will continue to be difficult. This is due to career stagnation, promotion standards and bias performance evaluation, lack of opportunity for training, and workplace discrimination (Larkins, 2000). Ethical and legal issue specific to strategic talent management and development related to “Managing diversity at Cityside Financial Services.” Ethical and legal issues have always influenced human resource management. These include equal employment opportunity legislation, employee pay and benefits, employee safety and health, employee privacy and job security. It also pays attention to race, age, religious discrimination and discrimination against physically challenged employees. Although women and the minorities are advancing the top management ranks, there are still barriers that keep the women and minority from getting the experiences that are necessary to move to the positions of top management. Ethics are the fundamental principles by which the employee interacts with the company. These principles help in making decisions and interacting with the clients and customers. Ethically successful companies are characterized by four principles: First they emphasize on mutual benefits in their relationship with the clients, customers and vendors. Secondly the employees assume the responsibilities for the actions of the company. Third such companies have a sense of purpose and value the employees and use them in their day to day work (Noe, 2007, P.31). Legal Issue The case reflects the violation of Equal Employment Opportunity. Equality under the law does not imply equality in the endowment of natural talents, intelligence and abilities. Rather, it means that there exist a priori claims, against ones life, liberty and ability to dispose of ones personal property in the pursuit of his or her personal life goals and activities. The importance of an individuals right to choice is the foundation of the belief that competitive markets are the best way in which to organize an economy. The economys role is to provide the greatest degree of satisfaction to the needs and desires of society. Laws enabling this process to function are designed to deny others the opportunity to deprive an individual of his/her freedoms of choice and property rights via the use of fraud or force (Kamin, 2013, P.100) In Cityside Financial Services the External Deposits department was headed by the White people who were smart, loyal, dedicated workaholics. The Blacks were deprived of any important position in the External deposits Department as they were considered to be people who work for salary and prefer 9 to 5 job. The Retail department was headed by the Blacks and it involved marketing to the neighboring locals. The people working in the Retail department were not allowed to participate in the decision making process relating to the External Deposits department or the bank as a whole. They were not allowed to give any suggestion and their suggestions were taken as interference. Most importantly the senior management had a cultural biasness towards the Whites which hampered their growth prospects. Ethical Issue There has also been violation of Fairness in Cityside Financial Services. Fairness is concerned with actions, processes and consequences that are morally right honorable, and equitable. In essence, the virtue of fairness establishes moral standards for decisions that affect others. Fair decisions are made in an appropriate manner based on appropriate criteria. When money, competition, and pride are at stake, both petty and serious unfairness are common such as taking credit for another’s work, shifting blame, inequitable allocation of work load, promotions of the less competent for political reasons and all these double standards. The moral obligations arising from the core ethical value of fairness are almost always associated with the exercise of power to render judgments that bestow benefits or impose burdens. Almost everyone has the power to give or withhold benefits including approval, praise, honor and support and to impose burdens including disapproval, criticism, blame, and condemnation. There are two aspects of fairness. First is fair result or substantive fairness and second is the fair procedure or procedural fairness. A fair result is one in which people receive what there due or what they deserve. However there is no criterion to determine what a person deserves (Elegbe, 2012, P.17). Different contexts and political ideologies have yielded different and incompatible criteria for substantive fairness. For some the true fairness is equality that is whether each person receives an equal share of benefits and burdens. Others believe that merit should be the criterion for deciding who is most competent. Again some others believe that benefits should be allocated on the basis of need and burdens on the ability to carry them. Distributive Justice includes resource allocation based on effort, social contribution, seniority, and legal rights. There are three important rules about the fairness of decisions. First, since disagreement and criticism are inevitable best way to reach a fair judgment should be based on personal conscience and ethically justifiable standards of fairness. Second one should be clear about the criteria of fairness that they are using. For example, in making a hiring decision, qualifications should be evaluated comparisons should be done. The applicants will have one or more attributes that will be given great weight such as seniority, experience, academic credentials, a proven track record, excellent references, evident potential, and good interpersonal skills. A fair decision should always weigh deficiencies or blemishes such as absenteeism, lack of pertinent experience, erratic personal relationships, a drinking problem, an opinionated personality, a bad reference, etc. In fact, all of these positive and negative factors are potentially relevant. With so many potentially relevant factors, any decision will be arbitrary unless there is some orderly way to sort and rank the issues. And though any good-faith decision that balances the strengths and weaknesses of candidates according to stated criteria is fair, one must still expect charges of unfairness from those who weigh the factors differently. The third rule in making decisions is that the procedures used should be fair. In many cases, a judgment is defended primarily in terms of the process used to reach it. In effect, a fair process always yields an ethically justifiable result. From the case study it is apparent that not only were the employees categorized as Black and White but the customers were also segregated as local and wealthy. This segregation resulted in different treatment to the customers who were local and the customers who were wealthy. The rich White clients would get added benefits which were not provided to the customers who were locals and Black. The investment packages were marketed to the Whites. The External Deposit department and the Retail departments were functioning as two different banks and there was lack of coordination. Explain how, as a HR professional you would address each of the issues you described. In your explanation, note whether you would refer the issue to an expert and discuss why or why not. As a HR professional there are many issues that need to be addressed in Cityside Financial Services. In the organization there prevails severe discrimination against the Blacks or the locals. The employees need to be made aware of the prevailing law of Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity. The employees are not aware that racial or ethnic diversity can be a blessing for the organization. When Wilkins introduced racial diversity in Cityside Financial Services the bank had actually soared and made a mark in the banking industry. After such racial discrimination began it actually hampered the operations of the bank as a whole because of the special treatment that was provided to the rich clients and not to the local. The employees also need to be provided special trainings on managing diversity. If I were the HR professional I would also encourage the participation of the Black employees in the decision making process. This will also reduce the barriers to effective communication and coordination. I would not refer the case to any expert since the problem lies in the core as employees are not aware of any of the prevailing laws against discrimination. Proper training needs to be provided to the White employees so that they can value the Black employees. References Kossek, E. E, Lobel, S. A & Brown, J.( 2005). Human Resource Strategies to Manage Workforce Diversity. [Available at] [Assessed on 18 March 2013] Shore, L. M, Herrera, B.G.C, Dean, M.A, Ehrhart, K. H, Jung, D.I, Randel, A.E, Singh, G. (2008). Diversity in organizations: Where are we now and where are we going? [Available at] [Assessed on 18 March 2013] Larkins, D. (2000). "ISSUES OF RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION". [Available at] [Assessed on 18 March 2013] Noe, R. (2007). Human Resource Management (Sie) 5E. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education Collier, P. (2004). Implications of ethnic diversity. [Available at] [Assessed on 18 March 2013] Elegbe, J.A. (2012). Talent Management in the Developing World: Adopting a Global Perspective. U.K: Gower Publishing, Ltd. Kamin, M. (2013). Soft Skills Revolution: A Guide for Connecting with Compassion for Trainers, Teams, and Leaders. U.S: John Wiley & Sons Martinson, J. WHAT IS DIVERSITY? [Available at] [Assessed on 18 March 2013] Read More