A Global Labour Market - Annotated Bibliography Example

Critical Analysis Name Institution Course Tutor Date Khoo, S., McDonald, P., Voigt-Graf, C. and Hugo, G. (2007). A Global Labour Market: Factors Motivating the Sponsorship and Temporary Migration of Skilled Workers to Australia. IMR Volume 41 Number 2 (Summer 2007):480–510. Khoo, McDonald, Voigt-Graf and Hugo (2007) also observe that a good number of developed countries presently suffer from acute skilled labour shortage. The authors hold onto the opinion that the greater portion of skilled workers in such nations is rapidly aging. Allen, Bryant and Vardaman (2010) classify this scenario under the category of demographic shifts, arguing that an aging population reduces the general availability of skilled talent. Thus, the need to remedy this problem is usually met by recruiting migrant workers that are sufficiently skilled. This strategy, according to Khoo et al. (2007) is practically employed in public sector firms like hospitals and schools, as well as in various small business enterprises. App, Merk and Buttgen (2012) beg to differ concerning the authenticity of recruiting migrant workers to replaced aged and aging ones. The authors assert that it is only fair for employers to maintain consistency in employment. By all means, employment ought to represent a psychological agreement in which the resultant benefits are reciprocated between the employer and his/her employee(s). Research indicates that maximum employee value is only realized when firms offer consistency and flexibility to employees. Within the context of this topic, the meaning of this statement is that there is a need for firms to address the diverse expectations of aging employees. Thus, rather than replacing such employees, it is more productive and appealing if the human resource manager renegotiates the contract. Employees do not, however, always migrate solely because of unmet expectations within a given firm. In other words, there are cases where a skilled worker will join a new employ albeit for a short stint. Khoo et al. (2007) refer to certain bodies formed in the 1990s that were intended to accelerate regional economic integration. The European Union (EU) is a good example. Among several other undertakings, the Union formulated explicit policies that did away with restrictions that had hitherto obstructed labourers from moving freely across regions. In a corresponding manner, the World Trade Organization made a provision that made it possible for skilled employees to move from country to country in order to render required services. All these notwithstanding, it is unanimously agreed that the core factor that motivates employee turnover, especially in nations in the Global South, is domestic inadequacy. What this means is that adverse conditions prevailing at home are essentially responsible for driving skilled workers to seek employment elsewhere. Khoo et al. (2007) cite aspects like economic collapse alongside political conflict as the most common drivers of skilled worker migration. Khoo et al. (2007) thereby conclude that the issue of employee migration is driven by employer-related factors on the one hand, and employee demands on the other. The authors note that most employers outsource workers principally because they cannot obtain properly-skilled ones in the home market. Additionally, firms operating in multiple countries prefer to hire temporary labour from those markets because this is the strategy that suits the specific project being undertaken in each country. Conversely, employees often change employers in order to gain better pay and hence improve their lifestyles. Allen, D.G., Bryant, P.C. and Vardaman, J.M. (2010). Retaining Talent: Replacing Misconceptions with Evidence-Based Strategies. Academy of Management Perspectives. It must be understood that employees do not always quit entirely because of insufficient pay. Some managers fail to realize the contribution played by factors like work relationships and the working environment on job satisfaction. Likewise, employees are likely to obtain greater satisfaction in a firm that provides opportunities for improving one’s profession (Allen et al. 2010). More importantly, employee turnover is also compelled by a desire to acquire vast professional experience in a world whose economy is undergoing rapid globalization. The remark made by Khoo et al. (2007) that outsourcing normally involves expert professionals raises a significant issue for organizational heads. Firm managers are faced with the responsibility of devising ways to ensure that crucial employees are retained within their organizations. Employee retention is a core mandate, considering that staff turnover automatically imposes serious costs to any organization. For example, replacing staff calls for recruitment and selecting as well as training. Over and above this, there occurs immense disruption of work whenever employees leave a firm, subsequently making the firm lose its organizational memory. The long-term repercussion of huge employee turnover is a marked decrease in organizational competitiveness, which may eventually lead to collapse (Allen et al. 2010). These consequences are what inform the widespread belief that staff turnover is simply detrimental. A big portion of organizational management is skewed to believe that workers give up their jobs because they are dissatisfied with their salaries. With such a misconception, retention strategies usually fail because managers feel that they cannot possibly meet the demands of individual employers given restricted budgetary allocations. Allen et al. (2010) warn managers that there cannot be a single strategy that always works in retaining employees. These authors concur with Khoo et al. (2007) that there are times when employee turnover brings benefits to a firm. To understand the positive aspect of staff turnover, Allen et al. (2010) propose that managers must first understand what turnover means, and its impact on an organization. Simply defined, turnover refers to the act of leaving an organization by an employee. There are various reasons for such decisions, the most notable ones being when an employee gets a job that pays better than the current one, or in order to advance his or her studies. Abusive employers that sometimes threaten to fire workers could also be another reason why employers decide to quit. Further to this definition, it has been established that turnover could either be voluntary or involuntary. According to Allen et al. (2010), voluntary turnover occurs if an employee makes a conscious decision to quit. On the other hand, turnover is said to be involuntary if employees are laid off if they perform poorly, or as part of organizational restructuring efforts. From this distinction, it is clear that managers focus their retention strategies on turnover that occurs voluntarily, since the employees involved in this type often tend to be the most valuable. Thus, the quitting of such employees would render the organization somewhat dysfunctional. Finally, it is vital that managers ascertain the extent to which it could avert possible turnover, by exploring the reasons why employees choose to leave. Gray, M., Hunter, B., Yap, M., & Lahn, J. 2012, Higher education and the growth of Indigenous participation in professional and managerial occupations. According to Gray, Hunter, Yap, & Lahn, (2012) a research done in 2011, by the centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research reviews the access and outcome of higher education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people and carry out an examination of the role of higher education in the growth of indigenous and employment in professional occupation, to assess the related benefit and cost to Australian economy and society and to look at the likely barriers to growing the number of indigenous professionals. This paper focuses on the analytical review of selected economic and social returns of higher education and employment, together with the effects of professionalism to Australian and individual’s economy. Secondly, it explores the statistical outline of the growth of indigenous employment in terms of occupation and compares it with non indigenous occupation as well as the role of post school qualification in employment process Gray et al (2012). Over the past years, according to the statistics there has been an increase in indigenous professionals as compared to non indigenous. The female indigenous professional’s rate has increased as compared to the male professionals. Despite, an increase in professionals, not many indigenous occupies the managerial post. This extreme difference has been brought about by the issue of higher level of qualification attained by the indigenous people who have higher qualifications as compared to the non indigenous especially among the women an idea shared by Dols et al (2012). The managerial positions have been held by people with lower qualifications while professional occupations have been held by people with higher qualifications. The statistics shows that, the managerial positions are occupied by people with lower post -school qualifications. Gray et al (2012) observe that this is ironical since managerial positions should be occupied by people with higher level of qualifications to oversee the growth and performance of the institutions. Indigenous women employed in the professionals are involved in social services while the top ten professionals are involved in counselling, visual arts community art workers, craft professionals, recreation and welfare. Male indigenous professionals are involved as environmental scientists, registered nurses, welfare, human resources management and others. For the non indigenous, they occupy secondary and primary school teachers, financial advisors, software programmers, accountants, engineers and others that lacks among the indigenous (Gray et al 2012, App et al 2012). The positions held by the non-indigenous tend to occupy the key positions that should be held by the indigenous for the development of the nation. Therefore this becomes unexpected for every nation to allow non-indigenous people to hold key positions. One of the insights is that most of the professionals are employed in the public sector that contributes directly to the economy of the country as compared to private sectors despite its slothful growth (Gray et al 2012). The second insight is that access to education is much nearer to the indigenous students. For the non-indigenous accessing higher education becomes a challenge. Some of the barriers are to increase in professional employment is that people are only concentrating on studies on culture and society, education and health. There is an increase in aging population in Australia which means reduced fertility hence affecting the growth of the population thus reduced potential employees as noted by App et al (2012). App, S., Merk, J. and Buttgen, M. (2012). Employer Branding: Sustainable HRM as a Competitive Advantage in the Market for High-Quality Employees. management revue, 23(3), 262-278. App et al. (2012) agree that highly-skilled employees provide prolonged competitive advantage to a firm. Precisely, there is an interesting labour market shift characterized by an excess in supply of jobs that are highly valued. As several developed nations embark on outsourcing as a way of obtaining cheap skilled labour for their industries, questions abound as to what is the prime factor that causes employee turnover. In most instances, skilled migration of professionals is mainly occasioned by globalization, wherein multinationals seek the expertise of highly knowledgeable workers. For example, the information technology industry perfectly demonstrates the reality that the modern global marketplace requires constant mobility of skilled labour (App et al 2012) This infers that the present labour market is one in which the population of people seeking jobs is less that the vacant jobs that pay well. Simply put, this is a scenario where people are seeking jobs, but the only jobs available are those that require high skill. This places a challenge to human resource managers as they attempt to hire and retain employees who not only have the requisite skill, but the motivation as well. In accordance with this, turnover reduction is a crucial component of upholding effective management of a firm’s human resource factor. The fundamental task assigned to human resource managers is to safeguard the productivity of a firm’s employees. By extension, this means that it is mandatory for managers to strive to ensure that valuable employees are retained in order to minimize setbacks that hinder timely realization of organizational goals. Sustainable production together with retention of human resources should not only encompass human resource development, but also an investment in human resource production (App et al. 2012). This kind of sustenance will in turn be a source of motivation to workers which in turn encourages and their participation in their work as Allen et al (2012) note. The proposition by App et al. (2012) brings a new dimension into the topic of employee retention. Specifically, the recommendation implies that firms have to give back to the institutions from which employees are sourced, and the labour markets into which they are generated. It is suggested that firms must invest in such institutions or families if they hope to get long-lasting supply of highly-qualified workers and survive in a competitive market. In short, firms gain immeasurable chances of gaining employee retention if they build their corporate images via social responsibility programmes. On a different note, App et al. (2012) contend that employee retention can be achieved from the very instant that employees mindfully decide to join a company. This is called employer branding, wherein an organization positions itself attractively enough such that it becomes the most preferred employer within a given labour market. To do this, an organization needs to explicit state the functional and economic as well as psychological benefits to be reaped by its employees. Closely related to this package is the firm’s corporate identity, which entails the vision, goals and values. By so doing, a firm will sell itself off as a unique employer that is positively distinct from its rivals. With such an image, organizations can be sure of receiving applications from highly-talented and motivated people (Dol et al, 2012). Dols, J., Landrum, P. and Wieck, K. L. (2010). Leading and Managing an Intergenerational Workforce. Creative Nursing, Volume 16(2). Employee retention strategies must be pivoted around the generational differences that are at play in organizations. Dols, Landrum and Wieck (2010) highlight different generations of employees such as traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X and the Millenials. Each of these generations is motivated by different factors; and they also deal differently with workplace relationships. As a result, retention of employees belonging to these different generations is impossible unless the manager possesses adequate knowledge along with power both to lead and motivate. For instance, retention efforts can only succeed if the value of maintaining a positive attitude between and towards co-workers is taught. Similarly, the administration must give rewards to managers that mentor employees effectively as Allen et al (2012) observe. Once this is achieved, it becomes easy for managers to gauge organizational performance and create sound corrective measures. It is well understood that there is some sort of direct relationship between turnover rate and corporate performance. Many research reports reveal that firms wherein turnover rate is low enjoy greater sales that those where employee turnover is high. In line with this finding, it follows that reduced rates of turnover improve morale among employees. Allen et al. (2010) then deduce that human resource management must substantially concentrate on the reduction of organization turnover if increased profitability is to be achieved. Apart from this, understanding turnover in terms of the effects and patterns it takes is a sure strategy of sharpening an organization’s competitive edge in a market with an uncertain future. It is the contention of Allen et al. (2010) that globalization comes with unpredictable impacts. On top of this, as firms increasingly rely on technology to aid production, there is a huge possibility that firms will soon find themselves seeking a skilled workforce that cannot be easily found since modern institutions do not offer the relevant courses. Consequently, managers ought to take advantage of this projection and realize the value of retaining key employees as App et al (2012) maintain. Retaining valuable employee skill is an utmost human resource management function. Nonetheless, employee retention, just like leadership is quite an intricate task (Khol et al 2007). This is more so given that there is no particular strategy that works for all organizations. It is, therefore, the discretion of the manager to determine what strategy he/she will undertake to ensure that valuable employees are continuously motivated to stay in the firm as Dols et al (2012) & Allen et al (2010) maintain. Besides the conventional motivation efforts of providing tangible rewards, it has been discovered that good corporate images are equally pivotal in acquiring and retaining talented workers. It also pays to differentiate the various generations of workers and hence address the needs of each employee satisfactorily. Accordingly, it emerges that businesses that engage in global activities tend to have dynamic organizational structures (Khol et al 2007). The implication of this, therefore, is that such firms must augment and facilitate the free movement of skilled workers in and out of the organization. This provision is particularly crucial because it helps firms meet the diverse needs of their clients, besides acquiring vital team input which in turn fosters professional development within the organization as Allen et al (2010) maintain. Read More