International Human Resource Management Assignment: HR Practices In MNCs

Question

Task: How can multinational companies operating across international borders, ensure that their human resource policies are applied equitably throughout the whole organisation, in order to generate company-wide thinking?
Within your analysis, you must provide relevant organisation-based examples to support theoretical arguments. The assignment must have a wide and visible application to industry, through the application of appropriate and numerous organisational examples.

Answer

Introduction
The present international human resource management assignment covers the concept ofinternational HRM which is classified as a series of activities which are aimed at the management of human resourceat world-wide level. It strives to achieve the goals of organization and obtain an advantage among its competition within the own country and other parts of the world. International HRM includes various functions like providing a training, appraising employees, selecting, shortlisting and recruiting employees across the globe. Moreover, the HR managers here do also perform some additional functions like expatriating the management and managing the global skills within the organisation. There are 3 types of employees noted in the international human resource management assignment which are management by the HR managers. First, the employees from the home country are those which reside in the same country where the corporate office or head office of the company is situated. Secondly the employees of the host country are those employees have their place of residence in the country where subsidiaries have their existence. Third, employees of the third country are those Employees who are not belong to any above category are classified in this category.

Global HR policies
In terms of HRM, a key issue facing the nationals of the host country is the quantum with which multinational corporations incorporate parent company human resource policies into global policies of human resource. This is based on some factors say, the structure of the company, company’s global influence and its market capture (Alkalha, et al., 2012).

The major constraint which multinational companies consider before incorporating various factors into its policies is the culture. Many human resource policies of multinational companies consider a culture of host country before incorporating where they put major focus gender. If the host country does not appreciate gender discrimination, the company accordingly will require preparing human resource policies. In countries where gender-based discrimination is socially and culturally acceptable, multinational companies may or may not define the policies which are dependent on the current policies. The parent company has the discretion to deal with this issue in consideration of the company’s value and goals (Brauns, 2013). Today, the world has become more vibrant and competitive. Globalization too has become a buzzword in the business world, in which strategies and policies are based on competition that isprevailing across the globe. Because this factor outlined in the international human resource management assignment greatly affects the organization's revenue and profit, multinational companies focus to formulate policies which are unbiased in terms of gender. A study was conducted on the international human resource management assignment in order to differentiate the HR practices of insurance companies in India and other MNCs, the results appeared that the companies in India differentiate wages and positions by gender. However, this practice is not obvious among multinational companies. Many companies today are looking for an employee who is competitive in his skills who can do the job rightly. Work is not limited to men or women, it is about the right people (Altarawneh, 2016). Therefore, it is justified that in big corporate who operates globally develop their strategies and corporate goals considering globalization and try to gain corporate and competitive advantages on a global scale, gender will not affect human resource policies.

A company named Nestle operating in France is selected in the present context of international human resource management assignmentwhich is a host country had faced various challenges in terms of gender imbalance, which has affected its global reputation. The trade union believes that the human resource policies of multinational companies in other areas such as recruitment and training are highly discriminatory. There had been no promotions of the women to senior positions, received no training, and senior management has not addressed many of their demands. This has led to an imbalance in the salary structure between male and female staff, women’s training opportunities are limited, and women’s opportunities for promotion to senior positions are rare. French legislation issued a number of bills to stop the discrimination done by the companies on the basis of their employee’s gender (Chung, et al., 2014). Companies with more than 200 employees must even have an equality committee. After then, Nestlé France lacks gender quality and therefore lags behind other global competitors such as Danone. The management was indeed concerned about the company’s discriminatory practices, so a survey was conducted and the results showed that discrimination against women is serious. As a result, Nestle changed its human resources policy to solve this problem. By 2003, the company had appointed female managers to senior positions and appointed female members to the board of directors. Nestle also proposed some mechanisms to ensure the equality among gender as part of its HR policy held globally. Nestle clearly exemplifies how human resources policies which are biased upon gender affect the company’s reputation. If companies do not focus to solve these problems, they will not be able to gain advantage among its competition compared to other companies and will result in loss making business (Eriksson, 2017). The Norway case examined in the international human resource management assignment had also considered the gender-unbiased policies in Europe. In Europe, Norway is a pioneer in gender equality, it is also one of the top countries which emphasize a women’s participation in the labour market. However, even after obtaining gender equality status, the Norwegian government is still aware that companies operating in Norway do not have too many female representatives in leadership positions. To solve this problem identified in the international human resource management assignment, the government encourages companies to draft and incorporate human resource policies which provide vast opportunity to the female staff in order to enhance their role in supervisory positions. Moreover, the reason they made such policies is that the country had noticed that there had been wastage of 50% of the country’s women population, and when women can contribute to society in the same way as men, they are not using these resources (Budhwar, et al., 2019).

It is stated in the international human resource management assignmentthat there had also been examples of gender pay inequalities among across the globe. It is observed in many countries that men work more than women because women have to manage the house hold chores and do not give more emphasize on work. Considering the factors, many companies situated in Asian countries provide less salaries or wages to the female staff as compare to male staff. Such gender pay inequalities should also be considered by the managers of HRfor boosting the growth of the company situated in any economy (Harzing and Pinnington, 2010).

What are the strategies to global HR management discussed in the international human resource management assignment?
The shortage of qualified HR personnel has considered a main limitation for multinational companies for expanding the sales volume at an international level. The development of a society which is knowledge-based and the pressure to open up emerging markets have prompted cutting-edge MNCs for recognizing more than ever that human resources and intellectual capital are as essential as financial assets in establishing a sustainable advantage over competition. In order to follow their leadership, the CEOs of other MNCs will have to bridge the gap between their company's HR reality and rhetoric. Now, HR must occupy an important position on the board.Good human resource management in MNCs always try to get the right person for right job at a right salary package. Then, these international managers must be integrated into a tightly connected network where they can identify quickly and take advantage of global good ideas (Gooderham, et al., 2019). Such type of network majorly linked on the continuity of the executives. In turn, this requires professional managers to ensure that when vacancies arises in any offices around the world, internally qualified senior managers are available readily, and excellent managers do not switch jobs because they remain unrecognized in the organisation. The solution to be adopted by MNCs discussed in this segment of international human resource management assignment is to follow the company who have much experience in the field of training, hiring, retaining and managing the good workforce around the world. Many of such companies are borne in Europe only. For example, Unilever and International Business Machines Corporation both use their global human resources functions to gain a competitive advantage. Unilever has put more constraint on having a good HR in the company. The HR has also appointed to join the board to develop the business by shortlisting, hiring and managing the in house talent and people in market. It is since 1989; the company has defined again 75% of the managerial posts and increased the number of managers therein. It is mentioned in the international human resource management assignmentthat IBM has also set a global HR strategy where instead of firing employees to reduce costs, they had entered into new assignment and expands it to new overseas market in order to achieve more profits (Mueller and Tyalor, 2013).

There are various strategies which the HR managers consider for developing a hostile environment in the head office and the offshore branches. Such strategies are listed below within the international human resource management assignment.

• Glass ceiling at local national level should be broken down: The first and most fundamental step in establishing a global human resource plan is to end all preference for managers, who belongs to the same country where the organisation is located. MNCs should treat nationals of the country where their headquarters are located as prospective expatriates, while treating other as "local nationals." But in the market of today globally where they distinction is made by the company gives a disadvantage to the company and should need to resolve them with strong reasons (Morley and Heraty, 2019).
• Lifeline to be traced: Considering the strategy that the company had adopted, the organisation should also identify those activities which can provide a success around the globe and also recruit a person who is ready to take such responsibility. Such positions are known as ‘lifelines’ to the organisation. They are accounted as only 10% in the company’s workforce. In the case of IBM considered in the international human resource management assignmentwho are into service sector, they had identified the people are who are technically sund to provide the services at local and internal level in host country. The strategy of IBM had taken around 18 months to develop a good sound workforce to reach to 100000 employees (Olson, et al., 2018).
• Global database to be created to highlight the existence of company and finding its talent: The major tool of the global human resources policy must be a global database. This is simply because multinational companies now have more strategic positions distributed around the world and have vigilance over the development of the manager’s career more. Moreover, there are some multinational companies which have are editing global human resource databases in the past ten years, these databases still emphasize on the top positions in the organization, ignoring managers at middle level and potential stars which are identified through their ranks.
• Mobility pyramid should be developing: HR managers should also highlight the person in the workforce who are ready to move to other parts of the world to manage the business internationally. Companies also keep a data of people who are ready to relocate and who are not. Many companies have also started considering those managers as glopats because they are considered to be business builder in the new market (Nankervis, et al., 2019).
• Leadership capital to be identified in the international human resource management assignment: The Company should clearly highlight that personal input to the system is voluntary, but human resource managers and other supervisors will still use the data to plan promotional activities and international tasks and evaluate the needs of training. Please pay attention to the personal privacy regulations in the EU’s new directive of Data Protection and similar regulations to be introduced in Japan as well. These regulations basically require employee consent to collect or disseminate any private information.
• Assess the skill gap and bench strength: HR managers should ask the company’s workforce regarding their vision and aim towards career development in the same organisation. HR partners after having an overview regarding this, can introduce a new training and mentoring methodology in the company’s culture to promote and develop such required skills by workforce. Unilever uses the 9 point framework for its senior managers where they keeppersonal information of those managers in the talent pool. The talent pool defines keep on reviewing those managers on particular defined parameters. Such mechanism is adopted at every office in every country and helps the managers to grow well by getting their productivity and efficiency measured and identified (Reiche, et al., 2018). IBM too, has similar type of framework which they keep on updating to get the best results out of that. Such strategy as explored in the international human resource management assignment has also proved to be well for many companies.

Standardisation and Localisation in global HR management
Today, HR management is considered as pivotal aspects in internationalisation. Human resource management has a huge competitive advantage because it is difficult to imitate. HR management has its unique qualities, which cannot be ignored in international research. First of all, human resource management mainly relies on national culture and also pertains its own qualities too. Secondly the human resource management is considered as the international prosperity. Finally, human resource management interacts directly with the people and influences their behaviour. Therefore, it is clear on this international human resource management assignment that by enhancing the importance of human resource management in business at international level, the quantum of policies on literature of HRM and practices related to standardization and localization debates has greatly increased (Singh and Raghubanshi, 2013). Standardization means that companies use similar marketing mix in as many nations as possible when operating outside their national boundaries. Companies which chase standardization are called global companies, and their strategies are called standardized strategies. Some examples of products world-wide include Sony TVs, personal computers, Gillette shaving blades, many financial institutions, Coca-Cola, etc. However, it is worth adding that for the standardization of documents. The other factor is known to be a localisation. The research on international human resource management assignmentillustrates that it is the process where company alters its cultures, tradition, and way of working, management in such a way to get the essence of local economy in the country.

HR managers here always tend to manages the workforce and maintain a bridge between standardisation and localisation. They always consider their long term existence in the country through managing the manpower and diverting them towards work culture related to own country and the behaviour of other country too. By this, the growth of an individual also enhances because they get to adapt themselves in working style of different economies and gets more options from other countries as well (Stredwick, 2013).

Importance of application of HR Policies
The human resources policy provides employees and managers with written guidance on how to deal with a wide range of issues relating to employment. They play acrucial role in effectively implementing the human resource strategy in the organisation. They provide a transparency and consistency for managers and their employees, help strengthen the psychological contract and give rise to a positive culture within the organisation. The human resources policy mentioned in the international human resource management assignment ensures that the organisation complies with prevailing laws, contracts of employment and collective bargaining agreements. Therefore, one of the merits of having the human resources policy is that it minimises the risk of liability in corporate or employee litigation. The human resources policy also covers areas that are critical to the mission of the company to guarantee the efficiency in the operations (Peltonen and Vaara, 2018).

In the subsidiaries or offshore offices, HR policies are drafted and implemented in the organisation considering the culture and practice used in other nation. It is the responsibility of the employer that they should handover the translated copies in the entire jurisdiction in which they operate because every law of each country require to be framed in local language.

It is stated in the international human resource management assignment that the investment in human resources is necessary for Anglo-Dutch Unilever. They have a place on the board’s executive committee, which is dedicated to cultivating internal talents and finding future leaders in the market. As a result, 95% of Unilever’s top 300 managers are entirely local. Introduce internationalization to managers through work content and overseas tasks.

In the organisation like Coca Cola in host country, it is observed that the when the equitably HR policies are drafted for the organisation as a whole, they help the people towards wide thinking. By such practices and policies, the HR managers do also get the right person for right job. It is also required by the management that the cohesive network should be included which will leverage and identify the good ideas for the betterment of business. From the discussion on international human resource management assignment, it is believed that such framework or policies are more importance tan establishing the systems in the organisation to embark business. Many US based MNCs do not have the system developed which provide adequate training, screen, monitoring new and old people in the organisation (Peltonen and Vaara, 2018). The HR managers here need to have a good experience in mitigating such issues faced by various organisations and to promote a healthy business.

There is a need to include succession planning and retention plans. The international network of the company in providing the knowledge and skills is based on the continuity and connections between the people. The continuity of administrative staff leads to reduction in labour turnover, opportunity and recruitment costs. Therefore, with the intensification of international talent competition, it is increasingly important for companies to retain management personnel. Where the monetary incentives are not enough, the plan must consider thepersonal growth, challenges, and job satisfaction. Moreover, the career development plan also is prepared by the HR managers for the executive officers and the same needs to be develop within first 100 days of incorporations. The findings obtained in the international human resource management assignmentmentions that such steps provide the satisfaction among employees and also raise a employability factor towards company. Many companies have benefitted with this approach and have results a good growth in terms of expansion, profitability and reduced employee turnover rates (Wilson, 2014).

Conclusion
At the end of the report on international human resource management assignment, it analyzed the different strategies and policies adopted by multinational companies to formulate effective regulations. Organizations need to consider various methods to globalize their business. The report on international human resource management assignment analyzes that standardization and localization strategies will affect the organization's culture. The organization needs to adopt best practices in the global market to effectively manage human resources. The main ideas include meeting human resource needs at the regional, national and local levels. The main methods that require a global human resource strategy include global databases. This is necessary because multinational companies are required to include more strategic positions and supervise the career development plans of senior managers.

Reference
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