LEADING ORGANISATIONS & MANAGEMENT

Leading Organisations & Management



Leading Organisations & Management

Question 1

There has been much debate as to whether recessions lead to transient, if otherwise significant changes, or cause profound and lasting disjuncture in the ways firms manage human resources and relate to trade unions. A case can be made that recessions in Ireland to date - and especially the deep and prolonged recession of the 1980s to early 1990s - have had more sustained impacts on employment relations through their influence on macro-level developments in institutions and arrangements, than on micro-level engagement between employers, employees and trade unions in firms and workplaces(Arpaia, 2010, pp. 105-109).

In the last twenty years a lot of changes have taken place in our country's economy, and as a result enterprises have had to keep up with the changes in order to survive. The rapidly changing economic environment and the inevitable influence of the global crisis has demanded continuous effort and readiness to adapt to radical changes. In the sector of large companies the role of the capital-intense foreign-owned companies is vastly important, and these foreign investments have brought fundamental changes not only in our country but all around the world; they have shaken the relations of property, production and employment structures.

Employment adjustment can be secured by reducing employee numbers or by increasing working time flexibility or a combination of the two. An option open to an organisation seeking to avoid job losses is to develop a workforce stabilization programme. A number of specific policies fall within this category, such as a temporary layoff scheme for employees; in-sourcing production that had previously been outsourced to suppliers or other companies; employee redeployment and staff sabbaticals or similar initiatives. Firms can also re-organize working time to avoid making redundancies, curb overtime, or introduce short-time working(Cassidy, 2009, pp. 236-239). Firms may also respond to the recession by increasing numerical flexibility: greater numbers of part-time and temporary workers are employed instead of full time workers in an effort to match more closely company employment levels with changes in demand for the company's products or services

The changing focus of strategy implies tremendous HR tasks: from the process of possibly down-sizing of employment to a new definition of job positions, to the re-establishing and reharmonizing of performance-evaluation and of the remuneration system, anything can be reconsidered. The crisis demands the creation of an HR strategy that can be adjusted to a completely new, completely changed economic environment and to a corresponding business strategy by most companies. If we look at only the smaller questions instead of a completely changed strategy, then - beside the above-mentioned increasing selectivity - the most important challenge for the organization is expected to be retaining talent and highly trained professionals who are involved in the basic business activities of the firm(Griffin and Smith, 2010, pp. 17-22). The growth of manpower certainly will not be the same in all professional areas or across all levels of professional experience. Regarding retention of employees the most important task ...