What Is the Global Village?

The global village is a term that reflects the state of businesses in our world. The rise of multinational and transnational corporations places new requirements on human resources managers. For instance, human resources must ensure that the appropriate mix of employees in terms of knowledge, skills, and cultural adaptability are available to handle global assignments.

In order for human resources to meet this goal, they must train individuals to meet the challenges of the global village. First of all, there must be means for these workers to gain a working knowledge of the language of the country in which they will work. Understanding the language cannot be overstated. There have been too many examples of embarrassing situations and lost business because executives or lower-level managers were unprepared. Product names or marketing strategies have translated poorly in some foreign countries.
 Accordingly, before any organization sends any employee ' overseas, human resources should ensure that the employee can handle the language.


Language requirements are also going to extend into communication programs for employees. When we go abroad, for instance, searching for people with specific skills, we may be bringing into an organization someone who speaks very little English. Accordingly, we will be required to assist these individuals in learning English as a foreign language - or go even further! That is, while our foreign-born employees may learn English as a second language, it is advantageous for HRM to assure that any communication provided be understood. To achieve that outcome, companies have moved toward multilingual communications. That is, anything transmitted to employees should appear in more than one language to help the message get through. While there are no hard-and-fast rules in sending such messages, it appears safe to say that such a message should be transmitted in the languages that employees speak to assure adequate coverage.

In addition to the language, human resources must also ensure that workers going overseas understand the host country's culture. All countries have different values, morals, customs, and laws. Accordingly, people going to another country must have exposure to those cultural issues before they can be expected to commence working. It is also equally important for Human Resource Managers to understand how the host society will react to one of these mobile employees. For example, although U.S. laws guard against employers discriminating against individuals on the basis of such factors as race or religion, similar laws do not exist in all other countries. Consequently, cultural considerations are critical to the success of any global business.

CASE I

Tony has been Director of HR at Team fun, a sporting goods manufacturer and retailer for three months. He is constantly amazed that the company does so well, considering that everything is so loose. Nothing is documented about the job roles and responsibilities. People apparently have been hired because Kenny and Norton, the owners and founders, like them or their relatives. Tony is lunching with Mary, a friend from college who now manages the HR function for a large financial investor. Tony tells Mary, “I don’t know if I should quit or what. They both got mad at me last week when I suggested smart cards for security. The employee handbook looks like a scrapbook from their kid’s High School days….No one has job descriptions. I don’t get it. Everyone likes working there. The job does get done. Am I the one with the problem?”

Mary replies “Couldn’t be you! It does sound like a great place to work. Has it grown fast in the last few years?”

Tony: “Unbelievably, It had 25 employees 5 years ago, now we have nearly 150.”

Mary: “That’s probably part of it. Remember how we discussed in the class that you could get by without a formal HR structure up to 100 employees?”

Tony: “Yeah. That was a great time! We did lots of team exercises and projects.”

Mary: “Anyway, maybe you could start with writing your own job description.”

Tony: “Then I could talk about the formal job evaluation processes. That’s a great idea”

QUESTIONS:

1. Help Tony write his job description.
2. What techniques should be used to gather data?
3. How should he conduct the job analysis?
4. What should he say to Kenny and Norton to get their consent on this project?

HRM SECTION

Human resource management (HRM) is an approach to the management of people, based on four fundamental principles.

First, human resources are the most important assets an organisation has and their effective management is the key to its success.

Second, this success is most likely to be achieved if the personnel policies and procedures of the enterprise are closely linked with, and make a major contribution to,the achievement of corporate objectives and strategic plans.

Third, the corporate culture and the values, organisational climate and managerial behaviour that emanate from that culture will exert a major influence on the achievement of excellence. This culture must, therefore, be managed which means that organisational values may need to be changed or reinforced, and that continuous effort, starting from the top, will be required to get them accepted and acted upon.

Finally, HRM is concerned with integration - getting all the members of the organisation involved and working together with a sense of common purpose.

An HRM strategy pertains to the means as to how to implement the specific functions of HRM. An organisation’s HR function may possess recruitment and selection policies, disciplinary procedures, reward/recognition policies, an HR plan, or learning and development policies, however all of these functional areas of HRM need to be aligned and correlated, in order to correspond with the overall business strategy. An HRM strategy thus is an overall plan, concerning the implementation of specific HRM functional areas.

Accordingly, the HRM strategy would seek to facilitate how exactly to manage personnel in order to achieve the goal. Specific HRM functions, such as recruitment and selection, reward/recognition, an HR plan, or learning and development policies, would be tailored to achieve the corporate objectives. Close co-operation (at least in theory) between HR and the top/senior management, in the development of the corporate strategy.

An HRM strategy can be divided, in general, into two facets – the people strategy and the HR functional strategy. The people strategy pertains to the point listed in the first paragraph, namely the careful correlation of HRM policies/actions to attain the goals laid down in the corporate strategy. The HR functional strategy relates to the policies employed within the HR functional area itself, regarding the management of persons internal to it, to ensure its own departmental goals are met.