The various aspects of human resources are greatly affected by different cultures in respect to a given society of the world. Here the human resource managers should be concerned mainly with trying by all means to harmonize all the cultural differences existing in various nationalities and not trying to choose any option because this will create more problems than solutions. Some of this human resource management practices includes employee reward, recruitment and selection of employees, training and development of employees and finally the employee’s relations and communications.
Employee reward
In various countries the remunerations given to workers are usually quite different from one nation to another. This is why most international corporations are recently setting up their branches in African and some other parts of the world where the rewards given to employees in terms of their pay is significantly low. For example in Japan there is a system in which the salaries are paid as per ones status (seniority) and not abilities and performance. This could impact so negatively on the on the corporate in terms of its profits and its future prospects.
This is because the corporation is paying so much money to unproductive people for this corporation and also very old. It is advisable for this corporation to think of rewards which are based on the individual’s ability and the proportion in which a particular person plays in the success of the company. Other aspects of culture such as racism have also contributed to the discrimination in allocation of salaries in some people with certain racial affiliations are well paid than the others.
Recruitment and selection
The cultures of various nations have brought the gender issues in the selection and recruitment of certain sex in particular jobs. For example in Japan the corporate world is highly dominated by men with women working as only tea girls and also their cultural practices have made it very hard for women to work. In other cases the young people have great problems in securing jobs because of the lack of experience and thus the human resource managers in multi-national corporations usually find themselves in big trouble since they are not employing the local people.
Training and development
The educational systems in various countries are usually quiet different and this makes it very hard for international corporations to train and develop the local population in order to absorb them in their organisations. This is mostly influenced by absence of adequate technological background in the education offered in various developing countries.
Employee relations and communication
For instance in countries like Japan where there are no free interactions between the employer and the employee and a lot of respect is accorded to the senior staff to the extent that one has to bow for his senior. This makes it very hard for employee to hire their grievances. Thus the human resource managers should initiate appropriate ways of communicating with the whole staff in order to make them understand the affairs of the corporation and thus creating the corporate culture while appreciating the cultures of different communities.
Various undertakings which the organisations can do to ensure good work life balance for employees and their families while performing international assignments
It is a common knowledge the when the organisation sets itself out as an employer of the people choice then the performance of the staff becomes unquestionable. This is because the employees will be highly motivated. The organisations can accord their employees the privilege of their family members to access their work place. For example when employees are going for assignment in the foreign countries the organisation can try to fund them to take their wives or husbands with them to their place of work in those foreign countries. This will make the very comfortable and thus perform to their best. Secondly, these organisations can also create programmes for these employees to keep in touch with their families. For example funding their children to come and see their parents at place of work.
Thirdly, the implementation of the flexible hours will do a lot good to the employees because their hours are not rigidly set and thus they are in a position to leave their places of work when they have emergency issue to attend at home or in other places for example when the female employees are breastfeeding and also the case where the male employees are taking care of their wives who have given birth. They can also do the above by giving the extended paternal and maternal leave to their employees. When the employee’s personal needs are well taken in to consideration he or she fells valued by the organisation in which he or she works for and this makes him or her to work hard to ensure that his organisation fulfils its set goals.
The role of human resource management in multi-national corporation and also in a small to medium enterprise nationally
The main work of human resource people is to ensure that there are right persons doing the right duties in the intended time and this is regardless of whether it is in multinational or national context. In most cases the human resource management in Multinational Corporation is highly concern on how get the right people to train in order to prepare them to be able to work in a country which is different from their own in terms of cultural, economic and political aspects.
This is to minimise the problems which could arise and these problems can be both work related or personal and can adversely affect the performance of the employees. Also the human resource people have a responsibility to ensure that these expatriates are returned back in their home countries to ensure that they offer the experience gained in the foreign countries. It is also the responsibility of human resource management to ensure that they cultivate the corporate culture both in multinational and National Corporation.
This will make sure the employees are guided experiences and beliefs. The other very critical work of human resource management is to ensure that the leaders are acquired and well developed in order to get people who can compete very well in this competitive world and thus the overall success of the corporation. Also these leaders should be well trained in order to fit in varying cultures and environments. In both multinational and National Corporation the human resource management should be involved in the activities of recruiting highly qualified personnel and also trying to initiate strategies to retain the staff with good talents whom if they can quit the corporation its performance can be adversely affected. This will call for good salaries to be accorded to such employees and also good working conditions to be offered to them to make it very hard for the competitors to afford them.