Human Resources Management is “all managerial action carried out at any level regarding the organization of work and the entry, development and exit of people in the organization so that their competencies are used at their best in order to achieve corporate objectives”. (KAMALF) This counts the responsibilities and tasks of HR facing many challenges in present business circumstances like globalization, workforce diversity, technology advances, and changes in political as well as the legal environment change.
2.1 Diversity in the workforce
Diversity has become outstanding managerial concerns since the market value is now increasing the firms are getting stronger and workforce is now internationalization together with legal, social, and economic changes. (DIVERSITY1) Diversity in workforce refers to different races, ethnics, gender, age, religion, ability, and sexual orientation in a company. Most companies embrace diversity and those companies have higher skill base and more competitive and innovative. (STUDY.COM) However, not all the companies have the same problems. Some have gender inequality, religion and ethnicity issues, daily activities are also the biggest issue in diversity, and work performances are the factors. Wholly, the main issue in human resource management is the diversity of workforce regardless the issue. Thus, HRM need to face the challenge of overcoming the issue by putting all the workers together without taking counting of the diversity. (CONTENT11)
In this organization, they are all from different ages, races and gender including having different educational background. They must work together to reach companies goal. However, as usual the basic diversity has separated all them. Just like in BakeJoy, many employees are older works at the production section since they have been working for quite long. Then, the younger ones work in management department due to educational background.
2.2 GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is the system of interaction among the countries in order to develop the global economy. (INDIANMBA) Thus, reducing the barriers among countries and enhance stronger bonds. Most foreigner companies have accomplished the procedures in globalization through foreign direct investment or stock investment. (JEUNGHEUNGJUN) Consequently, globalization has an effect on employment patterns worldwide. This has contributed to a great deal of outsourcing and opens up many job opportunities to combine with many companies all over the world. Besides that, globalization is also seen as changing organizational structures where expenses can move up or down as the business climate orders.
Globalization involves a lot of trainings to the employees, must supply and demand from the employees. HRM must find the qualified candidates and by relocating and train the employees to suit company’s needs. Therefore, the company must be able to send for as many as courses and trainings available to compete with other companies. Additionally, this company must be able to expatriate employees to work abroad for longer periods with all the amenities to be fully prepared to face other companies globally.
BakeJoy has many problem meeting the globalization needs. Nowadays, people are having many kinds of bread and cookies. The need to catch up with the global taste is a bit out of hand since they are still following the older recipes and not ready to take on challenges.
2.3 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Technology advances have significant impact on Human Resources Management. Therefore, information technology or also known as IT is the structural factor and instrument transforms architect of organizations, business processes and communication and is increasingly integrated into HRM. IT has impacts on everyone including managers, employees, customers and suppliers. All of them must increase their expectancies for HR functions. The significance of knowledge and human capital make extra suppression on HR functions and new competences for HR professionals are expected.
The challenges faced by the HRM under IT is more new skills required, need some downsizing, must increase collaboration of work and telecommuting, internet and intranet revolution, business environment changes, development of technology and service improvement. (KAMALF) BakeJoy can increase their efficiency and effectiveness with IT however need to take in consider all the challenges. BakeJoy can then take make orders online in order to save time and cost and also can increase sale through online marketing.
2.4 ETHICS
Ethics are those values, which has been absorbed within an individual on reinforced externally that help him to distinguish between right and wrong and to act accordingly. There can be some sources of ethics like religion, organizational culture, legal obligations, and other related issues. Ethics in HRM designate the treatment of employees with ordinary decency and distributive justice. The ethical business goals as the employees will feel motivated and they will work with efficiency and effectiveness. Ethics in HRM basically deals with the affirmative moral obligations of the employer towards employees to maintain equality and equity justice. (SLIDESHAREHRM)
There are many challenges in ethics issue such as the basic human rights, civil, and employment fight at stake, and the safety at workplace to take care. Then, privacy of the staffs to maintain, fair and equal treatments to all employees, give and take respect, fairness and honesty among HRM and employees.
At BakeJoy, especially the transportation department, they need to get insurance policy each. This is due to their work which is mainly about travelling. Besides that, they need to be more aware of their privacy at work place. This will avoid them from fighting with each other and create bad reputation for the bakery.
3.0 ANALYSIS ON ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
In this business world, an organization must analysis all the related issues and challenges in Human Resource Management. Human Resources have higher responsibilities in hiring new employees into the company. Thus, it is their biggest challenge to make all the employees to work in unity.
3.1 DIVERSITY OF WORKFORCE
Diversity in business basically means to have a workforce that corresponds to have a number of different viewpoints, backgrounds, cultures and ages. Diversity in the workplace is the main problem in the management.(INDIAMBA) Mostly, the diversity focuses on age, gender and race and the factors that is differ from another dimension is the education, technical skills or abilities, functional background and tenure. (CONTENT10)
Diversity of workplace has positive effects such as innovations and flexibility as well as negative effects on high turnover, and decreased job satisfaction. Conversely, diversity management can help reduce the adverse effects of diversity and capitalize on positive effects. A full blend of diversity can help organization to respond to business prospects more brilliantly and creatively, especially in the global arena, which will be one of the organizational goals. (INDIANMBA) Thus, the HRM must be able to tackle the right way in order to make diversity as the plus point of the company. Diversity management does not only recognize but also values and harness work force differences. This management takes advantages of the growing cultural that develops from world markets, grow the workforce mobility and increase awareness of the internalization of business. (CONTENT11)
3.2 GLOBALIZATION
Globalization refers to the combination of economics and societies globally that refers to world trade and financial markets are integrated to become as one. As the business grows internationally, there is where the HRM will meet the challenges regarding new laws, languages, practices, competitions, attitudes, management styles, work ethics and other related challenges. (INDIANMBA)
Human Resources Management must produce more highly qualifies employees to meet the globalization needs. They need to push for professional development by providing employees to earn a university degree, send employees to conferences or networking events and training for days. Furthermore, the employees must be updated with new information and skills. Emphasis on training gives company a competitive edge in the global marketplace. (EFFECTSOFGLOBALIZATION)The training must be a self-paced training, meaning that the training must be related to the job scope. (BAZCENTRAL)
3.3 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
In order to survive in a competitive environment, Bakejoy definitely need the skills in considerable number to handle the situations and technical equipments. There are sectors that require high technical experts like telecommunications, hospitality, retailing, banking, insurance, and bio-technology. HRM next needs to work on downsizing the staffs. Since now, there are new technologies decimating the lower-end jobs. Besides that, there will be pressure of maintain cost-effective in every aspect has also bounded organization to lean and thereby cutting down extra workforce at each and every level of managerial.
Other than that, the telecommuting is another aspect that will be a challenge to HRM. Telecommuting is process where the employees will work remotely from a place other than the main office. This way is very easy since the workers will work through their phone and internet to transmit the work to office.. However, the management and the supervision of these workers will be harder since they are working out of sight. The biggest issue of all is to guard data privacy, security, and business continuity recovery as well. The reason is technological advancement is easily adaptable with companies that can integrate with the internet. (INDIANMBA)
3.4 ETHICAL
The ethics issues have been a problem since 2000s, when plenty of companies have bad records of ethical and illegal conduct, resulting in the loss of billions from shareholders. Fortunately, the companies realized and started implementing ethic codes within working department. Therefore, HRM started developing codes of ethics and developing policies for ethical decision making. (INDIANMBA)
It is the responsibility of HRM to train all the young employees with the ethic codes, to provide them best rewards to attract them to show their commitment and loyalty towards the company. The method of production, the process of recruitment, and the training technique must be introduced to young and educated workers. (INDIANMBA)
On top of that, HRM needs to maintain safety standards and clean working conditions for employees to ensure they are comfortable working. Additionally, the employees must get a benefit provision such as pension programs. HRM must make sure that any benefits as well as insurance are paid as intended. Although, the HRM need to make sure that the expenses are by the budget so that it will not disturb other payments of the company.
4.0 RECOMMENDATIONS TO OVERCOME HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
1. Leadership
Leadership is the ability of an individual to develop the potential of a team in pursuit of a common interest. There are many kind of leadership styles such as the authoritarian, participatory, consultative and others. Each style will be appropriate to the context and charactersistics of employees. the source of leadership may be charisma, the hierarchical power, the power of knowledge or behavior. Through education and training, HRM can develop optimal leadership style. A leader does not command it runs, does not impose however seeks consenses, not divide but unites.
For example in BakeJoy, the problem can occur when the employees are not clear of the leadership. They don’t understand the decisions taken by the HRM. Every employee must know the leadership style and learn the pros and cons of the styles in order to understand the leadership better.
2. Mentoring
The mentoring is a process whereby a person teaches, advises, and guides to another in their personal and professional development. This traditional sponsorship used currently mainly in high positions in organizations. However, mentoring is still different that coaching. Mentoring is done by mentors who have expertise in the field which the person starts as the mentee, whereas coach is a person who does not have to have and experience in this field.
Nevertheless, here are some advantages of mentoring. Mentoring is a poerfuul tool that facilitated the retention and transmission of knowledge in the enterprise. Mentoring also increases the satisfaction of the guardian and the ward since the performance is seen along the process. Besides that, this can also increase employee retention and commitment of these with the company.
For an example, the founder of BakeJoy is quite old to be working and runningthe bakery. He has contributed in many ways to make the bakery working and pass over the company to a trustable person who is the managing director. Even thought he is not there, but the founder of BakeJoy can always be the mentoring all the departments since he was one-man army before BakeJoy and he has all the experiences he needs to become the mentor.
3. Education Climate Assessment
Diagnostic technique allows for an objective assessment of the degree of satisfaction of people in an organization, understand their needs, and expectations at work and their perception of existing problems. There are conditions that may hinder the effectiveness and objectivity of an evaluation process on working climate including labor disputes, job satisfaction, and lack of communication.
All the issues must be taken into account these conditions, so before starting the survey process may have to be a media campaign upon to explain what, why and what it intends to carry out this diagnosis. If there is unions representation in the company, then HRM should plan this process with their collaboration and consensus. The evaluation must be completely anonymous and the results published at all levels. The assessments should be followed by an improvement plan aimed at resolving conflicts and problems have been detected.
Therefore, to prove this method works then the assessments should be repeated once improvements made in order to verify their effectiveness and strengthen the process of continuous improvement.
As for example, at BakeJoy the joy of working is missing meaning that the departments are not collaborating and lack of teamwork. So, this work climate assessment will reveal the main problem and open room for improvements. Eventually, the HRM can next plan for incentive systems, improve employees training and develop more capabilities.
4. Competence Management and Performance Evaluation
This is a way to reconcile the interests of the company with the interests of each individual as much as possible. After knowing the employees knowledges and skills, HRM can next compare and place the person at the right job. This way the management process will be easier and job tasks can be done easily and completely. The competences is defined as the ability or quality which makes a person able to play their role without pretending being someone else.
In managing skills, HRM must identify the skills necessary for achieving the objectives of the organization whether is it strategic skill, tactical skill or the operational skill. HRM can also conduct skills assessment among members department. Besides that, setting and monitoring targets for both individual and collective performances can also contribute to verifying the possible skills that employees