Leading Global Workforce - Case Study Example

Leading Global Workforce: Case Study Introduction Human resources constitute the most important part of the operations of business organizations and other enterprises in the economic sense. The quality of the collective labor of individuals in an organization reflects the effectiveness of the management of the available manpower in it. With globalization being the stage for the leaderships of multinational organizations, the need for assuring the utility of effective management techniques is inevitable for them. Thus, each management in the mainstream global business arena is responsible to maintain international standards of human resources by eliminating multi-faceted crises and issues among the individual participants in order to run a smooth and profitable show. For solving most of such workplace blockades, present day’s managers look for solutions that ensure a win-win outcome as the end result. This paper will discuss the importance of formulating value added reciprocal relationships between the leadership and employees by interpreting a workplace issue. The Case According to the given case study, Fassler’s visionary approach to negotiate with the workforce strategies helped him overcome the economic crash. From there, he started experimenting with the diversification strategy in the product line. As a result, a retail chain of business helped him survive the SARS crisis in the airline catering ventures. The reason behind his survival was his ‘week on; week off’ payment basis during the recession. Fassler maintained great sense of enthusiasm to learn the food habits of neighboring countries like Korea and expanded his business from Salmon slices to Mushrooms. An innovative trade in party platters also worked well for him. During the years of business, he learned the techniques to predict the trends of the East Asian economy and adopted diversity in his product range across different marketing strategies over the fifteen years of time. As time makes way for him to retire, he is now worried about the future of the ‘Fassler Gourmet’. The very doubt about the cultural adaptability of the young engineers and their skills in making market predictions about the sales of the diversified food products makes it difficult for Fassler to take his retirement decision. Even though this one is not my own experience as an employee, I have good memory of it from my friend’s description. Coming far from East Asia to seek fortune in the United States, he had many personal problems to settle before he found a job in that company. After crossing the hurdles of everyday life in the new location, he got a job with a lot of hard work. The recruitment process itself gave him pains from the hidden signs of discriminative mindsets of some of the interviewers. As per the job, he had to work as a senior supervisor at the production unit where there were employees from different parts of the world. The majority of them belonged to Asians and African Americans b origin, but a considerable number of people were Europeans. Needless to say, the dominant nature of the European employees caused regular problems in the unit against which the American management had a lenient approach. My friend witnessed critical levels of partiality from the top level management towards the Europeans. The more hardworking African Americans and Asians were reportedly undertreated. Apart from this, he was given fewer privileges than other American officers in the supervisory level even though the pay was similar. These conditions provoked him and he eventually quit the organization just by adding another number to the employee turnover crisis of the present day business world. Causes of the Issue Workplace issues resulting from apparent racial discriminations normally derive from the instinctive human nature. As the say goes, ‘birds of the same feather flock together’, it becomes easy for people to make groups of people with similar views. However, the aspect of such uniformity may lead to separatism among organized groups if the leadership does not care for the actual causes of the seclusion of any particular group from others. Racial discrimination is a global issue in the business world today whose origin can be traced to the past colonialist era. Some of the studies indicate that colonialism introduced racism at workplace for the benefit of exploiting the indigenous workforce by using power and privilege of the dominant class to take the advantage of the fear and ignorance of the working class in the history (Australian Human Rights Commission). The current scenario of workplace discriminations with regard to the racial and cultural backgrounds of the migrant employees is only a civilized version of the past. Since the new trend demands companies and individuals to move from their own provinces for better opportunities, there will be considerable problems waiting for them at the new location. This happens because of the general perceptions of the people about color, language and cultural choices. According to Pager and Shepherd (2008), the hiring process of some of the American companies undergo crucial stages of racial biases which results in less employment opportunities for the African Americans than the white Americans. This is a clear indicator of the fact that racial discrimination exists in the employment market of the United States. According to Agocs (2004), the repeated incidents of individual issues arising from racial causes can grow to systemic discrimination which eventually develops partiality concerns among different employee groups. Possible Solutions and Recommendation Racism at workplace is a challenge for the security and dignity of individuals in an organization. There will be hardly anyone who would like to accept this challenge against his esteem and continue to work in a troubled unit. Therefore the management has to look for effective methods to cut down racial issues at workplace by preventing them. Modern leaders induct and experiment several techniques to eliminate racism which includes spreading ant-discrimination policy, recruiting diverse workforce, creating open communication etc. The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recommends the need for certain workplace aspects such as respecting racial difference, professionalism in interactions, developing organizational behaviors, knowing and responding to individual duties related to racial responses etc for the wellbeing of organizations and employees in a reciprocal relationship. A possible recommendation to alleviate the racial discrimination at workplace can be self motivation to develop resistance against it. Professionalism among the employees and leaders stands as the best solution for growing that resistance. According to Caliguiri, Lepak and Bonache (2010, Ch.4.3), inducting professionalism is possible for individuals by acquiring the cultural knowledge from different sources for meeting the essential standards of credibility, communication skills and togetherness. The aspect of credibility is a product of the continuous effort of the individual to appear pleasing for the targeted audience by understanding the nominal value of objectivity in professionalism. The effectiveness of communicating and interacting with people of other culture depend on the quality one practices for each changing situation. The sense of togetherness creates the platform for working together regardless of the physical distances as well as the cultural and racial barriers. These qualities are achievable only when the aspirant is aware of the cultural differences of different groups participating in the organizational structure. Additionally, while transacting the affairs of the diverse workforce, it becomes essential to formulate strategic measures for better results. According to Becker, Huselid and Beatty (2009), making a combination of right workforce strategy and strategic workforce measures to design a strategic architecture of the workforce by adding value to it without relying on benchmarks and assumptions is the key step to negotiate with the workforce issues in general (pp. 147-148). The exercise of a strategic workforce measure gives feasibility to the leadership for workforce strategy changes, which will result in promoting the harmony of opinions between the management and the employees of various cultures. Conclusion Workforce diversity is increasingly becoming the requirement of modern business organizations for better productivity. Managing employees from different locations and cultures under one organizational structure meets with challenges like cultural and racial discrimination claims at the workplace. Political and socio-cultural reasons contribute to majority of the differences among the diverse workforce. However, the effectiveness of the leadership in respecting cultural differences and working on strategic designs based on the diverse spectrum of the workforce can prevent the possible crises related to race, culture or language in multinational organizations. References Australian Human Rights Commission. I want respect and equality - Racial Discrimination: National Consultations: Racism and Civil Society. Retrieved from https://www.humanrights.gov.au/i-want-respect-and-equality-racial-discrimination-national-consultations-racism-and-civil-society Agocs, C. (2004). Surfacing racism in the workplace: Qualitative and quantitative evidence of systemic discrimination. OHRC. Retrieved from http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/race-policy-dialogue-papers/surfacing-racism-workplace-qualitative-and-quantitative-evidence-systemic-discrimination Becker, B. and Huselid, M. (2009). The Differentiated Workforce: Transforming Talent into Strategic Impact. Harvard Business Press. Caligiuri, P. Lepak, D., Bonache, J. (2010). Managing the Global Workforce. Wiley Blackwell. Pager, D & Shepherd, H. (2008). The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets. Annu Rev Sociol, 1 (34), 181–209. US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. How to Prevent Race and Color Discrimination in the Workplace. Retrieved from How to Prevent Race and Color Discrimination in the Workplace. Read More