Assignment topic and learning objectives

¶ … leadership that interests me the most is the human resource management because it is all about understanding employees and providing them with a better working experience. Many problems crop up in this line of work as its difficult to find common ways to satisfy a global employee base. Differences in culture, communication and time zones pose a major problem for HR managers today and this is an area that I would like to make some changes.

Human Resource Management

The role of a HR Manager differs widely from company to company in terms of the company's policies and the ways in which it is implemented. In general, Human Resource Management (HRM) "is a body of knowledge and a set of practices that define the nature of work and regulate the employment relationship" (Bratton & Gold, 2001, p.14). It covers five major functional areas, namely, staffing, rewards, employee development, employee maintenance and employee relations.

The role of the HR has become increasingly complex with globalization. As a company expands its operations to different countries or moves its work to low-cost destinations, the HR managers face the problem of handling a global workforce. Differences in culture, background, accent and time zone brings about a host of problems that the HR manager should be equipped to solve.

Problem -- Staffing and managing a global workforce

The company I work for is headquartered in the U.S. with operations in India and China. A major chunk of information technology operations and R&D of the company are in India while the manufacturing facilities are located in China. The U.S. headquarters has marketing, finance and sales operations and is responsible for collaborating with employees in the other two countries for the successful delivery of high-tech products and solutions for customers.

In the light of this set-up, the HR managers get constant queries from project managers and others about how to handle a communication problem or how to improve the productivity of workers. This paper will focus on a common problem faced by HR managers that is related to staffing. The gap between education and industry requirements is constantly widening and many employees who join the workforce do not have the interpersonal skills required to effectively collaborate and work in a global and dynamic environment.

"The perception from business, government and education leaders of 50 nations at the Bahrain 2010 Global Education Conference held last December, is that the global achievement gap between what industry expects and what education delivers is not caused by a lack of content. It is caused by a failure to provide opportunity for creativity, collaboration, context and practical application" (Cornelius, 2011, p.50). This gap is not because of the lack of education, but its rather due to an outdated education system that trains students like blocks on a conveyor belt. The individual abilities and talent are overshadowed by a rigorous coursework. A student is expected to excel at all the subjects instead of focusing his or her attention on a particular area that the student is good at.

This widens the gap between what a student is capable of doing and what the student is forced to do to achieve mastery over a rigid and difficult coursework. All this means the HR manager's work gets more complicated because it becomes difficult to identify the right candidate for a job. Moreover, the lack of exposure makes it further more difficult for the candidate to interact in a global environment, thereby leading to problems related to communication and employee motivation.

Another problem is the requirement for HR managers to find candidates in the same country to work in that facility. This is a part of the company's policies to recruit locally for the benefit of the local economy. For example, the IT openings have to be filled with Indian students while the manufacturing jobs have to be filled in China. Though this is one of the benefits of globalization, it also makes it difficult to staff across countries. Also, the cultural differences make global staffing difficult. This places a further restriction on HR managers to find the right person for the right job.

Information gaps and how it can be filled

The information that exists in this company regarding staffing is fairly grim. It is estimated that 10% of international jobs in the company remain unfilled because of the inability to find the right candidate. Potential candidates do not have the experience or exposure to be a part of the global workforce and from past experience, its becoming increasing difficult for them to fit into such a dynamic environment.

Almost 60% of the jobs that are opening in the company are high paying jobs that require a minimum Master's degree followed by high proficiency in the respective field. Besides these technical skills, the job also requires a high level of communication skills, critical thinking ability, adaptability to a dynamic business environment and ability to use a wide variety of media-rich ways to collaborate and innovate. It is these personal skills that are becoming increasingly difficult to find.

There are some gaps in this information that need to be bridged. Firstly, the remaining 40% of the unfilled jobs should be filled right away. The reasons for not filling this job should be identified. These jobs are not high-paying jobs and they do not require a high level of skills and so, it should be easy to find candidates for these positions. The local HR managers along with the project managers and team leads should be given the responsibility to make a list of the unfilled jobs in their team and the reasons for the same.

The project managers should have a meeting with the HR manager to discuss the reasons. This will give the HR manager a fair idea of the problem and the necessary solutions that have to be formulated to solve this issue.

Potential solutions

Work with different technical and educational institutions

There are many potential solutions to this problem. The first solution is to work with some of the top technical institutes in the U.S., India and China. Certain aspects of the required skills such as communication, adaptability and innovation can be imbibed to students at a younger age when they are more receptive to learning. Also, the students who show the innate ability to innovate and communicate can be kept a close watch on so that they can be absorbed into the company.

According to Cornelius (2011), the company and an educational institution can collaborate to make a list of the desired outcomes and work towards achieving them, improve the employability of students by providing workshops or internships, use learning methods that will provide problem-based competency, create a transparent assessment system that is not wholly based on examinations and work towards the development of skills and credentials that is portable for employment. This can help to reduce the gap that exist between industry requirement and the skills of the candidates.

Extensive orientation and training

Another way to overcome the staffing problem is to provide an extended amount of orientation for the new employees. They can be provided the training necessary to work in a global environment. The company can look to spend a good part of its training budget on providing communication and collaboration workshops for its new employees.

Internal movement of employees

The company should look at the possibility of moving employees within the organization instead of always looking for new talent. It should be a part of a broader process where the company works actively to provide on-the-job training to talented employees so that they can move up the ladder when the right opportunity comes up. Also, they can be moved across locations as and when a need arises, provided the employee is willing to make that move. Forcing employees to move across countries will never work because it will only result in the employee becoming dissatisfied and frustrated with the company and eventually, this employee will look for other jobs.

Open to the idea of hiring global candidates

A solution to working around the problem of finding local candidates for the offices in India and China is to have a global staffing team that works in conjunction with the headquarters in the U.S. To fill positions as they come up.

The company should also be open to the idea of hiring global candidates for the high-profile jobs in the U.S., India and China. The talent that is available all around the world should be put to use by the company and the only way to do this is to cut across physical boundaries and hire candidates from other countries. Though there are likely to be visa restrictions and cultural differences that can come up with this policy, it is nevertheless the way forward. Using the core idea of globalization, the company should work around these visa problems to recruit globally. As for the cultural differences, the company can provide extensive orientation and support necessary for the candidates to bridge these differences.

Best solution

There is no single best solution to the process of staffing and maintaining a global workforce. Rather, the company should combine a few strategies and modify them to suit the needs of the company.

Global recruitment without cultural bias

The idea of global recruiting is the best way forward as the entire world is looking to cut across cultural and physical boundaries. One thing that the company should ensure is that no discrimination is made on the basis of culture while recruiting. Shell is one of the global companies that faces a similar issue and it has come up with a unique way to address the problems that occur due to cultural bias. "In creating global staffing systems, Shell also faces issues of how to assess competencies on a global basis. Shell's goal is to understand what each competency means across cultures and to devise assessment methods that will allow the company to capture those culture-specific behaviors. Shell uses a global assessment center for assisting with candidate selection and has standard training for all assessors who administer the assessment center" (Vance & Yongsun, 2010, p.170). A similar strategy can be followed by my company when it comes to recruiting global candidates. The assessors should be given adequate training to look beyond the cultural bias and identify the traits that will work well for the candidate as well as the company.

More autonomy for local staffing teams

The staffing teams in India and China should be given more autonomy to recruit candidates as positions open up in India and China respectively. This is known as the ethnocentric approach to staffing. Earlier, the Parent Country Nationals (PCN) were doing most of the recruitment because of the lack of right talent in the foreign countries. However, this has changed during the last few years because of the increase in talent pool in India and China. So, the company can provide more autonomy for the HR teams in these two countries. At the same time, a global center should also work actively with the HR teams in the U.S., India and China to fill the positions through global candidates.