Competitive Challenges and

HRM
Competitive Challenges and HRM
 Ongoing studies of the most pressing competitive
issues facing firms is conducted by:

 Society for Human Resource management (SHRM) and

 The Human Resource Planning Society (HRPS)

By seeking the inputs from chief executives and HR

managers.
Challenge 1: Going Global
 The trend towards opening up foreign markets to
international trade and investment.

 Partnering with firms in other regions of the world &

using information technologies to coordinate distant
parts of their businesses—
 Companies have shown that their vision for future is
 To offer customers “anything, anytime, anywhere” around the
World.
Effect of Globalization on HRM
 To balance a complicated set of issues related to different geographies,
cultures, employment laws, and business practices.

 To Gauge the knowledge and skill base of foreign workforce, to figure out
how best to hire and train them.

 Relocating managers and other workers to direct the efforts of a foreign

workforce.

 Responsible for implementing trg. prgs. & develop. Opportunities to

enhance managers understanding of foreign cultures and practices.

 Adjust compensation plans—receive fair and equitable pay as per the

living cost of different countries.
Challenge2: Embracing New Technology
 Organizations are connected via computer-mediated
relationships, and they are giving rise to a new
generation of “virtual” workers who work from
home, in hotels, in their cars, or wherever their work
takes place.

 Shift from “touch labour” to “knowledge workers”:

employee responsibilities expand to include a richer
array of activities—planning, decision making, &
problem solving.
Influence of Technology in HRM
 The most central use of technology in HRM is an
organization’s human resource information system
(HRIS).

 HRIS– A computerized system that provides current

and accurate data for purposes of control and
decision making.

 Helps in automating payroll processing, maintaining

employee records, and administering benefit
programs.
Challenge3: Workforce Diversity
 Employees of an organization differ from each other—age,
gender, education, language, values, cultural norms, ethnic
origin etc.

 Composition of workforce in India is changing

 More women, minority groups etc. are joining the workforce.
 Young, skilled and knowledgeable people are increasingly occupying
positions of importance.
 Employees now prefer less secure but high paying jobs in MNCs &
other private sectors.
 The percentage of old employees is also growing owing to improved
medical and health care.
 Technological revolution and better transport facilities have improved
mobility of employees.
 What are companies doing to foster
diversity in workforce
A large scale survey by the SHRM and the Commerce
Clearing House have observed:

 Promoting policies that discourage sexual harassment (93%

of org. observed)
 Providing physical access for employees with physical
disabilities(76%)
 Offering flexible work schedules (66%)
 Allowing days off for religious holidays that are not officially
recognized (58%)
 Offering parental leaves (57%)
Challenge4: Employee Empowerment
 Empowerment is the process of passing authority
and responsibility to individuals at lower levels in
the organization hierarchy to enhance the feeling of
self-efficacy and a sense of owning a job.

 Managers are encouraged to allow a high degree of

workforce participation, group involvement and
autonomy, and to develop self-managing work
teams.
Employee Empowerment (Contd.)
 Empowerment is a process of delegating
authority to subordinates to shoulder
additional responsibility based upon their
ability, knowledge, experience and power to
achieve autonomy, independence and quality
of work life for organizational effectiveness.
 Approaches to Empowerment
 Helping employees achieve job mastery
 Giving training, coaching and guided experience that are
required for initial success.

 Allowing more control

 Giving employees discretion over job performance &
making them accountable for the performance outcome.

 Providing successful role models

 Approaches to Empowerment
 Using social reinforcement and persuasion
 Giving promise, encouragement and verbal
feedback to raise confidence.

 Giving emotional support

 Task assistance, personal care
Why Empowerment?
 To stimulate commitment and innovation from the
employees.

 To achieve competitive advantage by producing goods and

services that meet customer requirements.

 To implement change and stimulate decision making from

everyone where there is no precedence.

 To promote entrepreneurship and higher degree of risk.

Barrier to Empowerment
 Incongruent organizational culture
 Love for authority
 Dependency of subordinates
 Challenge5: Managing Protean Careers

 The career of the 21st century will be

protean, a career that is driven by the
person, not the organization, and that will
be reinvented by the person from time to
time, as the person and the environment
change.
Managing Protean Careers (Contd.)
 The protean career is a process which the person, not
the organization, is managing. It consists of all of the
person's varied experiences in education, training,
work in several organizations, changes in
occupational field, etc.

 The protean person's own personal career choices

and search for self-fulfillment are the unifying or
integrative elements in his or her life. The criterion
of success is internal (psychological success), not
external.
Characteristics of Protean Careers :
 Focus on psychological success rather than vertical success

 Lifelong series of identity changes and continuous learning

 Career age counts, not chronological age

 Job security replaced by the goal of employability

 Sources of development are work challenges and relationships, not

necessarily training and retraining programs
Characteristics of Protean Careers (Contd.)
 The new career contract is not a pact with the
organization; rather, it is an agreement with one’s self
and one’s work

 Focus on learning metaskills (learning how to learn), i.e.,

how to develop self-knowledge (about one’s identity) and
adaptability

 Adaptability and identity learning is best accomplished

through interactions with other people (reflected in
interdependence, mutuality, reciprocity, and learning
from differences)
Challenge 6: Moon Lighting By Employees
 Employees in most of the organizations realize that
all their demands cannot be met by their organization
alone.

 Hence they depend either on some other

organizations for part-time job, part-time business or
take up a business or start an industrial unit in order
to earn more. This type of activity is known as
moonlighting
Moonlighting Phenomenon
 Moonlighting is a term used to refer to holding a second job outside of
normal working hours.

 If there is a shortage, or if no great amount of additional work is

necessary, the organization can use inside moonlighting.

 Workers can be enticed to take a “second” job with bonuses

 Moonlighting while working for a private employer is governed by the

policies of the employer.

 Public employees seeking to hold a second job may be subject to laws

and agency regulations, depending on the position and classification.
 Employing MoonlightingWorkers
 Before going outside to recruit, many
organizations ask employees to encourage friends
and relatives to apply
 Some offer “finders fees” for successful referrals
 Employee referrals should be used cautiously,
especially if the workforce is already racially or
culturally imbalanced
 Blue Moonlighting
Management respond positively to the employees
demand and give hike in wages and benefits but some
employees are not satisfied with the level of wages and
benefits and want to go for second job for additional
income but due to their inabilities their efforts do not
bring any fruit . Such type of failure in efforts is called
Blue Moonlighting.
Quarter Moonlighting
When an employee is not satisfied with his current
salary and searches a part time job in which he works
after his regular job for extra income this is known as
Quarter Moonlighting.
 Half Moonlighting
Many employees tend to spend more than what they
earn, this sort of employees are fond of luxurious life
and also save a sufficient amount of money for future
and spend 50% of their time in part time job. This is
called Half Moonlighting.
 Full Moonlighting
When employees in some occupation find free time or
employees feel that their income is negligible compared
to their expectations or friends are earning huge money
than them and friends with lower qualifications are
enjoying better status in society. These sort of
employees develop Their own business and keep on
staying with their regular job for woes time .But their
social status determined by second occupation is known
as Full Moonlighting.
Arguments in Favor or Against
Moonlighting
 Fatigue
 Transportation Hurdles
 Lack of sleep Due to dual job
 Poor attentiveness
 Hustling and Juggling in multiple jobs
 Mediocre performance
Benefits
 Employee learns new skills
 Retaining Employees
 Less burden of benefits
 Less burden of benefits
 To meet seasonal requirement