INTERNATIONAL HRM

International Human Resource Management

International Human Resource Management

Introduction

The functions of Human Resource Manager are developing due to changes in competitive market environment and global recession and the increasing importance of strategic HR in organization success. Managing employee's retention and attracting is the challenging job of HR which requires effective strategies implementation system otherwise the company would face many obstacles as compare to other global competitors who are more effective in managing their HR.

With the increase in local and global competition, organization should be flexible, adaptable, and alert and customer oriented in order to get success in international market. With consideration of the change in environment, HR personnel must emphasize on becoming a strategic partner, behave like an advocate or change mentor to their employees within organization. Effective HR system requires proper HR planning, making effective policies according to the organization goal and objectives and understands employees' behavior. But this is very difficult for company to survive in this competitive environment. This is the reason that HR managers fail to face challenges and issues related to work environment and employees.

Cultural Differences

According to Thomas (1992), multinational firms have diversified workforce categorized in different dimensions based on ethnicity, gender, physical qualities, income, ancestry, race, sexual orientation, marital status, religion, geographical location and educational background. The most difficult task of HR manager is to manage diverse workforce by considering its benefits. Diverse workforce can provide more creative, innovative ideas and suggestions that can affect productivity of an organization. This diverse group can be an asset of an organization only if HRM would be able to focus on understanding diverse talents. With huge talents of different genders, ages and lifestyle in workforce let organization to respond to challenges and demands of customers more rapidly and effectively when dealing in global environment in consistent with organizational goals and objectives. If managers fail to manage the diversity in the organization, it would be difficult for it to survive in global competitive environment.

The Challenges of Workplace Diversity

These challenges exist especially in those companies which are operating on a global scale and hire people from different countries, cultural and ethical backgrounds. For example, the role of HR Department at Toyota is characterized by three broad approaches. Initial approaches of the HR Department emphasized a cross-cultural approach to towards employees' management in organizations (Huselid 2001). Another approach is related to the comparative role of HRM practices in managing the business operations within home and global countries (Hong, 2009). Third significant role of HR Dept. is related to the functional aspects of HRM deployed by the department at Toyota (Armstrong 2001). HR Department strategies at Toyota's integrate the orientations of strategy, culture, and HRM practices.

When different people work in the same environment, their decision making and their perception are usually different from one another. They can form an effective group in terms of company's productivity but cannot work together because they sometimes have conflicts and cohesiveness issues which are difficult to manage by HR ...