Human Resource Management Approaches of Babcock Company - Case Study Example

A Case Study about Babcock The report is about Babcock, which is an organization that has engineered excellence and builton a reputation of an Ultra-reliable delivery. The organization has a great background in supporting military and engineering support services. The organization also has a record of employing a staff of around 26k who build, manage, design, maintain, and operate assets that are significant in delivery of major public services in UK and even abroad (Babcock.com). The organization depends on key areas of energy, defense, telecommunications, transport, and education to deliver its services to the public. It also focuses on major activities like the management of infrastructure and assets, delivering programmes and projects, and the integration of engineering expertise to achieve its objectives (Babcock.com). One of the major problems of the organization is to retain their reputation and make the public believe that they are able to deliver their services within the agreed time. They strive to protect their reputation as an asset. The major objective of the company is to ensure that whatever they do does not offend their customers, the environment, or the people who are directly affected by their activities. The other critical objective is to ensure that the organization adequately plans for the future business needs so that the organization can be able to be sustainable and ethical. The organization is tasked with need to ensure that it becomes trusted by all stakeholders and at the same time ensure that the staff or the employees are developed to cope with the demands o f the project. The organization majorly operates in the UK, with 80% of its work done in the UK. The other 20% is done in other countries like USA, Canada, Poland, and Australia. The only challenge facing the organization in its effort to expand its activities globally is the difference in cultural perceptions. An example of such difference in cultural perceptions is that in USA, clients believe that the military origins of Babcock are disciplined, reliable, and have positive credentials whereas in Canada, such a feature is less valued. The core value of the organization that the personnel and engineers of the organization lay emphasis on is the interdependent project delivery. Every person in the organization is responsible for his or her own contribution to the team. The staff commits to the organization and they get pride in reaping from their efforts and contribution to the high performance of the organization (Babcock.com). The organization faces another problem of emerging conflicts due to conflicting demarcation of tasks. However, there is a strong culture of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), which makes the team members tolerance to conflicts and work diligently to achieve the organization’s objectives within the set deadlines. The team also works by making personal sacrifices and offering the best of their personal and professional ability to ensure that the project is delivered within the set time. For the organization to deliver the project in time there is need to adopt a very effective communication system that ensures full participation of all the team members. A proper communication among the team members can be effected by passing important information through the internet, posters, and suggestion boxes. The best tool of analysis that can be adopted by the organization is the matrix tool. This would ensure that the project teams deliver the best practice. The other problem facing the teams at Babcock is the resistance to change. This comes as a result of the fact that Babcock is mainly centered in the UK under consistent working conditions and the need to travel to take up projects and responsibilities abroad results in some degree of resistance to travel. The organization also commits to some standards to ensure that some tested and tired working practices adopted by overseas firms are not brought into the organization. The other important aspect important to the organization is the leadership prospects. Proper leadership will ensure that the organization develops the team members in order to enhance proper team capacity. The organization heavily relies on reputable values and ethical processes in order to develop trust not only among the team members but also with other firms. The managers and project leaders at Babcock are trained in such a way that they become risk tolerant. This ensures that all the goals are achieved in time and the project is completed professionally. Babcock also developed an internal system focus to enhance excellent practices. It also adopted the act of scanning the external environment in order to enhance the organization’s working conditions. Such policies have proved successful in the UK, with low but high performing staff. There also exists the culture of inspiration by senior supervisors and project leaders to the junior employees. This is mainly based on an induction to develop proper ethical values and professional behavior. The other problem facing the project team is the misunderstanding arising from differences in English roots and culture. For example, an email response written as, “the project’s achievements were not bad” from a UK perspective would be taken to mean, “the project’s achievements were terrible” from a Canadian perspective. The communication within the project team is mainly by conference call, Skype, or email. This often makes it hard to pin down the variations in practice. Business partners overseas at times become oblivious to difficulties arising from management operations but Babcock remains principled, transparent, and disciplined which in turn makes it accepted globally. The organization has also set up new global ventures across the world. For example, it set a new contract to open new mines in Brazil. Also a new subcontract has been negotiated with Locomocao. This is a Sao Paulo company that is in its rapid rate of growth. The HR operations are geared towards addressing the issues of recruitment, consistency, and procurement transparency. The forefront message that is communicated between the organization and its clients is the “Trusted to Deliver” slogan. It is core to the objectives and goals of the organization. The next challenge for the organization is the aspect of bridging the gap between the UK culture where the organization is majorly based and other foreign partners like Brazil. Such a conflict was witnessed in a meeting where senior managers from Brazil decided to wear three-piece suits; whereas the team from UK only wore jackets. This kind of informal dressing caused more unnecessary concern to the Brazilian team. This was also different from the Sao Paulo who adopted a more relaxed, but business like, code of dressing depicting the new arrivals of Locomocao in the international team (Gabriel, 2008). The aspect of flexible approach to solving problems and agile way thinking has made its partners ascend rapidly onto the international scene. This has made the organization adopt such measures in order to deliver the project in time. The organization was mandated to establish long lasting agreements with its business partners like the Locomocao. Such agreements made Locomocao get a new project manager and change the entire project. This was seen as a way of changing the mode of management that would match that of the Babcock. They were majorly driven by the attitude of “can do” (Babcock.com). Recommendations In order to ease its operation mechanism and cut on costs, Babcock company needs to understand that human resource managers have the chance to play a vital role in contributing to the success of the company if they establish policies and systems aligned with the company’s mission, vision and goals. Therefore, the Company should ensure that nobody interferes with the strategic function of human resource management because human resource management in an organization offers a significant platform to comprehending roles owed by human resource personnel’s in an organization (Daft, 2010). It is further recommended that HRM should be integrated with human resource functions since integrating vital human resources roles to reorganize a company’s internal environment leads to increased organizational results and superior financial performance that companies can achieve by adopting personal human resource programs. The research discovered that it is significant to incorporate three main roles in human resource leadership. They include, having a human resource structure that focus on human resource leaders as business partners to other organizational departments, professional and operational excellence in performing important duties and finally, incorporating a management culture allied with corporate strategy (Organ et al, 2006). Empirical evidence from the case study about Babcock Company has showed that high working and performing human resource department in Babcock Company had an important positive influence upon production, turnover, and financial performance. Despite the success of human resource management, Babcock company leaders have no know how or skills to create and implement policies and systems that are in line with the company’s vision, mission and goal. It is recommended that organizations should reframe their human resource department to provide service at decreased cost, as they would easy become accountable. Further, it would be important for human resource personnel to be trained thoroughly so that they acquire new knowledge on how to design and implement systems that are in line with the company’s goals and mission (Khurana, 2009). It is also significant to note that recalling the initial point that human resource practices are greatly influenced by economic, legal, socio-cultural, and political factors, as UK has changed its economic and political systems over the pas twenty-eight years; the country has as well changed its approach to managing people. Human resource management in Babcock Company is as fresh as its market economy with its conventional personnel administrative system going through a period of profound changes. The role of Babcock managers should change in that they need to take part in decision-making on various HRM matters including selection, recruitment, training, dismissal, promotion, discipline, and rewards (Gilmore, 2008). As the Babcock Company opened its doors to other countries in the recent years, its HRM approaches have dramatically changed (Pisapia, 2009). The Company has made significant improvement in decentralizing workforce management control to its enterprises, has begun to implement modern HRM approaches, and is allowing organizations to reform human resource systems through ways such as replacing permanent job security with employment contracts, replacing egalitarian rewards with work performance-based wages, and increasing contributory funding of welfare systems. 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