Essay: Ability To Prepare For International HRM.

Introduction of Australia and scenario of international human resource management

Discuss about the Ability to Prepare for International Human Resource Management.

The companies that want to expand their business in overseas countries must have the ability to prepare a strong group of skilled employee, who have the knowledge and aptitude of performing business deeds competently in the overseas countries and dealing with unpredictable difficulties efficiently (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014). In the present study, the chosen country is Australia, where the organisation wants to send its team of 10 senior executives for an important assignment. The organisation has gained significant reputation in Singapore since its establishment.

Therefore, to maintain its reputed position and competitiveness in the overseas market, the company wants to ensure that the staffs it is sending to Australia are able to survive in different environment of the country and perform efficiently. Therefore, the human resource director is responsible for collecting and providing necessary information regarding climate, language, and culture and working style of their Australian subsidiary for increasing their knowledge and confidence of performing tasks effectively. 

Different organisations adopt different organisational structures and designs based on the cultural dimensions of that country. Hence a significant difference can be seen in the organisational structures of the headquarter situated in Singapore and the subsidiary in Australia. With the help of Hofstede’s model of national cultural dimensions the comparison between Australia and Singapore can be done effectively (Berman et al. 2015).

Figure 1: Hofstede’s national cultural dimensions

(Source: Budhwar & Debrah, 2013)

In terms of power distance, Australia score very low, 36. In this country, hierarchy is set up for convenience. In the organisation of this country, managers remain always accessible and they rely on the team and individuals for their proficiency. Information is shared frequently to among the managers and employees and direct, informal and participative communication is carried out among between superiors and employees. On the other hand, Singapore scores high in this dimension, 74. The Confucian background dominates the society of Singapore and a unequal relationship can be seen among people. In the organisation, the power is centralised and managers are deepened on the rules and their bosses (Bratton & Gold, 2012).

In the dimension of individualism, Australia scores 90, as the culture is extremely individualist. As per this dimension, employees have to be self-reliant they must display initiatives. Employee promotion and hiring are done considering their skills and knowledge. Singapore scores 20 in this dimension. It denotes that organisational structure is based on group work and all the group members are responsible and loyal to each other. Indirect communication is carried out among employees and relationship has an ethical basis and has priority over completing tasks (Aswathappa, 2013).

Organisational structure and design of the overseas subsidiary comparing with the headquarter in Singapore

In masculinity v femininity, Australia scored 61, which indicate it as a masculine society. Individuals’ behaviour within the organisation is influenced by the shared values that they must attempt for being the best. The pride and success of Australians is the basis of hiring new employees and promoting the existing employees. Singapore’s score is 48 in this dimension and it is a feminine society. Conflicts are ignored in clandestine and ultimately harmony is curial (Mathis et al. 2016).

Figure 2: Comparing Australia with Singapore

(Source: Storey, 2014)

Uncertainty avoidance is the process of dealing with future that is done in different ways by different societies. If employees feel much threatened with the uncertainty then it reflects on the score. In this dimension, the score of Australia is moderate 51. Singapore scores 8 in this dimension. Here, employees are stand to so many rules due to high PDI (Alfes et al. 2013).

In the dimension of Long-term v. Short-term orientation, Australia scored 21 that denote its normative culture. Therefore, people in the organisation are more concerned with attaining quick results as compared to saving for future. The score of Singapore is 72 in this dimension. It signifies that cultural qualities support long-term investment like sustained offers, persistence, thrift, being bare with resources, slow results and so on. They believe in carrying it open communication and focuses on the way of doing business (Purce, 2014).

Australia’s score is 71 in the indulgence dimension. It is a luxurious country. People live a indulgent life and spend money as per their wish. Singapore scores 46 in this dimension, which is intermediate. Hence, it is difficult to determine the penchant on this dimension (Stahl, Björkman & Morris, 2012).

According to Renwick, Redman & Maguire (2013), while recruiting employee for international assignment, it is crucial for the HR director of the company to identify the level of international competitiveness of the probable applicants. In order to increase the strength of the team is to be send in Australia the HR director decided to recruit employees from the outside of the organisation. It is necessary that all the 10 members of the group remain informed about the troubles of international business. Moreover, the HR director must have the information regarding the availability and skill of the labour market. In order to recruit the right employee at a right time, the company would follow the ethnocentric approach, and would select staffs only from the parent country. The rationale behind following the process is, the employees of the parent country can represent the interest of headquarter situated in Singapore, in a superior manner. The process contains four steps are self-selection, creating an applicant pool, assessing technical skills and making shared decision (Ehnert, Harry, & Zink, 2013). 

Analysing the staffing process for the overseas project

Although, cultural difference influence the process of selecting; however organisations manly follow similar methods for hiring staffs across the world. This is because; the ultimate objective of any recruitment and selection process is to recruit the most knowledgeable staffs. The company would carry out a session of personal interview after short-listing the resumes of the applicants. Then the applicants, who would clear the step, would appear in the test. The test includes personality test, drug test, physical test and cognitive test. After that, the most eligible candidates would be selected for the overseas assignment (Jackson, Schuler & Jiang, 2014).

In order to deal with the uncertainties of the overseas market and perform competently, the recruited staffs would be provided with a cross-cultural training. In this type of training, employees would be trained for increasing their skills and knowledge of emigrants to live and perform effectively and gain broad life satisfaction is a different host culture. It would help the employees to enhance cross-culture adjustment and cross-culture interactions (Griffin & Pustay, 2012).

Effectiveness of the training is reflected by the behavioural, affective and cognitive changes that occur at the time of CCT event.  For increasing the efficacy of the CCT or the changes occurs during the training, the HR director has to follow a systematic approach for designing the CCT programme effectively. This should follow some sequential steps are as follows (Jackson, Schuler & Jiang, 2014):

• Identifying the form of international assignment for which the CCT event is required
• Determining the particular CCT program needs
• Setting up goals and measured to determine the effectiveness of the training
• Developing and delivering CCT event
• Analysing the effectiveness of the training program

This process would be helpful for the company to analyse the existing skills and enhanced skills of the staffs after the training is completed.

The assignees are to send for the global assignment should be provided with an appropriate remuneration package. Mello (2014) stated that while setting a compensation package, most of the HR managers follow the balance sheet approach, as it helps to set the accurate remuneration for employees based on their position and responsibilities. Using this approach, first the HR director would consider the recent position of the employees with respect to their benefits, taxes, income and other expenses and thus, would prepare a balance sheet of income. Further, the recent situation would be compared with the income, taxes and other expenses related to the overseas assignment in Australia. Finally, the higher costs would be debited and lower costs would be credited for making the remuneration package of Singapore and Australia equal. As, the daily expenditure of Australia is higher than as compared to Singapore; hence, it would need more money to Australia for maintaining the equality of  the lifestyles of the employees.

Analysing the process of training and development for the global assignees

Figure 3: Balance sheet approach for setting remuneration package for the overseas assignees

(Source: Jiang et al. 2012)

Conclusion

Hence, it can be concluded that international human resource management require significant skills and abilities of the human resource manager. It is the responsibility of human resource director or manager of any organisation to identify the business and physical environments of the overseas country, where the company wants to spend their staffs for completing a project. This requires carrying out a comprehensive session of recruitment and selection that would follow ethnocentric approach and cross-cultural training and development. It is essential for recruiting and selecting the most eligible staffs for the overseas assignment that can provide the company the highest competitive advantages form the global marketplace by completing the assignment successfully.

Reference list

Alfes, K., Shantz, A. D., Truss, C., & Soane, E. C. (2013). The link between perceived human resource management practices, engagement and employee behaviour: a moderated mediation model. The international journal of human resource management, 24(2), 330-351.

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Aswathappa, K. (2013). Human resource management: Text and cases. Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

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Jiang, K., Lepak, D. P., Hu, J., & Baer, J. C. (2012). How does human resource management influence organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating mechanisms. Academy of management Journal,55(6), 1264-1294.

Mathis, R. L., Jackson, J. H., Valentine, S. R., & Meglich, P. (2016). Human resource management. Nelson Education.

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Purce, J. (2014). The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 67.

Renwick, D. W., Redman, T., & Maguire, S. (2013). Green human resource management: A review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(1), 1-14.

Stahl, G. K., Björkman, I., & Morris, S. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of research in international human resource management. Edward Elgar Publishing.

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