The Irish Labour Market - Essay Example

Name: Institution: Course: Critically explore how recent changes in the Irish labor market have impacted upon resourcing strategies within Irish organization. According to Reagan (2009, Pp. 24-27), the Irish labor market has during the recession been deploring. The rate of employment growth has with insignificant rate tacked the economic growth of Ireland. The job market has suffered much and it has called for the variation in strategies related to recruitment and selection in most of the Irish organizations. In Ireland, employment has been checked by more than a quarter a million since the inception of recession and the figure stands at 3.7% and declining on year by year analysis. In the third quarter of the year 2010, the unemployed youth in Irish labor market was 1.86 million which as a fall of about 60%. The Irish construction, whole sale and retail sector experienced the largest increment in employment during the second wave of the 2004 employment boom and these have also accounted for the largest fall in levels of employment over the past two years. This has seen these organizations vary their recruitment and selection strategies significantly. The majority of selection and recruitment ratings have been made strict to ensure only the most experienced, with multi skills and expertise, those who can handle various issues at a single pay slip are actually retained in majority of the Irish organizations related to construction; BAM constructors to be precise and other wholesale and retail sector organizations. The resourcing strategies have been changed to accommodate flextime work schedules and employment due to the poor condition of the Irish economy and labor market. The part-time jobs and employment have risen on a slight trend up to 4500 figure on the year by year analysis. This means that the organizations such as the BAM Constructors have adopted the use of reduced hours strategy to pose as an alternative to the option and strategy of fully lying off the organizational employees. According to BAM construction company recourse management superior, they have been forced to adopt such resourcing strategies which are a crucial element towards the cost reduction strategy within the recession. Irish unemployment went up to around 19,000 within a time span of between the 2009 Q3 and 2010 Q3 respectively (O’Connell, 2007. Pp. 24). This rise meant that the total figure of the population out of work since 2006 had hit a triple multiple. This could give organizations chance to explore cheap labor readily available but they too are hit by recession. In the long-term approach these figures have been rising and unemployment rate is pushing the Irish economy to the verge of collapse. To ensure that some of the organizations are able to survive the recession, the resourcing strategies have been changed to give room for outsourcing approaches. The organizations in this case, had to contract for specific duties to help them cut on expenditures related to internal operationalization of these roles satisfaction (Tansy, 2001 Pp. 68). For instance, in this scope, the organizations have to acquire the services of an external provider of materials as opposed to them going to fetch them from the factories. This means that, specific ventures are relieved the need to have drivers, loaders and off-loaders in place because they are only able to release payment of consignment upon arrival at their warehouses. This is a variation is resourcing strategies that an organization such as BAM constructors adopted and has enable them to run their operations smoothly. Within the Irish unemployment high rate, the redundancies have shown a down rate of 24% on the year by year analysis. The vacancies that were notified to FAS are said to be up by about 17% on a year to date analysis as of November 2011. Despite this increment, these have remained at a depressed level compared to period before recession. Despite the point that the various organizations are still advertising for the vacancies in their ventures, they on the other sided opted to depress their availability levels as opposed to how they did this during the pre-recession period. Employment openings were much before the recession hit the Irish economy and in years prior to 2009. The strategy to depress vacancies is an approach that was adopted by the Irish organizations towards resourcing due to the economic recession and unemployment. The debt crisis in euro zone is much and despite it on a tactical consensus outlook on Irish economy, there are predictions of a return to GDP growth in 2011. The assumption is that the economic recovery shall be export led and thus employers and institutions such as BAM constructors are delayed employment growth. This thus has called for them to flex their resourcing strategies and make them “sharp and prickly” to enable the utilization of talents best suited and expensive to acquire first in their operations. Such measures are taken because the export sector is regarded as less labor intensive in scope. It is in this in mind that the employers are based on their rate of lying off workers are expected to increase working hours from the traditional 8 hour per shift to about 12 hours. More so, they are expected to increase employment relatively quickly as a response to any rise in production in an export led economic recovery. Irish organizations such as BAM constructors, have opted to move from structural employment and they are adopting cyclical type a factor which has seen the rise in the strategic unemployment with implications that their shall be an increase in structural unemployment that is harder to check during the economic upswing as opposed to cyclical unemployment. Such adopted resourcing systems are set to benefit the organizations after a period of economic upswing to ensure that they do recover the damage incurred during poor economic conditions before they embark on full resourcing. It is not at the option of the prior wonderful employers to turn into such “animosity” but based on the fact that any living thing is driven by self interest and an operating organization is a living thing, they had to get into such terms and strategies according to the Irish Employers and Labor Management board (IELM) in commerce and trade. Recession in Irish economy has created a condition of interdependence on donor funding to save it from collapsing. The internal environment cannot allow the generation of sufficient funding like it used to before to stabilize the economy of Ireland. Such factor have seen the need to change the resourcing methodologies such as the recruitment and selection strategies geared towards ensuring that the costs of production are minimized in any possible way and that the ventures are able to generate profits. The preferred method towards resourcing is integration. Experts have argued that integration is a key aspect to success and it includes the ability to facilitate access to the various markets which includes the global and Irish single markets of good and labor supply. Such ability will ensure that the various ventures are able to have in place strategically productive mechanisms that are cost effective as and high income generating when adopted. Recession is what has been pushing the various organizations and these ventures are struggling to save their lifespan by adopting more relief and friendly resourcing systems towards labor supply and other supportive systems of administration. BAM constructor have for instance adopted specific integration resourcing strategies to ensure that the regional economy is able to ensure that they stay in course and make profit despite the laying off its workers due to lack of business and need to check the operating costs. The strategies according to a senior official have been yielding in a positive way and the organization is able to sustain its activities and productivity amidst the deplorable current Irish economy. According to Waters (2008, Pp. 34), the recent recession has seen a future focus and prediction of an Irish economy that is enlarged and could support world trade. The figures meant that the ventures within the confines of Ireland and who are strategically set to continue with their activities had no any other option other than to adopt resourcing strategies that are able to give them room for quick addition of the essential resources in a fast way and check their totals when they are out of business and production activities. One of the strategies that were adopted by BAM construction as an example is to have flextime employees paid casual as opposed to the permanent and pensionable schemes that are strict on the employer despite the economic situation. Such a strategy enables the construction company to have just sufficient number of employees to sustain its daily operations in times of low business and increase the figures in times of good commerce. The strategy is set to help the situation on the ground due to factors that the company has no control of such as recession and global economic meltdown and inflation rate. Irish business ventures,; wholesalers and retailers, have enlargement opportunities in near days. This means that, they are likely to grow due to the better results anticipated towards economic development and stability in near future. In regard to this despite the current terrible recession and the adopting of respective and relevant resourcing strategies, it has forced the organizations to rethink their strategies towards resourcing. Some of the ventures have been revising their better days resourcing strategies to ensure that they shall have a one on one approach to the issue when it will come calling and be able to tackle the situation upfront. The flexible resourcing strategy has been the option. These are operational resourcing strategies that are supportive of sustenance of operation lasting for not more than a year and revised at the end of each fiscal year and incorporated into the fiscal policy documents in regard to the economic, recession and the inflation situation and rate in Ireland. Strategies that allow the various ventures to exploit the global opportunities have also been adopted towards resourcing activities in the current Irish economy meltdown and recession. Global opportunities has enabled business to compete in the demand fro skilled labor which has seen the Irish experts being absorbed by other ventures outside and the internal organizations sourcing externally for absolute talents aimed to their growth and development. Skilled labor enabled quality management, brand and marketing management as well as effective production. The resourcing strategy associated with skilled labor demand I set to enable the business ventures to refrain from bulk employment and turn to minimal expertise employment hence enabling it to continue with operations with manageable resources in the course of the meltdown. This is one of the strategies associated with resourcing that has seen organization do well despite the meltdown of Irish economy since 2009. Basing on the fact that the services sector is key to the economic recovery and growth, the hospitality and service providers such as the telecommunications organizations of Irish economy have adopted the work based training to ensure that their human resource power is on the rise towards customer care. Hotels for instance, have adopted zero based external resourcing strategy in which the ventures do not recruit from the external environment but prefer the already exposed internal employees. This serves as a motive towards better production and workers loyalty to the enterprises. According to the Irish hotel and Caterers Corporation, the move is cost friendly, more effective and gives room for quality and unity in direction. They argued that, gardener who is able to play the role of a porter, is productive and practical to have in place as opposed to having 10 independent porters and 10 gardeners at the expense of 12 gardeners who can still be porters. The strategy to have such mechanisms in place is practical in the poor performing Irish economy and does enable the quick likeliness to revamp the economic situation. Resourcing strategies that address factor that are affecting Irish labor supply have been the only option available to many organizations during the economic meltdown spell. The population fertility and participation, migration and education have seen the variations of the resourcing strategies (Buchanan & Nicholls, 2010, Pp. 56). The Irish labor supply growth is affected by these factors and in a graphical representation the situation is sickening. To address the lowered rate of labor supply, organizations are opting to have resourcing strategies that address the fertility situation education and the migration which results to brain drain. One of the strategies is the early adoption of big performers in the national examinations to ensure that their loyalty to an organization is natured way back in college and university. Such a strategy is able to ensure venture resourcing efforts are strategically beneficial to its growth and profitability. Some ventures have been forced to turn into “homing pigeons”. This is because these are personnel resources that enhance productivity at limited resources, and they increase the potential of Irish cost-cutting measure because they are the driving forces good quality for distant direct investment (Walsh, 2008, Pp. 21). In summary, the Irish economic recession have seen many organizations, adopt resourcing strategies that are able to sustain their growth. The resourcing strategies are specific to each venture in relation to what they produce and targets in compliance with the labor market taxes, the consumer prices and other domestic pricing of services. Thus, the organizations adoption of practical resourcing strategies has been able to influence their ability to survive in the poor performing Irish economy Works cited Buchanan, Paul. & Nicholls, Kate. Labour Politics in Small Open Democracies: Australia, Chile, Ireland, New Zealand and Uruguay. Miami: Palgrave Macmillan.2010. Print. O’connnell, Philip. The Irish labour market. Sydney: Economic and Social Research I nstitute.2007. Print. Reagan, Maeve. Employment Law: A Guide to Irish Law. Geneva: Bloomsbury Professional.2009. Print. Tansy, Paul. Making the Irish Labour Market Work. NY: Gill & Macmillan.2001.Print. Waters, Steve. Fast Labour. Manchester: Nick Hern.2008. Print. Walsh, Brendan. Unemployment persistence in a small open labor market: The Irish case. Dublin: University College Dublin. 2008. Print. Read More