Comparison Of Labour Market Condition In UK And India

• Economic Growth:

In the recent times, UK is recognized as the successful employment performer internationally. Since the financial crisis, the labor market of UK is rapidly improving as compared to the rest of Europe. The unemployment rate has decreased recently and the number of employed people has increased. UK economy has performed better in the last six months. The labor market has been tightened as demand for skill and talented employees will increase in the near future. UK organization needs to attract the potential employees and train them to match its international competitors. Whereas, the Indian economic condition is increasing but still the bigger challenge is to ensure the reforms in labor market condition due to economic growth. The majority of workers in India are still related to informal jobs (Thomas 2015). The regular pay of the employees has considerably increased but large amount of workforce relies on the agricultural sector. Majority of workers are in employment field and self-employed in nature.

• Inequalities in Wage-Level:

Every citizen of UK around the age of 16 and above is either employed or economically active. Due to the changes in the state pension regulations, the employment rate for women has also increased (Wilkinson 2013).  Since July, there are 31.80 million of people in work. People relying on government supported agencies and training Employment Programme reduced from 39,000 to 65,000 (Burrell 2016). Whereas in India the vital factor for rising income inequalities is globalization and rapid urbanization. Employment has grown faster for people in urban areas. The spatial disparities between urban and rural region leads to inequalities in income.  Most of the jobs created in India are informal because the workers have no access to the social security or employment benefits. The employment rate of women participation is the lowest in the world (Kapsos, Silbermann and Bourmpoula 2014).  The labor market in India is mostly unorganized sector.  In India, the labor market conditions are loose in nature.

• Public and Private Sector Differences:

In the current scenario, several educational institutes were turned into private sectors. The royal Mail group and Lloyd’s banking group is reclassified as private sector since June (Atkinson and Storey 2016). Labour dispute has been further lowered down. The redundancies rates have also decreased since last year. India’s economy has gone rapid changes in the last few decades. Recently, the huge fiscal imbalance has forced the government to impose privatization in the economy. Privatization strategy is now adopted in the form of government’s equity disinvestment in the public sector undertaking. The Employees Provident Fund act has ensured that employees are provided financial security by system of compulsory savings. According to the ILO that is, India Labour Market latest Update (2016-17) more than 90 percent of the labor market is employed in the agricultural sector and approximately 70 percent of the labor forces works under the non-agricultural category.  

In the current scenario, every business organization large or small now wants to become an employer of choice.  It is collaborative in nature that means that a great working environment has been created within the organization and the very best people want to be hired in the organization (Baker 2014). The business culture created due to employer of choice is helping in changing the employment relationship in a positive manner. Through benefits and career development opportunities, the business can position themselves in better manner (Ulrich 2014). The employers are adopting employer of choice strategy nowadays. The new employment relationship model is based on:

• Flexibility- it is the technique of working that matches with the employees need, for example working from home or having flexible time for starting and finishing the work. The employer should be willing to work in different business role and settings. Whereas, the employer should encourage the employees to perform various other organizational roles.
• Customer Focus- the employee should be more focus on the customer and serve them before their manager. Moreover, the employer should more give more emphasis on providing information, incentives and skills externally.
• Branding- as the labor market condition has tightened it has become quiet hard to recruit and retain the employees. All the business organization has an employer brand through which it differentiate in the labor market. A strong employer brand allows the businesses to compete for the best available talent and thus establish credibility (Viktoria, Rampl and Kenning 2014). Employer brand is essential to recruit talents and mergers in the organisation. Moreover, employees’ value proposition in the organisation is discussed through branding. It helps in segmenting employee's value proposition idea for various employment groups as it engenders loyalty and encourages familiarity (Rosethorn 2016).
• Training and developments- the employees should be able to develop skills to excel in their jobs and eventually reach the career ladder.

Both loosing and Tightening have strong influence on the condition of labor market. Loosing labor market leads to the effective process of employee retention and recruitment within the competitive sector of the labor market. Loose labor market indicates that there are plenty of potential supplies in the competitive market. While tight labor market leads to fierce competition for the talented and skilled labors within the labor market sector (Friedli and Stearn 2015). UK faces tight labor market condition whereas; India faces loose labor market condition. In India, the labor market condition is loose, the organizations like Tata Motors all the compensations related issues are now being solved with the workers, and they are provided long-term settlements.  The way an organization uses its work force resource is crucial for its future growth.

The tight labor market condition helps in obtaining generous stock options and high wages. The opportunity cost of entrepreneurship also increases due to the high level of compensation.  The labor market condition further influences the selection and recruitment pattern of the employees within the organization.

Trade unions are the organization created by the workers who are the members. The main aim is to protect and give job security to its members. The trade unions negotiate with the employers on securing pay rise, to benefits all the employees in the work place. They also provide the member with legal and financial advice. In UK, downsizing of the public sector has led to decline in the number of trade unions. Moreover, since 1980, the right to take strike actions by the trade unions has been completely restricted. Collective bargaining is also practiced to grant the workers equal bargaining power as compared to their employers. Trade unions help in improving relation within the organization because of these union representatives.

 In UK, the enforcement of employment right is in hybrid form. Alongside government enforcement, employment tribunals have a majority of rights. The right enforced by the government includes national minimum wage, employment business standards and 48- hour working. It is the duty of the Government to enforce employment protection against the employers, who seeks on gaining unfair advantages by misconducting and mistreating the staff.  The creation of Pay and Work right Helpline has helped much the different employment agencies. Infrastructure investments and apprenticeship schemes are done by several government agencies to reform the labor market. Whereas, In India, several Government initiative has been launched like Make in India, labor reforms, Skill India so that the labor market is formalized and all leads to the overall development of the country.

• Role of Employers:

Collaborative approach is used to reform the labor market structure by the employers. Funding and sponsorships are also made to improve the employment structure of the business. In the current scenario, various professional standards have been developed by the employers to ensure that the future skills and talent needs are met.

Workforce planning is the systematic approach to have the right people with perfect skills and at right time and right cost to make the business run successfully and efficiently (De Bruecker et al. 2015). It aligns the organizational and HR needs to enable the business have the following rights:

• Right people
• Right skills
• Right cost
• Right place
• Right size

Through proper planning the organizational risks related to executing business strategies can be minimized.  The major components of workforce planning are operational and strategic in nature. Strategic workforce planning forecast the future critical roles that an organization will require. Operational workforce planning is the planning of short-term organizational demands and comparing them to the present talent supply. Moreover, it helps in determining the additional requirement of the business.

 The benefits of workforce planning are workforce planning helps in recruiting and retaining the employees in the organization. It aligns the business and strategic planning process with selection and retention planning.  Workforce planning also helps in avoiding any kind of delays and disruptions.  It is in crucial in maximizing the profit of the organization and ensures long-term success.

• Skill gap analysis:

The organizations nowadays are developing skill gap analysis approach that involves defining the knowledge and skills required for completing the assigned task and furthermore comparing the employee’s current level performance to the given requirement (Armstrong and Taylor 2014).  The skill gap analysis is done by identifying the business goals, collection of data, analyzing the data and finally drafting a training plan to develop the employee skills.

Table I: Skill- gap Analysis

Source: (Armstrong and Taylor 2014)

Organization benchmarking further helps in understanding, identifying and evaluating the current position of the business processes. It also analyses the business procedures of other and compare it with their own organization performance level. Then the necessary steps are implemented to close the performance gap. Benchmarking is an integral part of an organization to improve the on-going process (Estampe et al. 2013). Workforce planning is also done through goal alignment and succession planning, which lead to smooth running of the business besides profit and wealth maximization.

Succession planning is the process through which the individuals are scanned, evaluated and further recruited for the leadership role within the company (Rothwell et al. 2015).  Succession planning helps in the smooth running of the business, when the organization’s most important employees are hired for new opportunities, or get retires or pass away.  Succession planning involves evaluation of the leader’s skills and then identifying the potential candidate both within and outside the organization (Collings 2014).  During the internal replacement, the employees should be trained to take over.  In large companies like ours, the owners and employees are not only influenced by the succession planning but also the shareholders. Talent management is the strategy to retain the top-level talented employees.  This also enables the present employee to ascertain where they fit in an organization. Developing proper organizational culture helps in supporting talent management.  

• Developing a Succession Planning Program-The development of proper succession planning is done after identifying the high potentials employees (Spencer and Harris-Bowlsbey 2013). They are further enhanced with development opportunities so that they get prepared for future growth opportunities. It is followed by the following ways:
• Identifying Leadership Gaps:  it is vital for an HR, to properly analyze of the leadership position that is crucial for the organization to achieve its objectives in the end. Succession planning strategy will help in addressing the talent gaps if any in the organization created by:
• Expected retirements within a specified period.
• Internal promotions within the organization.
• Unexpected loss of the potential candidate.
• Forecasting future needs: The current and future needs of an organization that is crucial for the organization success is identified
• Establishing successors: an internal assessment for determining the strength for the leadership position should be done from time to time.
• Selecting High-Potential Candidates- From the pool of candidates the employee with the highest potential should be selected for the leadership position after the final interview.
• Creating competencies-Succession planning leads to creation of competencies. The organizational competencies are very vital to retain successful order for an organization.

Career development is a process that develops the employee work identity. A self-imitated approach is enhanced with the support of managers and the company.  The career development should be in the form of 70-20-10 rule (Blustein 2013). Major part that is 70% of the employee development should be gained while action learning and on-the-job activities like job rotation and job enrichment. 20% of the development is gained after interaction with the other employees like, coaching and mentoring. 10% of development of the employees should be coming from training, which includes seminars, classes for learning and development and conferences. The employee career can be developed through the following:

• Job Enrichment- it is an approach to motivate employees by providing them the opportunities to use their diverse abilities (Patton and McMahon 2014). The responsibility of the worker is increased to display his skills and talents.
• Coaching and mentoring the employees- this helps the employee to set goal to be achieved for their jobs. The mentors act as a resource for the employees to be successful.
• Job Rotation- this strategy is used to move employees within the organization to increase the interest level of the employees (Khan et al. 2014). It helps to explore the hidden talent within the organization
• Secondment- this is a strategy to assign an employee for a job on a temporary basis. This approach helps the employee in gaining some experience by working on a short-term project.

 In a business organization, downsizing is the strategy to reduce the employee’s number from the operating payroll. The organization uses various approaches for downsizing, which includes allowing incentives for early retirements and transferring the employees to subsidiary companies (Sekaran and Bougie 2016). The most common technique used by the organization for downsizing is simply to terminate the employment of few of its employees.  Downsizing leads to the overtime payment of remaining employees. It is the duty of the HR to make look into the various factors, which will influence the downsizing decision. First of all, the specific problem is to be identified that is to be solved through downsizing then after assessing the resource the final decision is to be made that will affect the company’s performance in the long-run  (Drucker 2017). These are the basic steps taken to make the downsizing work:

Communication plans- Communicating with the employees is the crucial step that an HR goes through after announcing the initial downsizing (Bovee, Thill and Raina 2016). Being an HR manager, it is a great responsibility to communicate with the employees and explain the reasons for downsizing. After proper planning and re-structuring, the employee should also be kept updated on the progress.

Ensuring equity and fairness- Being an HR, it is my duty to ensure that downsizing decision taken is fair and just for the employees.  Downsizing often causes poor morale of the terminated employees.  Moreover, if the decision is not fair it leads to guilt and stress for the employees retaining their job. Employee should be given proper redundancy notice and payment (Greenberg and Cohen 2014).

Maintaining managed approach- The employees selected for redundancy should be provided with a notice period before the date of their termination. They are further allowed redundancy payment if they are working continuously for the organization for at least two years. As per Equality Act 2010, employees have the power or right for not being unfairly selected due to redundancy. Moreover, redundancy consultation is also provided (Harmon 2014). The management is supported in all terms of policies, ethics and procedures by the HR.

The organization structure of the company is a framework, which helps in arranging the work according to the position explained through job description. Job description is a crucial tool that focuses on describing the scope, duties, responsibilities and purpose for a specified job (Breaugh 2017). Job description is used in various processes like selection, orientation, recruitment, compensation and succession planning. After preparing the process of workflow analysis, the job design and job analysis is done to build a job description. This can be done through:

Job design- it is the process to organize tasks that is required for performing a job. Job design is influenced by the organizational structure and business strategy (Hendrick and Kleiner 2016). Job rotation and job enlargement can be the best ways to create duties variation for the employees.

Job Analysis it is the technique to gather information for the content of a particular job. The main purpose is to know the similarities and differences between the various jobs and gain knowledge on jobs within the organization.

Using competencies- competencies are used for development and training and it further helps in evaluating the training needs, making decisions about transfers and promotion and encouraging career growth for the employees. Moreover, this also helps in finding out the people or employees who have perfect skills for making the business successful.

The Equality Act, 2010 came into from October 1, 2010. The main aim of this Act is to streamline and harmonies the current discrimination legislation, which is included in various statutes (Hepple 2014). The discrimination is done on the grounds of disability, gender, age, race, civil partnership, religion or belief. The impact of this act is as follows:

• Protection of the employees against any kind of disability discrimination.
• Employers should take appropriate action and quickly respond to any kind of report or complaints.
• Ensuring equality of employees in terms of payment, promotion training, transfer opportunities, training and redundancy.

The Data Protection Act manages how the personal information about the individual is used by businesses, organizations or government. The data contains all the accessible records of the individuals related to health, education and cultural background of the employees (Townend 2017).

• The provided data should be fair and lawful.
• The data should be used for limited and a specific stated purpose.
• The data should be accurate and no longer be kept than absolute necessary.
• The data helps in knowing the ethnic background, religious beliefs, political opinions and criminal records, if any, of the employees during recruitment and selection.
• To conduct audits so that it can be assessed whether the business processing of the individuals personal data follows better practice.

For example, being an HR, assessment of an employee’s performance is done during the probationary period and the individual’s personal data should be protected or safeguard.

 In human resource, recruitment and selection of employees is also known as sourcing, which means using various sources to find the eligible candidate (Breaugh 2017). After recruiting several candidates, the said employee is finally selected.  Recruitment can be done through internal and external sources. The various methods of internal recruitment are through promotion of the employees, transferring the employees to another position depending on the requirement of the job, internal advertisements or job posting and Employee Referrals. While the external sources of recruitment includes direct recruitment of the employees through employment exchanges and employment agencies. Advertisement is another most popular source of recruitment done through various print and social Medias. Professional associations and campus recruitment is also few of the methods generally practiced by an organization. After recruiting the pool of eligible candidates come the final procedures of selection (Gatewood, Field and Barrick 2015). There are various methods that an organization can practice while hiring a candidate for a particular job. The selection method includes interviews, online screening and short listing, psychometric testing, personality profiling, aptitude and ability tests, group exercises, presentations, references and assessment center and trial shifts. The strength and weaknesses of two of the methods are described below:

 Table II: Methods of Recruitment and Selection

Source: (Breaugh 2017)

In the recent years, no matter how well the employees are paid, motivated, promoted, appreciated and valued most of the employees decide to leave. They leave the organization mostly in search of better career opportunity, in want of better work/life balance. Job security is another main reason for leaving or staying of employees in an organization. The employee’s nowadays prefer more control and independence to their personal work. The reasons of the employees staying or leaving the organization are mentioned in table III:

Table III: Reasons employees Stay or Leave the workplace 

When the best of the employees leaves the organization then the business faces dysfunctional turnover in the organization. This could be due to high appealing job opportunities, or low growth of career opportunities. Too much of employee turnover besides being costly also gives a bad reputation about the organization. There are various costs associated with the employee’s turnover that includes direct cost such as leaving costs, transitions and replacement costs. Whereas, indirect costs is quite difficult to be determined. They are the cost liked with the time to train the employees with lost knowledge and low morale.

Retaining of the employee talents can be done by increasing the benefits for the employees and providing better or flexible working conditions. The advantages of retaining talents are that it saves cost of the organization for hiring and training new employees. Experienced workers are more efficient and loyal towards the employees. Moreover, when the employees retained are less eligible for the post it lead to unfavorable working environment and often it leads to groups in the organization affecting the quality of work. 

If an employee is dismissed from a job there must be a fair reason for such action, which can be described as follows:

• Conduct of the employee- If the employee show signs of poor conduct by continuously missing work have poor discipline and is related to theft or drugs than he or she is dismissed (Brand 2015).
• Illness- If the employees are on long-term illness leave, and then the employee has to be dismissed after a certain time to meet the demand of the company.
• Statutory restriction-If the employee breaks any law of the country, which makes them unable to be, continue their job, then they are dismissed.
• Due to some major irresolvable personality clash between the employee and the manager.

If the present business moves to other location then the employees can be dismissed due to technical reasons.

Before the dismissal of any employee the employee should be provide with a notice period and lawful disciplinary process. The content should all have provisions for the settlement of all future and current legal claims of the employees.

In the current scenario, retirement is no longer lawfully enforced upon an employee due to their age. Older and experience employees can retire anytime they opt and draw their entitled occupational pension. As per the equality act, no discrimination is allowed in the workplace in respective of the age of the employees. The duty assigned to them should be equal and favorable payment should also be made.

As an HR manager, if an employee informs about their impending retirement then through proper planning, smooth phasing out and through golden goodbyes the retirement process can be encouraged and supported (Talib and Manaf 2017). There are various kind of retirement plans such as pension plans and profit sharing that can be offered to the current employees   the people at the retirement age should also be provide medical care options and other benefits. A retirement plan is also beneficial for the old age people. They should be well aware that through proper budget the contribution of the employees would add up their money value and increase the retirement benefits. Retirement of the employee is a serious matter still new fresh talents are attracted to the organization.

Redundancy occurs when the employee is dismissed by an employer, moreover not due to act of the employees. The fair reasons for redundancies are as follows:

• When the employer is unable to carry the business or at the present location.
• When the employer decides to re- structure the business with fewer employees.
• When the employee is no longer required for the particular post they are assigned.
• When the manager follows job enlargement within the organization.
• If the present employee is not consulted in a redundancy situation then the decision will be unfair and the manager can be taken to employment tribunal.

If 20 or more than that employee are redundant then the collective- consultation rule should be followed within 90 days of time period at single establishment (Davey, Fearon and McLaughlin 2013). Redundancy is the best decision made by the manager for organizational growth against the other options such as recruitment pause, reduced working hours, early retirement and redeployment.

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