Contemporary issues in human resource management - Assignment Example

?Contemporary Issues in Human Resource Management Executive Summary This study aims at discussing an important issue of human resource management, with the example of a recent incident that occurred in Virgin Australia Airline’s flight. Discrimination on the basis of gender is a major issue, which has been critically discussed in most of the countries, and necessary steps have also been taken to eradicate discrimination completely. Virgin Australia Airline introduced a new policy for their airlines that the male passengers cannot sit beside any unaccompanied minor passenger, while a woman can. Though many parents whose children had to travel alone welcomed this initiative, morally this policy was wrong and illegal. Moreover, even a woman can harm an unaccompanied child, if she wants to do so. Specifically tagging the males as dangerous and harmful was something not expected from a company of such stature. It can be considered a HR issue because the male employees of Virgin Airlines can feel insecure and depressed due to such decisions of the company. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 INTRODUCTION 4 Background 4 Problem Areas 5 Outline of the Study 5 CASE STUDY - VIRGIN AUSTRALIA AIRLINES 5 Conclusion 6 Recommendation 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 INTRODUCTION Background The study aims at highlighting the contemporary issues involved in human resource management, such as discriminations, job stress, safety issues, emotional labour, diversity, and employee burnout. In this report specifically the issue of Virgin Australia Airline has been chosen and their new policy of not allowing male passengers to sit beside children, as they are considered unsafe. This policy was regarded as a discrimination approach of Virgin Airlines, by its male customer. In such cases the role of human resource management and the department needs to be evaluated. Human resource management (HRM) plays a very important role in the development of modern economies. The difference between developed and developing countries lies in difference in their human resources, otherwise most of the resources are same (Price, 2011, p. 3-4; Bhatia, 2008, p. 91-92). It has been seen that though exploiting the financial, physical, natural resources are very important in modern times, but none of them are as important as committed and efficient work force. It is often said that most of the development come from the human minds (Robbins, and Coulter, 2008, p. 366-367). The traditional importance of HRM was due to the recruitment and selection process which they handled, but now a strategic approach of HRM in administration, personnel management and other accomplishments have made the role of HRM momentous in organizations (Bernardin, 2008, p. 9-10). There are numerous additional roles that the human resource department of the company has to supervise along with staffing and selection of the employees. These roles includes training the employees, monitoring performance of the employee for appraisal, job analysis, ascertaining the remuneration for a particular job position, 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, 2008, p. 5-6). The human resource department also has the responsibility to ensure that gender discrimination does not prevail in the organisation on the basis of gender, according to the Civil Rights Act 1964 (Kurtz, and Boone, 2008, p. 54). Problem Areas This section involves the contemporary issues of human resource with respect to Virgin Australia Airline. The company has recently reviewed its policies in which they have restricted men to sit beside children on the flights. The policy of the Airline Company became public when a fireman from Sydney was asked to switch his seat with another passenger because he was sitting in between two unaccompanied children (Brown, 2012). In that situation a female attendant asked the passenger to change his seat. People all around the world have revolted against this policy of the company, as this single decision of the company has not only reversed the image of men in the society, but also degraded the image of the Airline Company. Outline of the Study The policies that deal with the human beings are designed and formulated by the human resource department of the company. They not only take part of the recruitment and selection processes of the company, but also contribute their knowledge and recommendation in developing strategic decision for companies, especially in the service industry. So the report begins with a brief overview or background study of the human resource management and the probable contemporary issues they deal with. Then the problem areas in this study have been mentioned to highlight the issues of discussion. Further the incident and the policies of Virgin Airline Australia would be presented in form of a case study. Finally the report would be concluded and probable recommendations after studying the case would be stated for better understanding of the readers. CASE STUDY - VIRGIN AUSTRALIA AIRLINES Recently, four airline companies were thoroughly criticized for introducing controversial seating regulations. According to this policy, the men were not allowed to sit beside any unaccompanied children. This policy can be strictly considered an issue of discrimination under contemporary human resource management. The policy was strictly criticized by civil liberties and also protested for. In 2012, this discriminatory policy of the Virgin Airlines became public when Johnny Mcgirr, a 33 year old male from Sydney was moved from his seat as he was sitting next to kids on the plane. A public uproar against this policy of Virgin Australia on Twitter has compelled the airline company to review its policy once again (Jabour, 2012). However, most of the parents who have small children and whose children generally have to fly alone are in support of this decision because according to them this would ensure the safety of their children to some extent. It would be safe for female minors to sit with women instead of men, as this might reduce the increasing crime of molestation of female minors on flight. So it can be said that this issue has two dimensions, the first is the discriminatory activity by the airlines and the second aspect is the concern of those parents whose children had to travel alone due to some specific reasons. Creating a negative image of males in the society by tagging them as paedophilic is against law. When the society demands to stop discrimination between male and female in organizations, then why discrimination should be allowed in airlines. The males who are restricted to sit beside a minor may be the father, grandfather, or brother of a female minor. This step might have been taken based on the feedback of the passengers or parents whose children travel along. Due to the increasing rate of sexual assault cases committed by men, parents are always concerned for their children when they are travelling along. Perhaps this might be the probable reason for such a step. However, does this also drive the airline to make a policy to assign separate seats for males and females in an aircraft? If not, then why the discrimination policy is implemented only against males. Even a female can harm a minor if she wants to do so (Gans, 2012). Conclusion As we have already studied in this report that the core function of the human resource management department is to recruit and select candidates for employment based on their skills, but there are various contemporary duties of the HRD which play vital role in streamlining the organizational objectives with the goals of the employees or the human capital of the organization. The contemporary issues includes workforce diversity, discrimination, fair pay, employee benefit, etc (Thornton, M., 2010, p. 136; David, L., 2009, p. 65). Among these contemporary issues, we have discussed an issue of gender discrimination in this report. The incident which recently took place in a Virgin Australia Airline highlighted the fact that the policies of gender discrimination is not only applicable for women but for men too. Virgin Australia Airlines has floated a policy that the male passengers cannot sit beside the unaccompanied children passengers in the flight, while if necessary a woman can. Though this cannot be considered an internal HR issue of Virgin Australia Airline, but the policy implemented by the management has been followed by the crew members of the airline company, who function under the supervision of the HRD. When such policies are being considered and preached by the company management for its flyers, then there is no guarantee to the fact that such concepts do not prevail or can prevail within the organization (Ukmix, 2012). The idea is to just put forward a question in the minds of the readers that, as far as employees or passengers are concerned, both can be included within the bracket of human capital, because employees are the assets for the company and flyers or the passengers are the revenue or profit. In such a case the company has not only showed gender biasness, but also decreased the goodwill of the company extensively. Moreover, the male employees working in the Airline Company would also be annoyed with such policies of the company and a feeling of insecurity would spread among the male as well as female employees of the company (Professional Pilot Rumour Network, 2012). Recommendation After a complete analysis of the human resource policies for handling contemporary issues and the case of Virgin Australia Airlines, it was understood that the company took a hasty decision based on some probable customer feedback. They wanted to highlight that at Virgin Australia Airline, the customer feedback is given prime importance and implemented a policy to grab attention. However, the results turned out to be completely different. Though the policy of the company is illegal under the Civil Rights Act, but even then if the company wants to continue this policy then it can be modified, by stating that the seat beside unaccompanied children should be left vacant and under any circumstances neither a male nor a female would be allowed to sit beside them (Stredwick, 2012, p. 80). The second option can be that, the unaccompanied children should be allotted seats in a separate area all together, so that the airlines would not have to keep any seat vacant and all the unaccompanied children travelling in the same flight should sit together. References Aswathappa, K., 2008. Human Resource and Personnel Management. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Bernardin, H. J., 2008. Human Resource Management. 4th ed. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Bhatia, S. K., 2008. Emerging Human Resource Development (Hrd). New Delhi: Deep and Deep Publications. Brown, G. S., 2012. Man Seated Next to Unaccompanied Minors Forced to Change Seats. ABC News, [online] (Last updated 11:52am on 13 August 2012) Available at: [Accessed 27 September 2012]. Gans, J., 2012. Who Can Sit Next to Children on Flights? [Online] Available at: [Accessed 27 September 2012]. Jabour, B., 2012. Seat Swap Outcry Moves Virgin to Think Again. The Sydney Morning Herald, [online] (Last updated on 10th August 2012) Available at: [Accessed 27 September 2012]. Kurtz, D. L., and Boone, L. E., 2008. Contemporary Business. 12th ed. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Price, A., 2011. Human Resource Management. 4th ed. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Robbins, S. R., and Coulter, M., 2008. Management. 9th ed. New Delhi: Pearson Education India. Stredwick, J., 2012. Introduction to Human Resource Management. 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge. Thornton, M., 2010. Sex Discrimination in Uncertain Times. Canberra: ANUE Press. Ukmix, 2012. Airlines Attacked For Labelling All Men Paedophiles. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 27 September 2012]. ? Bibliography Armstrong, M., 2008. Strategic Human Resource Management: A Guide to Action. 4th ed. London: Kogan Page Publishers. 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 27 September 2012]. Centrorisorse, no date. The Human Factor in the Current Business Environment. [Online] Available at: < http://www.centrorisorse.org/the-human-factor-in-the-current-business-environment.html#> [Accessed 27 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 27 September 2012]. Schermerhorn, J. R., 2009. Exploring Management. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons. Virgin Australia, no date. Company Overview. [Online]. Available at: http://www.virginaustralia.com/au/en/about-us/company-overview/. [Accessed 27 September 2012]. Virgin Australian, no date. Virgin Australia History. [Online]. Available at: http://www.virginaustralia.com/us/en/about-us/company-overview/virgin-australia-history/. [Accessed 27 September 2012]. Read More