Human Resources, Competitive Advantg - Essay Example

Human Resource Management One of the trends that will affect HR practices and the way labor market is composed is age. People between the ages of 45 to 65 are increasing, following an increase in those individuals who are 16 to 24 years old (Dessler 28). Issues related to aging experienced by HR include planning for retirement and retraining the workforce. Second trend that may affect is the issue of diversity, as the number of immigrants increase and due to this HR will experience the issue of managing cultural diversity within the workforce.

The third trend is increase in participation of the female gender in the workforce. HR will have to ensure that they are given equal opportunity and they are protected against issues such as sex discrimination.2. Sexual harassment has been defined as sexual moves that are unasked for by the victim, requests of favors that are sexual in nature in exchange of promotion or threat of firing the employee and physical and verbal actions and movements that are sexual in nature. Sexual harassment that is recognized as Quid Pro Quo occurs when an individual is offered promotion or is threatened to be fired from his/her position if the employee rejects or accepts favors that are sexual in nature.

Sexual harassment that is recognized as Hostile environment occurs when people on the same level of the hierarchy conduct activities that are sexual in nature and are unwanted and make the environment difficult for the victim to continue to operate in an efficient manner.3. When during the procedure of selection and hiring the HR employs a multiple hurdle model, the applicant has to stay successful during different steps of a test and they have to prove to be successful in every step. If they fail to achieve the passing score in a particular test, they are deemed as unfit for the job.

If the HR has employed a compensatory model, they will be making their hiring decision based on the overall scores of all the tests. This model is based on the premise that if an applicant performs well on one test and fails to perform well on the other test, the earlier score will compensate for the score of the second test. 4. According to the job characteristic model, there are five characteristics of a particular job. The first characteristic is skill variety, which is defined as the number of skills that are required to perform a particular job; the second is task identity, which is defined as the completion of the job from the starting point to the ending point.

The third is task significance which is defined as how significant is the job for the organization. The fourth is autonomy, which is defined as the amount of freedom that an employee could exercise to perform a particular job. The last characteristic is feedback which is defined as the perception about how well the job has been performed by the employee according to the employer.Works CitedDessler, Gary. Fundamentals of human resource management. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.