International Human Resource Management

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International Human Resource Management










International Human Resource Management






Task 1: Individual Presentation Slides

Introduction

The HR manager of a company is responsible for recruiting and hiring candidates, managing workplace environment and relationship among employees, maintaining workplace policies, and so on. There are two types of HR management; International HRM and Domestic HRM. In this presentation, the key factors differentiating these two HRM will be discussed. This topic will be discussed in the context of Amazon.

Amazon is the world’s leading e-commerce company and has been on a growing streak since 2003. Jeff Bezos is the CEO and the founder of the company. Amazon was founded in Bellevue, Washington, United States on July; 1994.The headquarters of Amazon is located in Seattle, Washington, United States. Subsidiaries that come under Amazon are Audible, Zappos, AbeBooks, Amazon fresh, Woot, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Pharmacy, and so on. The company is listed in the New York Stock Exchange under NASDAQ, with a share price of $3,331.00 (aboutamazon.com, 2021).

Main Body

With reference to an MNC of your choice, critically discuss the key factors that underpin the differences between domestic and international HRM. You should include references to both theory and practice.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory

Greet Hofstede’s developed a cultural dimensions theory that focuses on the different cultures across various countries. People across different countries have different beliefs and religion and this is where Hofstede’s culture dimension theory comes in. The human resource management of Amazon is responsible for the behaviours of people in Amazon premises. The company has two different kinds of HR management that are Domestic human resource management and International human resource management. The domestic human resource management of Amazon has to focus only on the cultural environment of Amazon offices in United States of America. In order to maintain a good culture the HRM has to focus on power differences, collectivism, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, femininity, orientation and indulgence vs. restraints of the same country.

However, the international human resource management of Amazon has to focus on all of the aspects that two of the countries in which Amazon has its facility established. For example, the HRM has to develop a different policy for India compared to England or Australia. The policies of HRM in India mainly focuses on restricting racism due to religion and peoples belief while the policies in England might focus on restricting racism due to colour or sexual orientation of people.

Domestic Human Resource Management:

Labour market regulations

It is the work of a domestic HR manager to maintain policies regarding the labour market regulations of the host country. These regulations include minimum wage settings, health benefits, insurance system, and so on. The domestic human resource management of Amazon has to only maintain these policies for their employees in the United States (Wilton, 2016).

Industrial relations systems

The domestic HRM of Amazon has to maintain relations with various suppliers, customers, labours and other parties with the host country, which is the United States. Maintaining relations with the various entities is necessary for the company.

Production systems

The domestic HRM of Amazon is also responsible for making proper workplace arrangements for the employees in the host country. This is mandatory to increase the productivity of workers. Increase in productivity is essential for Amazon, since, it is a very large company and needs to cope up with the demand.

Welfare systems

The domestic HR management of Amazon has to make sure that every employee in the host country has all the equipment required for safe working. In the United States Amazon has to follow the welfare system proposed by the government of the United States (Boella and Goss-Turner, 2019). It provides housing assistance for employees, supplemental security income, Medicaid, supplemental nutrition assistance programmes and temporary assistance for that in need.

International Human Resource Management:

Education, training and careers

The international HR managers have to make sure that all the employees of Amazon who are working overseas are being provided with proper education and training. This is essential so that the newly hired employees become familiar with the working environment of the company and work well on live projects. The international HR management of Amazon also has to make sure that every Amazon facility around the world provides career development facilities for their employees (Sparrow et al., 2016). This way the company can retain its employees by providing them with free education and providing them with opportunities at a higher level in the company.

Social stratification

Whenever an Amazon's employee is relocated to a different country is the job of an international human resource manager to inform them of the social structure of the country. It refers to the classification of the citizens by race, colour, religion, ethnicity and education. The employee must be informed about these, so, that they can fit into society properly. If any kind of discriminating act happens with the employee, the international HR managers should take actions against it.

Household, family and gender systems

The international HR management of Amazon also hast to provide their relocated employees with information on how they manage their households and family in the new country (Shamim et al., 2016). The international HR managers have to involve themselves in the private lives of the employees and provide them with suggestions.

Conclusion

Thus, it can be said that the roles of domestic and international HR management are different. The domestic HR managers are only considering with managing operation in the host country while the international HR management is responsible for managing the operation in every country where Amazon has its facilities located.



Task 2: Individual Report

Introduction

The human resource managers play a very import part in making a strategic plan for Amazon. This strategic planning is mainly focused on managing workplace practices to increase the productivity of employees and teams. In this report the important HR practises of Amazon's HRM will be discussed at local and international level.

Main body

1. Investigate the importance of HR practices to the business strategy of an MNC

The human resource managers of Amazon are also responsible for building a business strategy for the company that will help to increase the productivity of workers and also the productivity of the company. The human resource managers of Amazon are required to carry out the following:

Strategic Management

It is the job of the human resource manager of Amazon to make strategies that will help Amazon to increase its productivity. They have to understand how every employee's effort affects the company's productivity and make plans to improve them.

Mitigating liability issues

The human resource managers minimise the company's exposure and transparency associated with reports of unfair recruitment strategy.

Minimising compliance

The human resource managers of Amazon have to ensure that the company follows all the rules and regulation of the government. Amazon has its facility is several countries and hence has to follow rules and regulations of different countries.

2. Critical Evaluation of the contribution of HR practices to Strategic Management of an MNC at local levels.

The human resource management of Amazon needs to build a systematic and approach to handle the most valuable asset of Amazon, which are the employees. The human resource managers of Amazon have to make all the decisionsfor Amazon's strategic management. Some of the human resource practices at a local level are discussed below:

Hiring the right people

The most important task of a HR manager is to hire worthy people for the company. This is a very difficult task as they also have to conduct technical interviews. The human resource managers of Amazon have to hire the right people for every function such as marketing, production and most importantly finance. It is very important to hire the right people as they are the most important asset for the company (Zehir et al., 2016). The human resource managers also have to make sure that the hired employees are provided with the right amount of training before they assigned a live project. Effective training enhances the efficiency of the employees and it is ultimately beneficial for the company.

Managing and building effective teams

Building effective teams are one of the most important HR practice. It is mandatory to build effective teams so that Amazon can increase its productivity as well as the productivity of its workers. Every company build teams where individuals from different expertise can come together and work on a project. This is essential because there are so many products that Amazon builds, which requires engineers from different backgrounds. The teams that are cognitively flexible and mentally stable are the strongest. This implies that a strong team that can communicate well can generate ideas during random discussions (Rees and Smith, 2017).

Benefits

The human resource managers at the local level have less work compared to the operations of human resource management at the international level. Hence, it is easier for managers to hire worthy employees. This is because the managers have to hire employees from a given country. The number of people applying for jobs at domestic would be lesser compared to the international level. The positive side of building a team is that people who get stuck during work can get support from their team member.

Limitations

Limitation of this HR practices is that managers have to regularly maintain the relationship between the employees of the group. The fundamental aspect is the perception that the diverse influences of modernising local HRM suggest that changing from 'people approach' to 'human resource approach' is a conceptual reorientation that extends the focus from a approach of person-job-fit to a particular feature of Amazon HR management on an personality basis.

3. Critical Evaluation of the contribution of HR practices to Strategic Management of an MNC at international levels.

The human resource management of Amazon at the international level has to ensure that the company has an effective structure. The organisational structure is very important when a company has facilities overseas. Apart from forming effective organisational structure HR managers also have to do the following:

Recruiting and hiring

The international HR managers have to recruit and hire people for their facilities abroad. They are responsible for hiring the head of these facilities and also a local HR manager in these facilities (Conway et al., 2016). Hiring the right people is very important, since, the profitability of Amazon in these countries will depend upon the people that the international HR of Amazon has hired.

Development and training

The international HR managers of Amazon should inform and train the personnel that have been hired. This is done so that the people become familiar with the company’s operations and do not have any kind of doubt later in the future.

Evaluation

The evaluation process is a very important practice of international HRM. Evaluating Amazon's facilities at different locations give the international HRM an idea if these facilities are progressing or not.

Labour relation

The international HRM of Amazon also has to make sure that the employees working abroad are happy with their work and the working environment. The company must provide flexibility and benefits to keep the employees happy (Gabriel et al., 2016).

Benefits

The ideology of Amazon can be easily transferred to all branches with the support of purpose, goals and mission. Communication gaps between the head office and the subsidiaries can be reduced and the operations of the subsidiary can be organised in a better way.

Limitations

The negative side to the HR practices at the international level is that the company will have to pay extra money for the domestic workers who have been relocated to a different country. Disputes may also arise in a workers life that has been relocated due to religious differences.

4. Critical Evaluation of the contribution of HR practices to achieving organisational goals of an MNC at local levels.

The objective of Amazon at the local level

According to Amazon (2020), the main objective of the company is to provide customers with the lowest prices on products, convenience and the best selection of items available in the market.

Contribution of HR in achieving organisational goals

Manpower planning

The HR managers at local levels should make a plan that helps them to. Effective HR planning will help the company to reduce its extra expenditures. This can help Amazon to achieve one of its objectives which is to reduce prices and offer the lowest possible prices for their customers. Successful preparation of human resources would also save HR managers and the business a lot of time (Darwish et al., 2016). Pre-planning would allow Amazon to select qualified applicants who are suitable for the work.

Recruitment, selection and placement

The HR managers of Amazon must also recruit and hire worthy employees who can help the company to achieve its goals. The employees who are passionate about their work are the one who helps a company to achieve its goals. The employees hired by the HR managers should have integrity, good communication skills, confident, disciplines and resilient.

Training and development of employees

The domestic HR professional of Amazon should provide training and development programmes for their employees.This is can help the company to achieve its objective of providing convenience for its customers. Employees must be trained in such a way that their main priority should be to address the customers query or issue (Shipton et al., 2016). Training and development are also necessary to increase the productivity of workers.

Benefits

These practices will help Amazon to achieve its business objective by reducing extra expenditures. Selecting the right employees and training them properly will also help Amazon to provide convenience to its customers.

Limitations

The negative side of this is that the HR of Amazon will have to provide a lot of effort to hire and train the right employees.

5. Critical Evaluation of the contribution of HR practices to achieving organisational goals of an MNC at international levels.

The objective of Amazon at the international level

According to Amazon (2020), the main objective of the company is to provide customers with the lowest prices on products, convenience and increase its client base.

Contribution of HR in achieving organisational goals

Compliance management

Professionals of human resources manage Amazon's labour affairs and conflict settlement activities. The job of an HR is to ensure that in terms of salary, labour and equal treatment standards, Amazon is familiar with government regulations (Raineri, 2017). When conflicts occur between employers and their workers, strict enforcement control may help a business escape litigation and liabilities. This is important because it helps the company to achieve its objective of providing convenience for its workers at the international level.

Maximising employee performance

Whenever an employee is moved, the HR director must ensure that employees are knowledgeable about the working atmosphere of different nations. HR managers will have to guarantee that any worker employed across borders is well-motivated and dedicated until the required employees are in place to increase their effectiveness (Masri and Jaaron, 2017). Using various inspirational techniques such as bonuses, increased salaries and rewards, HR practitioners can boost the morale of employees.

Benefits

These practices will help Amazon to achieve its goal of increasing client base. Maximising employee performance is very crucial as it helps the company to serve more customers and compliance management helps the company to provide convenience for their workers.

Limitations

The negative side of these human resources activities is that extra sums will have to be invested by the organisation to retain employee morale across the globe.

Conclusion

Thus, it can be said that HR practices are very important to achieve the business objective on international and local levels. The work of domestic HR management is a lot lesser than the work of international HR management.

Task 3: Reflective Essay

Introduction

Career management and development is a very interesting topic that focuses on the development of the employees so that they can improve their qualities and work in a better position in the future for the company. In this essay, I will discuss hoe the career development and career management works at Amazon. The HR managers of Amazon are deeply involved in this process as they are responsible doing effective research and then conduct seminars and presentations to give employees a basic idea, what career development and management are actually about. It also gives employees an idea of which direction they can focus and work upon to work in a better position in the future.

Main Body

Investigation of career development practices within Amazon

The systems theory framework presents a map to consider the roots of career counselling and the problem facing it currently.  Career therapy is a distinctive specialty focused on the philosophy of career theory and counselling. Conventional career theory has tended to concentrate on particular discrete principles related to the conduct of individual occupations. Concentrating on only one aspect of career choice is important.

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Figure 1: Systems Theory Framework

(Source: McMahon, 2017)

The systems career development theory focuses on influences, reclusiveness and change over time. This theory can be used by Amazon to develop the skills of their employees in three different stages. The first stage includes influencing employees with certain actions. Employees can be influenced in different ways such as by providing them promotion at a certain point in time. The company can influence their employees by providing them a better place to work and give them a change to improve their skills with the help of educational institutes. The employees may make mistakes even after learning different skills and ways to increase their speed. However, overtime the skills of employees will improve drastically as shown in the figure above.

From my experience of working at Amazon, I have found out that the company uses the 360-degree feedback process. This feedback process generates various feedbacks from the employees and employers of the company. Every personnel of the company are given a chance to provide feedback on someone else. It is an anonymous feedback process. That means the employees who are writing a remark on someone else would not be recognised by anyone. The feedback is received from every person working in Amazon including the managers, peers, subordinates and so on (El Haddad et al., 2019). This is the reason why I think the name of the feedback process. It helps the company to gather various people’s opinions and make a reasonable decision. This framework also shown me that it can be used as a career development tool since it offers data on the job competencies, behaviour patterns and connections among the working personnel.

The 360-degree feedback process is done in the following way.First of all administering of the survey is done. In this procedure I was given a chance to provide feedback. These feedbacks are then reviewed by the HR managers and professional. If there is no feedback that the company needs to work upon, feedback is gathered from external sources such as customers, shareholders and external parties (Das and Panda, 2017). In this feedback form I was supposed to answer few questions and provide a rating for several aspects of the company. It may asked me to provide a rating on the company's leadership and communication skills. This whole process is then reviewed by the managers and trainers of Amazon.

It is not possible to distinguish individual responses as the feedback is given as sums from the different evaluation categories. In a report typically generated by a reputable third party, the input is given and important areas for improvement are identified. The data helps to build a growth plan. People providing input on the topic must be well trained and should be impartial and positive in providing the data.From my experience of this process, I have learned that this process has several advantages and disadvantages to it, which I will discuss briefly here.

The 360 degree is a valuable tool for Amazon as it can access various anonymous feedbacks from the company personnel. I can provide feedback on any topic such as strengths, weaknesses, and so on. With the help of this data, the manager’s and trainers can improve the various aspects that are discussed in the anonymous feedback. The feedback process is very effective. This is because every person of the company is given a chance to provide feedback (Chopra, 2017).

This feedback process also helped me to improve my communication skills. This is because the feedback process understands the topic knows how others view them, which helps collaboration in exchange. According to me, this process is mainly effective for the career development process. Reviewing the different feedback from different personnel gives the reviewers a basic idea of my interests. Understanding my interests gives Amazon a chance to focus, on the interests and provide me with career development opportunities.

The feedback theory is most useful when it is combined with the systems theory framework. This outcome of 360-feedback theory improves when it combines with systems theory framework. After getting feedback, the company is able to fids ways in which employees can be influenced. Amazon provides career development centre to their employees so that they can improve their skills. According to the theory, employees can improve their skills only by failing and practising their skills over time.

The disadvantage of the 360-degree feedback process is that the feedback is provided anonymously, the feedback of different personnel can conflict. This happens I give a bad review on a certain topic and on the similar; topic another person gives a good review. The error of disregarding positives and fully concentrating on flaws is often made by Amazon. If only the negatives are discussed with the employees like me, everyone’s morale will go down, and as a result, it may affect productivity of me and other employees. Every employee including myself should focus on the negatives and strengths. Unclear queries must be prevented because the responses are hard to translate into observable actions. Queries must be used that will provide provable details to the topic.

Investigation of career management practices within Amazon

Amazon’s career management practices have helped me as well as several other employees working in the company. The career management practices of Amazon involve the following:

Use mentoring programmes

When I was working in Amazon the company took several measures for the development of the skills of their employees. Amazon provided mentoring programmes for me as well as several other employees. These mentoring programmes have helped me to achieve my dream of becoming a marketing professional. When I joined the company I was a fresher. However, as I continued to progress in my work, the company recognised my potential and helped him to reach my dream (Vuori et al., 2019). The company provided mentoring programmes on alternate days. This helped me to work on my project as well as learn along with it. There were different mentoring programmes. Every employee that was chosen by the company to help them improve their skills was given a chance to express their passion. There were different mentoring programmes set by the company. Amazon provided mentoring programmes for the employees interested in marketing, human resource, production, finance, engineering, software and so on. The mentors chosen by Amazon were of a very high standard. Every mentor chosen by the company had at least 10 years of teaching experience.

Setting up employee career centres

Amazon had also set up career centres on the working premises. These career centres were set so that employees could access themselves. These career centres had various computerised programmes, counselling programmes, training programmes, seminars, and so on. Whenever I completed my work earlier I would visit the career centre so I could make decisions for my career development (Podnar et al., 2017). I would first visit the counselling sessions, which was conducted by the HR professional. In these sessions, the HR would communicate with me and give me different choices for my career development. The career centres of Amazon were of very high quality and had enough space so that hundreds of employees could fit in it.

Conducting Career Coaching Workshops for Managers

In order to support the career development process of the employees, managers have to learn the process of career development. Managers of every Amazon facility are responsible for guiding and helping their employees like me through the career development process. Managers of every Amazon facility are assembled so that the company can share the knowledge of career development and ask their managers to take part in the process (da Silva et al., 2016). The workshops are conducted by the company were I participated to inform the managers about the career development process of the employees like me and how they need to work upon it. The company also informs these managers that it is necessary to retain as many employees like me.

Establishing Individual Learning Accounts

Amazon has also established individual learning accounts for employees interested in the career development process. In order to have an individual learning account, employees had to pay money and choose their learning time. These learning accounts have many additional facilities such as one-on-one with the mentor, direct line to the mentor, hundreds of coaching and practical videos and also live classes on the specific time chosen by the employees (Jackson and Wilton, 2016). I had an individual learning account with Amazon and it helped me to improve my skills at a faster rate. Since these learning accounts also shared practical knowledge I was able to use the teachings and knowledge that I gained from the classes in Amazon’s working environment. This can be done with the help of systems theory. The first stage of systems theory includes influencing employees with certain actions. Employees can be influenced in different ways such as by providing them promotion at a certain point in time. The company can influence their employees by providing them a better place to work and give them a change to improve their skills with the help of educational institutes. The employees may make mistakes even after learning different skills and ways to increase their speed. However, overtime the skills of employees will improve drastically as shown in the figure above.

Conclusion

From this essay I can conclude that career development and career management are a very useful practices. The career development practises usually focuses on improving an employee’s skills so that he or she can work at a better position in the future for the company. The career management process mainly focuses on setting up facilities and programmes that will support the career development process of the employees. Amazon practises career development and career management so that they can retain their talented employees. Employees that work for a company have a better understanding of the company’s operation and with career development process they can help the company to progress at a faster rate.

Reference list

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