Contemporary Issues in Human Resource Management - Essay Example

?Contemporary Issues in Human Resource Management Table of Contents Introduction 4 Skill Shortage 5 Newspaper Article by- Coventry Evening Telegraph (England); February 20, 2012 Monday 6 Summary 6 Managing Diversity 7 Summary 8 Emotional Labour 8 Summary 10 Conclusion 10 References 12 Appendices 13 Appendix 1 13 Introduction In this study we are going to discuss in detail about the different dimensions of human resource management. Human resource management simply means to manage the employees or human resources of the company, by keeping in mind the long-term goals and profitability of the company. The basic function of the human resource department is to ensure that the company has competent, willing and efficient workforce (Bhatia, 2008, p. 91-92). There are several other functions that the human resource department of the company has to monitor along with recruitment and selection of the employees. These functions includes job analysis, training the employees, monitoring performance of the employee for appraisal, ascertaining the remuneration for the particular job position or employee, allotting incentives for good performance, taking care of the employee benefit policies of the company, acting as a communication channel between the employees and the top level management, developing employee welfare, safety and health care plans, taking care of promotions, transfers, maintaining industrial relationships, handling the issues of the Trade Union, solving disputes within the employees or departments, assessing the ethical issues in the department or organization, etc (Aswathappa, 2007, p. 5-6). The study aims at mainly focusing on the contemporary issues involved in human resource management, such as job stress, discriminations, diversity, safety issues, emotional labour, and employee burnout. In this study the issues of skill shortage, diversity management and emotional labour has been considered with the help of journal articles, and newspaper editorials to capture the latest discussions on these issues. Skill Shortage Newspaper Article by - Coventry Evening Telegraph (England); July 5, 2011 Tuesday Nuneaton Edition: In the article, “Skills shortage for city's small firms; business briefing”, it has been highlighted that nowadays companies are struggling to find really skilled employees to meet the requirements of the organization. These major concerns compelled Lloyds TSB Commercial to conduct a survey, which revealed that there was a skill short of about 43 percent in the small business industry. The owners of these firms believed that there was major scarcity of skilled workforce in most of the region. Gary Saxon, a representative of Lloyds TSB Commercial accepted the fact that there is short supply of skills; so on job training or hands on experience would surely solve the problem of shortage (Perry, 2011, p. 42). Journal Article by- Sussman, Dan: The journal article “Skills Shortage”, focuses on the shortage of skilled employees in the manufacturing industry. According to CIA World Factbook, 29 percent of the global production was derived from US, but this statistics has fallen to 21 percent. Though there are many reasons for such situation, such as enormous layoff in the automobile sector, advent of automation in manufacturing segment, etc. The National Association for Manufacturers (NAM) has revealed that 80 percent manufacturer agreed to the shortage of skilled personnel in their organization. Another important reason is that nowadays education and training is very important even in manufacturing industry. Gone are the days when people with less education could also gain good jobs in manufacturing industry. One needs to have the ability to solve problems, communicate, understand statistics and utilize brain (Dan, 2006, p. 2-3). Newspaper Article by- Coventry Evening Telegraph (England); February 20, 2012 Monday Nuneaton Edition: In this news article, “Credit Easing Can Boost Employment”, UK’s labour market is considered and has been analyzed that, the situation has become very difficult since the beginning of the global recession. This has been stated by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). They have also predicted that the private sector of UK is moving toward a phase where the employers are downsizing, which is resulting in an anaemic economic growth. CIPD is also expecting that the unemployment rate of the country would be reaching to 2.85 million by 2012. This scenario reveals the core causes of skill shortage in the country as well as in other parts of the world. A close relationship between youth unemployment and shortage of skilled employees can be drawn from this article. Slashing about 37 percent employees is also reducing the percentage of skilled workers from the organisations (Bailey, 2011, p. 18). Summary All the three articles were included in the study to explain the latest trends of skill shortage in the global market. Due to this reason an overall analysis of US, UK and other labour market has been studied to derive the fact that shortage of skilled employees has been seen in 80 percent of the small, medium and large organisations. The reasons might be downsizing due to global financial crisis, automation and demand for highly developed and knowledgeable workers. Managing Diversity Journal Article by - Gillian A. Maxwell, Sharon Blair, and Marilyn McDougall: In the article, “Edging Towards managing Diversity in Practice”, the focus of discussion is on managing diversity, and its value at workplace. A realistic relationship has been drawn with the public sector of UK to explain the concept further. Though the concept of managing diversity started in USA, but it also influenced UK considerably in the late 1990s. The Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) has described diversity in organisation as a vision for providing equal opportunities to all the individuals of organisational development, but in this case it can be said that there is a minor difference between equal opportunity and diversity. Equal opportunity is influenced by external forces such as legislation, etc, whereas management of diversity is lead by internal forces and is directed connected to the bottom line. Equal opportunity relies on human rights, ethical business practices, and issues like social justice, while in case of diversity. Instruments like business cases or examples of diverse workforce gaining profitability for the organisation are responsible. There are many benefits of managing diversity in organisation such as utilisation of skilled employees, which would lead to organisational success. The organisation would be well equipped with diverse skills and talents (Maxwell, Blair, and McDougall, 2001, p. 2-5). Newspaper Article by – The Guardian (UK); August 6, 2012 Monday Public Leader Network: Managing diversity is also explained in the news article, “Making Your Workforce More Diverse: Top Tips” in a cohesive manner. It states that organisations which set targets for themselves with regards to public diversity prove the fact that they are seriously committed to gender equality and managing the diversity, but only setting targets is not enough. Though women comprise of 50 percent of the work force in the organisation, but leakage in the pipeline still exists. The article describes six major steps towards managing diversity in the workplace. They are setting goals, rewarding fairly, coaching and encouraging, motivating leadership, and citing examples to lead (Wells, 2012). Journal Article by - Lynne Bolen and Brain H. Kleiner: This article, “Managing Diversity at Workplace”, describes the cross-cultural aspect in managing diversity in organisations. The example of the American society has been chosen for this purpose. Managing diversity is not a matter of any social, moral or legal issue, but mismanagement would surely create challenges within the organisation. Diversity does not encompass any religion, race or gender, but it involves ages, region and difference in the way of thinking. Companies would be more competitive of they learn to manage diversity. Moreover, it would also result in a change in the organisational culture (Bolen, and Kleiner, 1996, p. 2-3). Summary This section of the study deals with a different contemporary issue of human resource management that is managing diversity. Organisations round the world focuses on utilising the positive effects of diversity of workforce in their organisation. With the help of the above articles, different facets of managing diversity in the modern times has been discussed and evaluated. Emotional Labour Journal Article by – Ronald H. Humphrey, Jeffrey M. Pollack, and Thomas Hawver: The concept of emotional labour has been described in the article, “Leading with Emotional Labour.” The concept of emotional labour was conceptualised mainly for the front line employees in the service sector. There were very few researchers who included the managers while studying the concepts of emotional labour. They discovered that the tendency of the manager to perform the emotional labour is higher than that of the physical workforce. The term emotional labour was coined by Hochschild (1979). She depicted that the service agents are the ones who perform the emotional labour, when they express their feelings and emotions as a part of their job role. For example when they smile while providing services to the customers, or show a friendly attitude towards the customers. It has also been explained in the article that organisations can lead through the effective usage of emotional labour. Leading with the help of emotional labour signifies the display of emotions by the leaders to influence their followers. The different types of emotional labours that are generally seen are in customer service jobs, caring employees or jobs where social control is necessary (Humphrey, Pollack, and Hawver, 2012, p. 151-153). Newspaper Article by – Guardian (UK); June 13, 2012 Monday Higher Education Network: In the news article “We Should Be Paying More Attention to the Emotional Labour of Teaching”, the concepts and the significance of emotional labour are explained in this article. Emotional labour requires the employee to display a certain amount of emotions as a function of their job responsibility. In this article the utility of emotional labour in teaching profession has been expressed. The concept is to show certain emotions while dealing with different students and their various issues like sexual assault, etc (Aragon, 2012). Journal Article by - Pam Smith and Maria Lorentzon: In the article, "Comment". The ethical issues related to emotional labour has been discussed. The author has raised an important question; is emotional labour ethical? This is a very valid question in this scenario because the authenticity of such show of emotions is not tested and they are off course not true. The emotional labour is just a part of their service and should not personally affect them. These can also be regarded as fake emotions. In professions likes aviation, where the air passengers should be treated nicely to make them feel safe and comfortable, etc. In hospitals nurses have the duty to care and treat the patients carefully so as to help to recover faster (Smith, and Lorentzon, 2005, p. 2-4). Summary Emotional labour simply means utilising the emotional factors of the employees for delivering the duties in the organisation. This concept is mainly applicable to the service sector because they deliver services directly to the customers. In professions like air hostess, waiter in restaurants, beauty services, teaching, nursing, etc involves emotional labour. The articles included above for throwing light on various aspects of emotional labour also evaluates similar ideas as mentioned. Conclusion The new age of business has been witnessing revolutionary changes in the field of employee management. Nowadays demand of HR professionals has been like never before. Presently an HR plays a multi dimensional role. They are responsible for identifying the potential candidates and also build relevant strategies in order to contribute efficiently towards the process of achieving organizational goals. Hence in order to survive the ‘war of talent’ it becomes the responsibility of HR department to attract, motivate and retain the best employees of the organization. The HR department of an organization is responsible for the employee experience during the tenure of his employment. It is the human resource management of the company who are responsible for organizational culture and leadership. The human resource department of the company also has the essential duty of monitoring that the employees work in compliance with the labour laws. It is also the function of the human resource manager to assist the top-level management of the company in maintaining a healthy relationship with the trade unions in the organization. They also provide help the management in support functions and chalk out strategies to reduce the internal cost of the company and risk reduction. This study has included the various contemporary issues in human resource management. The contemporary issues such as skill shortage, managing workforce diversity and emotional labour has become very important in organisations now a days. So a detail discussion on these issues has been done. The facts and theories presented in the study have been strongly backed by the usage of adequate journal articles and newspaper articles from authentic sources. References Aragon, J., 2012. Making Your Workforce More Diverse: Top Tips. The Guardian, [online] 13 June. Available at: [Accessed 7 September 2012]. Aswathappa, K., 2007. Human Resource and Personnel Management. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Bailey, D., 2011. Credit Easing Can Boost Employment. Coventry Evening Telegraph, Nuneaton Edition, pp. 18. Bhatia, S. K., 2008. Emerging Human Resource Development (Hrd). New Delhi: Deep and Deep Publications. Bolen, L., and Kleiner, B. H., 1996. Managing Diversity at Workplace. Cross-Cultural Management: An Internal Journal [e-journal] 3 (4) Available through: Emerald Insight [Accessed 7 September 2012]. Dan, S., 2006. Skills Shortage. ProQuest Education Journals [e-journal] 60 (5) Available through: ProQuest [Accessed 7 September 2012]. Humphrey, R. H., Pollack, J. M., and Hawver, T., 2012. Leading With Emotional Labour. Journal of Managerial Psychology. [e-journal] 23 (2) Available through: Emerald Insight [Accessed 7 September 2012]. Maxwell, G. A., Blair, S., and McDougall, M., 2001. Edging Towards managing Diversity in Practice. Employee Relation [e-journal] 23 (5) Available through: Emerald Insight [Accessed 7 September 2012]. Perry, C., 2011. Skills Shortage for City's Small Firms; Business Briefing. Coventry Evening Telegraph, Nuneaton Edition, pp. 42. Smith, P., and Lorentzon, M., 2005. Comment. Pam. Nursing Ethics [e-journal] Available through: Sage Publication [Accessed 7 September 2012]. Wells, H., 2012. Making Your Workforce More Diverse: Top Tips. The Guardian, [online] 6 August. Available at: [Accessed 7 September 2012]. Appendices Appendix 1 Screenshots of the Abstracts from the Journals Used In This Study Skill Shortage Managing Diversity Emotional labour Abstracts from Newspapers used in the Study Read More