International Human Resource Management - Employers Confederation of the Philippines - Case Study Example

Name: Course: Lecturer: Date: Intеrnаtiоnаl Нumаn Rеsоurсе Маnаgеmеnt and Development Summary Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) is mandated to work across with employers, organization bodies and the government in articulating, implementation and evaluation of policies that are related to socio-economic and labor issues. Its objective is set to unify the organization and employers to enhance interests related to labor management, socio-economic policy, promote industrial harmony, national growth and social justice. With increased membership, they are able to cope up with challenges of globalization, labor issues and address the socio-economic policies. Generally, ECOP offer various services to its members related to benefits, workplaces, information, representation, policy advocacy, training, advice, conferences and corporate social responsibilities. Currently it has extended its influence from industrial relations to gender development, family welfare, population planning, environment, substance abuse and members initiative programs for work-family balance and responsibilities. In Philippines, the nature of family involves extended family system, which lessens work family issues; though do not completely end the differences. Mainly, differences revolve around gender, age, and financial problems variables. Women are still stuck in traditional domestic roles which translate into absenteeism, low concentration and productivity, frequent leave days and long working hours, in addition to refusal by some women to work overtime, in faraway places or during holidays. Women are concerned about how well maids look after their children. In extreme cases, women may be forced to quit the careers. Men on the other hand are still regarded as breadwinners but do not necessarily face intense work-family challenges as women. However, men are likely to lose their self esteem should their wives be earning more than they do, which result to more issues for women. As of regard to age, division of labour at home is increasingly evident in young couples. Elders in the family are expected to take care of the children while their parents work. Non-married people are expected to financially support their relatives. Generally, Philippines enterprises face and ought to address issues such as; absenteeism, presenteeism, resignations, fatigue and stress, and wages increment. As a response to these issues, ECOP encourages its members to employ initiatives to ensure work-family balance to achieve benefits such as employee satisfaction, commitment and loyalty, minimized grievances, absences, as well as improved production, income and customer satisfaction. These initiatives are provided through designed training, research and advocacy, especially on gender and developmental issues. Indeed, ECOP has teamed up with other organizations such as Ayala Foundation Inc to determine a baseline data in regard to work-life practices and policies. Through techniques such as case studies, ECOP and its collaborators have managed to gather information in various aspects like perspective of CEOs on work-life balance and advantages of the same, an analysis of cost-benefit in relation to work-life programmes in various companies, the involvement and awareness of employees, as well as the benefits derived from the work-life programmes. Q: 1 How do social institutions in Philippines affect Human resource management and development? Human resources are the people employed in a business to conduct various activities and operations. Boxall and John (p. 84), observes that, it is only through human resource that all other elements of a business enterprise-materials, money, marketing, money, and so on, are managed. Simply put, human resource (HR) comprise the most essential and productive resource of a business unit. According to Swanson et al (p. 12), human resource management (HRM) entails the planning, directing, controlling and organizing of the procurement, compensation, maintaining, integration and development of human resource to effectively contribute to organizational, social and individual goals. On the other hand, human resource development (HRD) constitutes the developing of available manpower by use of suitable techniques such as training, transfers, opportunities and promotions for career development (Maurer et at, p. 707). In Philippines according to ECOP (p. 62) family is a major social institution that affects the management and development of human resource. Work-family conflict involves a situation whereby pressure from family and work are commonly incompatible in some ways. The conflicts are demonstrated in two ways namely; family-work and work-family conflicts. These adversely affect employees’ behaviour and attitude in the family and work domains. In turn, both HRD and HRM become very difficult to implement. In actual fact, bad attitude in the workplace influences ones morale in training. The family system in Philippines divides employees on the basis of gender and age. In regard to gender the role of women workers in the family systems poses challenges to balance and manage family and work domains. As Maurer et al (p. 707), states that HRD programmes provide a lineup of well trained, capable, and efficient subordinates and managers. These individuals constitute an imperative asset of a venture. Women traditional domestic roles like child rearing and taking care of the family causes absenteeism, low concentration and productivity, frequent leave days and long working hours at the work place (ECOP, p. 62). Moreover, many women refuse to during holidays (ECOP, p. 62), a time considered best for training purposes by many businesses (Cromwell & Judith, p. 454). In this case, HRD practices cannot be affected effectively. Basically, organization differs depending on employees working therein. Furthermore, Nordenmark (p.126) argues that HRD is not greatly affected when women are forced to quit their careers to handle household roles. As well, men are breadwinners and non-married individuals should financially support their relatives according to Philippines’ family system. Thus, they are pressurized to deliver as per these perceptions. In this case, failure to achieve the same lowers self-esteem, a major hindrance to HRD and HRM in any workplace (Maurer, p. 707). Failure to effectively resolve these challenges, these workers experience challenges either from the work or family area. Considering that manpower ought to nurtured and purposefully used for the achievement of the business (Boxall & John, p. 84), issues affecting families in Philippines must be addressed to make sure they do not deter HRMD. Therefore, organizations should install work design aimed at incorporating diverse work-family affable policies. This will help employees be able to balance the pressures from both sides. Secondly, HR contingency planning should become an integral component of risk management in a business enterprise. This ensures that calamities in HR are anticipated. Thirdly, all the activities of HRM; job analysis and description, training, interaction, selection, performance appraisal, discipline and compensation are engaged management of HR to ensure the manpower is well equipped and effective. Q: 2 What are the roles of employer’s organizations in work-family issues? Employer’s organization is a body that represents the interests of businesses and social policy. Examples of such organizations are: International Organization of Employers’ and Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP). ECOP (p. 63) understands that employees cannot completely leave family issues at the background while they are working. Family issues should be given a serious attention and if they are not there might be problems in the place of work and thus end up affecting the working performance of the employee, hence the ability of the company to meet its objectives is also affected. As a result of these problems the company loses its competitive power with other companies. Therefore, ECOP encourages its members to come up with initiatives for both work and family that consider the different needs of different workers in order to balance their duties both at work and with the family. This is to avoid the very costly long-term effects that may affect companies. (ILO, p. 5) ECOP also urges the employers to help their workers as they struggle to balance work and family responsibilities through giving them support services like care centers for children and parent, providing Medicare and supplementary livelihood activities. They also urge employers to structure flexible work arrangements for t he benefit of the employees. Employers and managers are sensitized on how to respond to gender needs as it is one of the problems especially for women who are mostly sexually harassed and may receive discrimination from work. They also try to ensure that the growth of the population amongst the Philippines does not affect the demands for wages and benefits increases. By encouraging its members to adopt work-family balance, ECOP believes that the following benefits are achieved. The employees are more satisfied at work which leads to low rates of complaints from the employees, minimized absentees, increased employee loyalty, increased customer satisfaction all round, improved product quality and services provided and hence increased income for the company because there is greater added value. (ILO, p. 7) In addition, the following recommendations are useful for this topic of discussion. Employers’ organizations should advice their members to consider the following inventions in the area of working hours since they have been successful in improving work-life balance. These include, Part-time, compensated reduced working hours and compressed work weeks (Bailyn et al, p. 20). Also the workplace should be considered. This may include organizational practices such as flexible leave breaks and emergency childcare, culture and management. Recommendations would also include advice for workers. Workers should find out the policies and practices the employer offers which should be flexible according to the desire of the worker. Next, the worker should find out if there are solutions that are solutions that are used successfully by other co-workers and they can also use the same if they are beneficial. Finally, they should discuss ones work arrangement with the manager. This would be appropriate may be after a return to work from a leave, the beginning or end of a new project or during an annual review (Bailyn et al, p. 21). Q: 3 What are the outcomes of the research, case studies and surveys carried out by the Committee on Gender and Equality in Employment set up by ECOP? The committee on Gender and Equality in Employment was a Committee on Women set up by ECOP so as to train, advocate and research on issues of Gender and development. The Committee with assistance of Philippines university professors conducted research several areas. The first area was seeking to know the views of the top management regarding gender and development in order to help ECOP come up with a programme for gender and development that is in line with the needs for their members. The research shows that more women have come to managerial positions. The second aspect of research was women and financial crisis. This looked on how financial crisis of the 1990s affected the human resources practices of ECOP member companies. The third issue of research was on child labour. The aim was to discover the awareness level in relation to the issue of child labor within and across industries. This was to act as a basis of coming up with strategies for advocating and direct interventions (ECOP, P. 65). Case studies carried out by ECOP helped gather additional information showing the perspectives CEOs on work-life balance. These include: - the employees to life spaces such as organizational, professional, civic and family life spaces thus simply giving to the employees everything they desire; productivity and the rate it fluctuates. Thus, a work-life balance according to the CEOs it should serve as a base in which a company should keep its employees happy (Narendranath, p. 3). These researchers have identified the best practices on work-life initiatives in various firms. It is the hope of ECOP that the research will act as a motivation to other members to standardize their work-life programs. Results show that some companies did not realize that their programs fall within the work-life or work-family scenario. Programs were initiated by unions and management in recognition that human resources are the company’s most important assets. These programs include various types of leaves, bonuses, insurance and health care systems, flexible working arrangements, child care and group and medical insurance schemes for employees and their families. Narendranath (p. 3) points that, further survey in collaboration with different associations of personnel management show that managers are sensitive to the lives of their employees outside work and this is shown by their paternity and personal leave policies, medical benefits for dependants and training in skill that are related to work and their personal interests. Surveys conducted in the manufacturing and service sectors sought to assess their interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and identify possible activities that could be carried out by ECOP to assist them. ECOP members therefore look to it for financial and technical support in order to help them adopt their own CSR programs. Out of all this research, the following recommendations would be so important for the employers. They should be sensitive enough to their employees needs and be able to meet them and accommodate them (Narendranath, P. 3). Employees should also be aware of their rights and needs from a company and be able to attain work-life balance. Finally, gender issues should be taken into account by employers and they should understand that women can handle financial crisis and can be professionals (John & Lowan, p. 3) References Bailyn, Lotte, Robert Drago and Thomas A Kochan. "Integrating Work and family life." A Report of the Sloan Work-Family Policy Network (2001): 19-21. Boxall, Peter, and John Purcell. "Strategy and human resource management." Industrial & Labor Relations Review 57.1 (2003): 84. Cromwell, Susan E., and Judith A. Kolb. "An examination of work‐environment support factors affecting transfer of supervisory skills training to the workplace." Human resource development quarterly 15.4 (2004): 449-471. ECOP. Work-family issues and initiatives in the Philippines Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP). Geneva: International Labour Office, 2005. International Labour Office. Work-family issues and initiatives in the Philippines Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP), No. 63. International Labour Organization, 2005. John E. Grable, Jean lown, Ph.D. "Tools, Techniques, Strategies, and Research to aid consumers and professional financial advisors." Journal of Personal Finance, volume 3, Issue 4 (2004): 3. Maurer, Todd J., Elizabeth M. Weiss, and Francisco G. Barbeite. "A model of involvement in work-related learning and development activity: The effects of individual, situational, motivational, and age variables." Journal of applied psychology 88.4 (2003): 707. Narendranath, sheena. "work life balance - the employers perspective." Osmania Journal of Management (n.d.): 3. Nordenmark, Mikael. "Multiple social roles—a resource or a burden: Is it possible for men and women to combine paid work with family life in a satisfactory way?." Gender, Work & Organization 9.2 (2002): 125-145. Swanson, Richard A., Elwood F. Holton, and Ed Holton. Foundations of human resource development. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001. Read More