Human Resource Management Problem in Qatar Foundation - Case Study Example

It is a big challenge for the organisation to find the right candidate with adequate knowledge and skill. The recruitment firms face several difficulties in finding the right skill and quality candidates who can give efforts to maximise the organisational values and objectives (Heynes, 2007). In today’s market, the organisations face various issues in fulfilling the vacancy, as there is time constraint to select the right candidate who is serious and dedicated towards the organisational activities. In the recent years, due to migration of labour and different skills and carer, it is difficult to identify the right candidates as per the organisation’s requirements (Buller and McEvoy, 2012).

• High competition:

High competitive employment market further raise more issues to identify the right candidates as per the organisational needs. In the recent years, candidates cannot drop their curriculum vitae directly in the company’s portal. Rather, they need to register their names in recruitment firms. Thus, it is a very complicated phenomenon for their organisation to find the right person. Moreover, due to high competition, the recruiters try to negotiate with the candidates for wages and other facilities in the organisations (Gordon, 2008). Accordingly, sometimes the organisation needs to provide higher wages to retain the experienced employees towards the brand.

• High speed of employee’s turnover:

In the recent years, the business world is moving faster as compared to the past few years. With the high growth rate of the businesses; the employee’s turnover rate is also high, due to misunderstanding and lack of satisfaction of the employees. Due to this reason, it is quiet difficult for the recruiters to select the candidates and replace it within an effective time period. The organisations need to bear higher cost of replacing the candidates due to a high turnover rate (Mills et al., 2008). This will further adversely affect the budget ratio of the organisations. In today’s market, multiple interviews are offered to the candidates due to the rise in internationalisation of organisations, making it difficult to select the right candidate as soon as possible by offering them good salary packages and other organisational facilities.

• Inefficient recruitment strategy:

Lack of efficiency in recruitment procedure is also another issue that the organisations are facing in the recent years. Hiring new employees is costly, as the organisation needs to provide proper training and induction to the candidates. Therefore, the labour cost for the full time employees is high if the company offers other employee benefits and organisational facilities (Zinyemba, 2013). Thus, it is difficult for the human resource department of the organisation to manage the employees and full-time staffs, by monitoring payroll tax and employee benefits.

• High cost:

Cost of hiring the employees is high in recent years. Competitive employment market and a wide range of opportunities for labour migration; adversely hampers the organisation, as the recruiters need to set attractive packages for retaining the right staffs (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). Therefore, it is costly to hire experienced employees who can manage the organisational activities more efficiently. On the other hand, recruiting a novice is also costly, as the organisation needs to provide with appropriate training and development program to the candidates such that, they can gain an adequate knowledge and adopt effective technical skills to conduct the job responsibility in a systematic manner (Lingham et al., 2006). Thus, the overall recruitment procedure is costly and in such an era of global competition, every organisation tries to hire the best candidates for their organisation. In order to retain the customers the recruiters need to provide attractive salary packages and other organisational facilities to the staffs.

• Inefficient recruiters:

The organisations need to have an efficient recruiter who can retain more employees towards the company. The recruiter sometimes fails to explain the actual job role to the candidates within the organisation and this lack of understanding may lead to failure of employee’s joining. Moreover, in some organisations, the interview process is too lengthy and it includes several steps such as written test, group discussion, HR (Human resource) interview and PI (Personal interview) (Hoque, 2005). It is sometimes difficult to explain the process of interviews to the candidates and due to this, the interviewee gets confused with the organisational process. It is important to provide a full job description to retain the employees, as well as provide with attractive salary packages and other employee’s facilities to attract the candidates.

These are the main issues that the recruiters of the organisations face in the recent years and further fail to select the right person for the organisation who can manage job responsibilities successfully. It is important for the recruiters to select a pool of suitable applicants for the organisational vacancy. The skills and knowledge of the human resource managers need to be efficient to identify the capabilities and knowledge of the applicants (Renwick et al., 2013). It is also necessary to deter the unsuitable people from the selection process and it depends totally on the efficiency of the recruiters. The recruiters also provide positive brand image and information about the job role to minimise such issues about recruitment and selection.

• • 2.2 Impacts of the issues on the organisation

There are several impacts of poor recruitment and selection procedures on the organisations. The organisational cost increases due to wrong recruitment of the candidates. It is very difficult to select the right person for an organisation, who can understand the organisational procedures and is dedicated to work at workplace. Thus, if there is wrong selection of candidate, the company needs to bear cost for his or her replacement (D'Cruz et al., 2014). If the candidates are inefficient to do the organisational activities, then it will be difficult for the company to maximise profit volume (Jiang et al., 2012). Therefore, wrong employees adversely hamper the business operations and profitability. Inappropriate people require more time and attention of the management team, in order to improve their skills and technical knowledge. Thus, it is quite difficult for the management team to provide long-term attention as well as training and development program to them for improving their skills. These employees need more time for improving their capabilities and becoming productive.

The organisations in this regard, need to provide them with a long-term training program, which is expensive. Client’s satisfaction is also the main factor in this era of globalisation and in such a time, where the market’s motto is ‘Consumer is the King’; inappropriate staff will only fail to satisfy the needs of the customers (Kehoe and Wright, 2013). This is a crucial issue that hamper the organisational growth prospect by deteriorating the profitability and sales volume. Therefore, ineffective employee’s performance further deteriorates the organisational efficiency to perform the job properly. Poor performance has a significant impact on the organisational budget and unsuccessful candidates further increase the challenges for the company (Lepak et al., 2012). Moreover, if the employees are not suitable for the organisation and cannot match the corporate culture, it will hamper the work environment and arise several cultural conflicts will arise at the workplace. Cultural conflict in the organisation is a big issue in such an era of globalisation, where the workers migrate from one place to another for gaining better opportunities to work (Yadav and Nagpal, 2014). Cultural conflicts also hamper the cooperative work environment and the lack of communication and interaction among team members fails to achieve the organisational objectives and goals efficiently. In this regard, competencies, right attitude and individual’s perception for conducting the job, need to be matched for gaining positive results (Buller and McEvoy, 2012).

Due to the wrong recruitment of candidates, initially there is financial cost of the organisation. On the other and the organisation fails in several aspects such as decreasing the sales volume, deterioration of profitability, lack of efficiency in building corporate relationship and lack of opportunity to seek more information and new ideas. Inappropriate workforce fails to build a relationship with the customers, which is the main requirement of the companies in such an edge of global competitive market, in order to retain the consumers and improve customer’s loyalty. Inefficient workers are also disadvantageous for the company as they cannot conduct the job efficiently; and hence, fail to deliver high quality products and services to the customers after acknowledging to their needs and preferences. Thus, it is difficult for the companies to meet up with the customer’s requirements and expand the business activities on a global platform by recruiting the wrong people for the organisation, who are not dedicated to their work. Lack of opportunities in gaining new ideas and creativity, may arise more threats for the organisations as it is difficult for them to utilise more innovation and technological advancement due to the wrong selection procedure.

• 3. Case study analysis
  • 3.1 Company profile of Qatar Foundation

Qatar foundation is a famous organisation for education, research and scientific analysis. The organisation is reputed for arranging several programs for development of the social community. The managers utilise private fund and government fund to arrange more development programs and it is a main success factor of encouraging education, science and cultural development in Qatar. The organisation tries to motivate the people to increase their potential to seek better opportunities and develop the society in a sustainable manner. Thus, the firm takes initiatives for educating more people worldwide and increasing the opportunity for research and development. Qatar Foundation aims to become a research and development hub, where people can conduct more research to explore new knowledge and ideas (Qatar Foundation, 2016).

The foundation invests more for social development and this will further provides an opportunity to foster a more progressive society with sustainable development. The organisation mainly arranges the program with collaboration of attractive design, information and communication technologies, policy structure and event management team, such that it is possible to provide a high quality program to the people across the globe. Qatar Foundation took several initiatives such as opening Awsaj Academy, school for children, and school for disabled people, Opening Qatar Leadership Academy with proper collaboration with Qatar Armed Forces (Qatar Foundation, 2016).

Opening high schools and university is also an effective strategy to foster more opportunities for education and learning. Research and development part is also efficient to encourage more investigation in the new technologies and literatures as well as to foster more analysis for exploring new ideas. Environmental initiatives provide a scope to the organisation to develop the community by fulfilling the needs of the people. The organisation is successful in developing different fields such as environment, energy resources, water resources and food, in order to improve the well-being of every individual. There are large scale projects that provide a proper support to the local people of Qatar, by providing them with quality health and social care service, education and fulfilling the basic needs and preferences of the people. Thus, a huge investment in cultural program, research, environmental and medical initiatives, as well as community development, helps the organisation to foster more sustainable development in the society (Qatar Foundation, 2016).

• • 3.2 Issues of recruitment within the organisation

Qatar Foundation shows continuous growth and in order to maintain a sustainable growth structure, the organisation needs to hire the high quality human capital. The recruiters try to replace the vacancy with new candidates for different departments of the organisation. The process of recruiting and selecting the right candidates for the organisation is mainly done on the basis of skills and talent of the candidates (Wells, 2014). Qatar Foundation mainly tries to plan to hire the best candidates for the organisation such that they can manage the business activities efficiently. The first issue face by the organisation is the identification of the right talent for Qatar Foundation. As the organisation is related to education, research and development, it requires individuals with that very talent who can foster more growth and manage the organisational activities in a more efficient manner. The recruitment process of semi-skilled and un-skilled candidates at work in Qatar Foundation is like corruption and unethical practice, as the organisation is reputed for community development and education (Wells, 2014). Thus, without the proper identification of right talents, the organisation cannot run the business activities efficiently.

The organisation also faces issues of hiring the migrant workers at Qatar, which further raises more controversies about international labour rights and welfare initiatives for the organisational labourers. Therefore, it is also another main issue to hire the workers outside of the country and in this respect the organisation needs to maintain all the labour rules and regulations for resolving any such issues. If there are any legal issues related to employee’s rights and regulation, it is difficult for Qatar Foundation to manage the recruitment procedure and retain more candidates from the international countries (Wells, 2014). The main countries that send labourers are India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Philippines. These countries supply a wide range of workforce to Qatar and the number of employees is approximately 45,000. Additionally, minimum wage is also another crucial issue that has been faced by Qatar Foundation.

Lack of principle in equal pay for equal work arises more controversies about the organisational rules and regulations. Due to this inequality in wage payment, there are many people with the same qualification are paid different wage rate as per their nationalities. Thus, lack of effective rules and legislation, minimum wage pay act and equality in wage pay, the organisation, Qatar Foundation face several issues in recruiting the employees for the organisation (Wells, 2014). Moreover, there is difficulty in adopting visa and permits to work in Qatar Foundation, which further raise issues and challenges for the organisation during selection and recruitment procedures. Another major problem is lack of building trust and poor employee’s loyalty as there are some inefficient recruiters who arrange substitute contracts. They pay lower wage and less organisational facilities to the employees than they offered in terms and conditions. Hiring illegal fees is also another issue that the organisation faces due to high fees for selecting the candidates for Qatar Foundation. Therefore, current recruitment and selection system is not efficient in the country and due to this broken system, Qatar Foundation is facing several issues and challenges.

• • 3.3 Impacts of the problems

The existing issues first of all adversely hamper the reputation of the organisation in the international market and due to these reasons Qatar Foundation may lose the organisational value in the education and research sector. The corruption in the recruitment and selection system may hamper the organisation, as the recruiters cannot retain the loyal and skilled workers towards the institution (Wells, 2014). Since, the organisation is involved in education, research and development field, Qatar Foundation needs to hire skilled and knowledgeable candidates. Thus, education is the main criteria of selecting the candidates for the institution such that, the staffs can share knowledge and information with each other and conduct more research in their respective educational fields (Wells, 2014). Moreover, lack of efficiency in maintaining employment policies and regulation may hamper the organisation to build loyalty and trust among the workers and it will further hamper the collaborative work practice.

As the educational and research work as well as social community development program totally depends on the team work, without proper communication and collaboration it is difficult for the members to develop effective programs to improve wellbeing of the individuals. Therefore, it is difficult for the organisation to select the right candidate for the organisation who can work efficiently (Wells, 2014). Wrong selection and recruitment of the candidates further hampers the smooth development of the organisation and Qatar Foundation may fail to arrange more community program in different education field and cultural field with inefficient employees. Wrong selection procedure increases the chances of labour retrenchment and it will be costly for the organisation to replace these vacant posts with new candidates (Wells, 2014). There is a financial loss of the organisation to replace the position in different departments of Qatar Foundation, as the institution needs to deliver effective training and development program to these fresher candidates, in order to train them properly. Wrong method of recruitment and selection hampers the sustainable development of business along with the arrangement of an effective community development program (Wells, 2014). This will further create issues and hamper organisational activities to increase well-being of the social community and foster more education and research in the society.

• • 3.4 Reasons for such existing issues

There are several reasons for such existing issues that the organisation Qatar Foundation face in the recent years. In such an era of globalisation, there is a rapid increase in labour migration and the organisation fails to retain the candidates due to existing broken system of selection and recruitment procedure (Wells, 2014). Lack of rules and policies is the main reason for such issues and challenges related to recruitment and selection process of hiring the right candidates for the organisation. Lack of understanding about the rights and responsibilities towards the organisational employees, is also another strong reason for such existing challenges and it raises more difficulties for the organisations to fulfil the needs of the candidates. Substitute contract is also another reason for misguiding the candidates within the organisation (Wells, 2014). This situation further raises the incidents of trafficking people, debt bondage and forced labour, which is not suitable for organisational sustainable development. Lower grade contracts with the candidates is not suitable for the institution and due to this reason, the recruiters cannot replace the vacancy with high-skilled labourers (Wells, 2014). In addition to these, illegal system of payment is another reason which raises more complication in selection and recruiting the right candidates. Therefore, the organisational reputation is hampered due to misguiding the employees. The people are forced to pay illegal payments for getting selected for the institution, Qatar Foundation and this payment system further raises more issues for the organisation leading to more un-skilled labour recruitment with higher fees (Wells, 2014).

• 4. Recommendation

In order to resolve the existing issues, Qatar Foundation needs to implement several strategies through which the recruiters can select the right skilled candidate for the institution. First of all, it is required to improve candidate engagement by building more communication and cooperation with them. It is recruiter’s responsibility to build trust and guide them properly for hiring the right candidates for the institution. Building communication and fulfilling candidate’s expectation are needed for improving engagement with them and provide assurance about the organisation and employment policies.

The organisation also needs to manage candidate’s relationship; such that, they can rely on the institution as well as accept the job opportunities. On the other hand, the organisation needs to follow the employment policies and regulations to create value for the candidates. Interaction with the candidates helps to identify the educational background, experience, personal skills, attitude as well as their job expectation which are necessary to select the right candidates. Moreover, the recruiters of the organisation needs to provide all the relevant information about the organisation, job responsibilities, salary packages, incentive design and other non-monetary facilities at workplace such, that it is easy for the employees to select the right institution to work in.

The recruiters need to follow all the rules and regulations such that any candidate is not misguided in order to reduce corruption in recruitment and selection process of the candidates in Qatar Foundation. Many people are forced to make illegal payments for getting selected in Qatar Foundation. In order to stop this practice, the agents need to make transparent system and help the candidates to secure Qatari work visas. In order to resolve the issues related to the illegal contract, the government of Qatar needs to implement ethical standards in the employee’s agreement. Appropriate legal agreement needs to be made for the employees and a proper maintenance of labour laws is required for managing transparency and accountability in the selection and recruitment procedure. The Qatar government also needs to develop own recruitment agencies such that the candidates are not forced by other recruitment firms to pay illegal fees for selecting in Qatar Foundation.

In addition to these, there needs to have standardised contract with providing clear rules, terms and conditions as well as liabilities and termination conditions for the employees. This strategy may improve quality of the agreement and reduce unethical recruitment practices. The institution also faces issues related to low wages and in to resolve these, the recruiters need to develop standardised wages. Standardised wage rate needs to be fixed not on the basis of their experience, knowledge, technical skills and qualification and on the basis of his or her nationality. The organisation mainly needs to monitor the whole recruitment procedure, such that the employees can be selected fairly without any sort of unethical practices. The organisation needs to aware about the Qatari Law to prevent illegal payments and prevent unethical recruitment and selection process and support potential employees.

• 5. Conclusion

In the recent years of globalisation, the organisations face several issues in the human resource management department of the company and this will arise several challenges and issues for the companies. The recruiters face different issues in hiring the right candidate for the organisation who can work with a lot of dedication to achieve the goals and objectives of the company. Qatar Foundation as a research and education centre, in the recent years, faces several issues and controversies due to lack of transparency and accountability in the selection and recruitment procedures. The issues are such as illegal contract, misguidance of the candidates, high competition, and illegal payment for selection, unethical practices, inefficient recruitment strategies and lack of maintenance in employee’s laws. Due to these existing issues, the reputation of the organisation is adversely affected in the global market. Wrong recruitment policies and low-skilled labour selection by the organisation arise more challenges in arranging social community development program and conducting more research in different educational field. Therefore, in order to resolve the existing issues and run the organisation sustainably without any ethical issues, the institution, Qatar Foundation needs to implement different strategies. The planning such as setting standard of labour, standardisation of wage, minimum wage law, equality in wages, ethical practices at workplace and building relationship with the employees, may improve the current situation at Qatar and recruit more skilled candidates for the organisation ethically.

• Reference list

Buller, P.F. and McEvoy, G.M., 2012. Strategy, human resource management and performance: Sharpening line of sight. Human resource management review, 22(1), pp.43-56.

Davies, S., Hammer, N., Williams, G., Raman, R., Ruppert, C.S. and Volynets, L., 2011. Labour standards and capacity in global subcontracting chains: evidence from a construction MNC. Industrial Relations Journal, 42(2), pp.124-138.

D'Cruz, P., Noronha, E. and Beale, D., 2014. The workplace bullying-organizational change interface: Emerging challenges for human resource management. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(10), pp.1434-1459.

Gordon, K., 2008. Poor Recruitment Decisions-What is the cost impact to the Organisation. A case study on an Organisation within the Financial Services Sector. Human resource management, pp.43-78.

Heynes, N.A., 2007. An analysis on the impact of recruitment and selection within the Department of Economic Development and Tourism in the Provincial Government of the Western Cape. Public management, pp. 56-93.

Hoque, K., 2005. All in all it’s just another plaque on the wall: the incidence and impact of the Investors in People Standard. Journal of Management Studies, 40(2), pp.543–571.

Jiang, K., Lepak, D.P., Hu, J. and Baer, J.C., 2012. How does human resource management influence organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating mechanisms. Academy of management Journal, 55(6), pp.1264-1294.

Kehoe, R.R. and Wright, P.M., 2013. The impact of high-performance human resource practices on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Journal of Management, 39(2), pp.366-391.

Lepak, D.P., Jiang, K., Han, K., Hong, Y., Kim, A. and Winkler, A.L., 2012. Clarifying the construct of human resource systems: Relating human resource management to employee performance. Human Resource Management Review, 22(2), pp.73-85.

Lingham, T., Richley, B. and Rezania, D., 2006. An evaluation system for training programmes: a case study using a four phase approach. Career Development International, 11(4), pp.334–351.

Mills, E.J., Schabas, W.A., Volmink, J., Walker, R., Ford, N., Katabira, E., Anema, A., Joffres, M., Cahn, P. and Montaner, J., 2008. Should active recruitment of health workers from sub-Saharan Africa be viewed as a crime?. Human resource management, 3(9), pp.685-688.

Qatar Foundation, 2016. About us. [Online] Available at: < https://www.qf.org.qa/about/about> [Accessed 2 June, 2016].

Renwick, D.W., Redman, T. and Maguire, S., 2013. Green human resource management: a review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(1), pp.1-14.

Wells, J., 2014. Improving employment standards in construction in Qatar. [Pdf] Available at: <http://www.engineersagainstpoverty.org/documentdownload.axd?documentresourceid=25> [Accessed 2 June, 2016].

Yadav, N. and Nagpal, A., 2014. Emerging issues in human resource management. International Journal of Management, IT and Engineering, 4(10), p.77.

Zinyemba, A.Z., 2013. The Challenges of Recruitment and Selection of Employees in Zimbabwean Companies. International Journal of Science and Research, 1(3), pp.2310-7064.