Globalization Challenges for Human Resources Managers - Research Paper Example

• Abstract

Now a day’s, various organizations are facing challenges to recruit skilled employees according to their requirement due to open market operations. Globalization has proved to be both a boon and a curse for overseas corporations. The research has been conducted in various multinational corporations where 50 employees and 50 HR professionals were asked about their perception regarding the challenges faced by them during recruitment procedure after globalization. Most of the human resource professionals said that challenges are part of organizational growth and therefore they have initiated to take effective steps in order to mitigate problems regarding recruitment of overseas employees.

• Introduction

When a business’s processes, operations and strategies are integrated into diverse products, cultures, ideas and services, it is known as globalization. It is important to manage workforce diversity effectively when globalization takes place. If the management can dissect the impact of anticipated globalization on human resources then HR managers will be better equipped to manage the workforce diversity. As globalization is increasing in regular interval, many organizations have started to interact with foreign stakeholders and customers effectively thereby increasing their business empire. Diverse workforce is recruited in companies because human resource managers have understood that it is important to hire employees from diverse culture so that they can interact with overseas customers effectively. Organizations are also witnessing increased professional development because of globalization. Some companies send their employees in international conferences and some insist their workers to pursue better professional degrees from overseas educational institute. As a result, these added skills of the employees works like competitive advantage in globalization era for various organizations.

• Research question

The research questions are: 1) How the globalization is changing the recruitment process of domestic and multinational organizations? 2) What are the challenges faced by human resource managers due to increasing globalization? 3) How foreign trade policies affect an organization when they intend to trade in overseas countries?

• Research objectives

The primary aim and objective of the research is to understand how human resource managers of various organizations have to cope with globalization and change their recruitment process. Challenges faced by HR during recruitment include dual-career families, talent gap, religion, varying labor laws of other countries and most important cultural conflict.

• Literature review

According to Hosie & Smith (2009), diversity within an organization affects everything right from compensations structure to recruitment. Diversity has two distinct aspects, one is underlying differences and another observable differences. Employees respond in various ways to the diversity within the workplace; it can be emotional reactions or significant change in their behavior can be observed. Diversity can affect a workplace in positive as well as in negative ways; positive effects include flexibility and innovation and decreased job satisfaction can be categorized as negative effect. It is the responsibility of a human resource manager to manage diversity in workplace effectively.

As per Suppiah & Singh Sandhu (2011), foreign countries regulatory and legal environment also affect an organization during international trading in either negative or positive ways. Human resource managers have to understand and anticipate the implication of such scenarios before they take place. Sometimes HR managers have to face talent gap while they hire overseas employees. Due to globalization few countries are not able to adopt with the pace of the changing economy. The employees of developing and underdeveloped countries possess fewer skills compared to that of developed countries. As a result, the human resource managers of developed countries face “talent gap” problem. Workplace efficiency can be considered as combination of two different jobs into one. For example, if one of the employees in workplace lacks a particular set of skill, then it can be compensated by hiring an employee who possesses that missing skill. Due to integration of different countries’ businesses, recruiters face skill gap problem to a large scale. Few decades back, the organizations witnessed that baby boomers are growing old and they will soon retire. Moreover, at that time most of the experienced employees were good at high level skill-sets but those organizations lacked workers for technical works (Robbins, Judge, Millett & Boyle, 2013). As a result, the human resource managers had to find some way to recover this skill gap. Human resource managers have to think twice before recruiting any employee of varying culture and geographical location. The existing employees within the boundaries of the organization may feel uncomfortable if a new employee suddenly uses different language to communicate with his or her fellow members. Cultural barriers can arise in workplace when there is resistance to change amongst the existing employees or they can also communication problems while interacting with each other in the workplace. Immigrant employees can also witness that his or her country’s culture is constantly creating ideological conflict in the workplace. Slowly problem of dual career is increasing in the workplace. The problem is increasing because of changing demographics. As a result, different couples have to balance their family and work-life which is a big challenge for human resource managers.

• Methodology

When all the methods applied in the research are analyzed theoretically, it is known as research methodology. Two types of researches are mainly conducted; they are primary and secondary research. In the above project, primary research has been conducted. Target group is selected for this research. Primary research helps to deduce accurate and in-depth perception on the given topic. Later the perception of target group is analyzed to reach a conclusion. In primary research, researcher can also participate in group discussion and personal interview procedure.

Sampling method used for this research is random sampling.

Target group selected for this research: 50 human resource professionals have been selected from various corporate and 50 overseas employees who currently migrated to different geographical location.

Data collection method used in this research is via questionnaires.

Method used: Target group expressed their point of view via group discussion and direct interview. Sample group answered to structured open ended questions from the questionnaire.

Questionnaire:

• How globalization is challenging human resource managers of multinational corporations in recruitment procedure?
• Is workplace diversity creating a communication gap between existing employees within an organization and new hired employees? If yes, then how?
• How dual-career holders in a family are affecting the productivity in a workplace?
• What steps human resource managers should take to mitigate the challenges arise because of workplace diversity?
• How the human resource managers can collaborate with an organization’s top level management in order to effectively implement change management related to workplace diversity?
• Analysis

Choosing different career by family members of a family is a challenging issue for the human resource managers as well as the management of an organization. For example, if an HR manager finds a skilled employee for attaining the objectives of an organization, then he may wish to recruit the employee. These situations may crop up challenge like “dual career” issue within a family. Suppose a husband is working in an MNC, then he may have to relocate or travel sometimes; but in such scenarios the wife may not be able to relocate. As a result, the organization may have to lose a talented employee in those instances as they cannot compromise the objective of the organization. Some other issues that the human resource managers face regarding dual career challenge are children’s education, maintaining work-life balance, etc. International workshops conducted by various multinational organizations can enrich an employee both professionally and personally, but even in these types of situations relocation issue arises. Human resources managers can mitigate the talent acquisition and talent gap issue by retaining experienced and skilled employee for a stipulated period of time until and unless they can hire employees who fulfill their requirement. After hiring new employees, they can be imparted knowledge about various stuffs such as product knowledge in FMCG companies or vocabulary training in knowledge based industries. Alternatively, the human resources managers also needs to update their key skills and knowledge about the changing trend in the international market. For example, the HR managers have to become more convincing in order to implement cultural change in the organization. Change management covers almost 40 percent of all the challenges that the human resource managers face in an organization. The HR departments of various organizations have to increase their workforce because globalization is giving rise to immigrant population. These populations will slowly and steadily increase the demand for employment opportunities in multinational corporations. Conventional structure of five Rs is no more applicable in recruitment procedure. The five Rs are restructuring, resourcing, restraining, retaining and finally recruiting the employees. Mere implementation of policies by the human resource department within the workplace is not going to work after globalization rather the employees will have to be engaged effectively for maximum output. Managing large diversity of workplace is not an easy job especially when employees of different geographical location bring different perceived ideologies with them.

• Conclusion

Due to globalization various organizations are facing varying range of issue while recruiting employees from different background and cultural. There is no doubt that globalization has helped overseas organizations to integrate their businesses and reach the goal of their organization. Open economy has compelled many people around the world to relocate in foreign countries to enjoy the employment opportunities of developed nations. Human resource managers sometimes struggle to effectively implement the change management within an organization especially where employees of diverse culture are recruited according to their skills and talents. It is never feasible for a company to compromise on employment quality in order to retain their experienced and older employees who may or may have upgraded their skill sets according to the job market demand. As a result, human resource managers are trying to mitigate the challenges that they face while recruiting culturally diverse workforce.