Reflection and recommendations for article: Labor market: HR to the fore as businesses hit reset

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 25th April 2018

BUS 4373

Strategic Human Resources Management

Assessment 1 –Reflection Paper

Fall 2016

Step-1:Read thoroughly the specified article (‘Labor market: HR to the fore as businesses hit ‘reset’).Write five reflections on current macroeconomic situation and labor market conditions in GCC countries (30 Marks).

Introduction:

High rate of unemployment coupled with dwindling economic performance and decreasing level of corporate performance is forcing significant changes in corporation across the GCC regions. This has resulted to a significant shift to HR restricting and rebuilding as the HR is considered the main source of sustainability in the region.

Reflection-1:

Employee motivation - The present economic conditions across the GCC countries is not favorable as it has resulted to numerous financial loses for businesses and increased unemployment rate with special reference to Saudi Arabia. Companies are laying off staffs while the remaining ones are cutting down salaries. This is resulting to vast negative effects on the motivation and commitment level of employees.

Reflection-2:

Work design - The major factors for this issue is the company’s over-dependence on oil as its major source of economic growth. This has resulted to issues from the oil sector having direct effect on the performance of other sectors in the country’s economy. The poor work design that focuses on single product feature instead of diversified economy is also an issue for the HRM as they will need to train new staffs on still to combat the present HR issues.

Reflection-3:

Diversification of economies will mean diversification of HR skills–with the intended desire to diversify economies, it is expected that more skills outside of the oil and gas sectors will be demanded, which will create the need to diversify the HR sector in the process.

Reflection-4:

Poor payment structure–with the present economic situation, the HR is experiencing increasing demand for its services, resulting to higher earnings. If the economy gets better, it is expected that such sphere will decline, which imply that the pay structure is not well managed. Management of the pay structure is important to provide job security for the HR sector (in both good and bad economic situations).

Reflection-5:

Training and development - Instead of employing new staffs, corporations are urged to train the junior managers and equip them with the necessary skills to ensure continued performance. This considered more effective and cost friendly can hiring an entirely new set of staffs into the system.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the HR department is an important aspects of any given corporation as shown in the case. Their importance is reflected on the understanding that they help the company through restricting process in order to enable them pass through hash economic conditions. Additionally, diversification is essential in any economy as it would provide the opportunity to leverage poor performance of a given sector with great performance of another sector.

Step 2: Based on the article (‘Labor market: HR to the fore as businesses hit ‘reset’). Identify five challengesfaced by the businesses and HR departments in GCC as result of current macroeconomic situation and labor market conditions in GCC countries. Scan both internal and external business environment (25 Marks)

Business / HR Challenge-1:

Diversification of skills – the case indicates that majority of the economic features in the region are based on single source of wealth (oil), which implies that issues form the global oil industries have direct impact on GCC countries. Therefore, diversification is considered a solution by the case does indicate that there are no precise and accurate processes established by these economies for the purpose of effecting a diversified system within its reach. This is a big issue as indicated above and diversification is needed urgently. This is a big HR challenge because diversification of the economy will also demand diversification of HRM skills an competence in order to meet set objectives.

Business / HR Challenge-2:

HR restructuring – another issue identified in the case is that corporations within the region focus primarily on the conventional business process, which implies that they don’t clearly understand the need for effective HRM. As such, they are not structured to handle adverse economic effects as illustrated in the case. This is a business issue because businesses needed to be structured to handle the impacts of both good and bad economic conditions. The HR issue here is that restructuring the business process will effect a resulting change on the HR management, which the unit most carefully consider.

Business/ HR Challenge-3:

Effective HR management – the case also shows that majority of the corporations are owned by the government, which implies highly bureaucracy and little innovation and creativity. This is also featured in the way the government has been handling these economic issues. However, the good thin stands that the government has understood its weaknesses and the need to incorporate the private sector into the development process. As such, it has plans of privatizing some of the government corporations and providing necessary supports to the private sectors in the process. This is a big HR challenge as inter-ownership between the government and private sector will demand new approaches to HR management.

Business/ HR Challenge-4:

Training and development – one major issue highlighted from the case is that numerous employees don’t have the right skills for effective delivery of their designated tasks. As such, training and development is considered vital. The issue here is that such training and development programs must be customized and tailored to the individual skills of employee are it related to their designated jobs.

Business / HR Challenge-5:

Recruitment and selection - as a remedy for the issues identified in the case, it is important to either recruit or select the right workforce if the economic is to experience desired changes. This comes with its issues as it involves varied rigorous processes.

Step 3: Evaluate the effects of the challenges (presented in step-2) on the HR Strategies of organizations in GCC (20 Marks)

Effect-1:

Diversification of skills can reduce quality of process outcomes as it would not allow the staffs to specialization. Focusing on one major job will definitely improve quality of outcomes as “experience is the best teacher.”

Effect-2:

HR management is not easy as it demands that different people with different feature be brought together as a functional unit. Complexity comes in terms of fairness, equality, managing corporate conflicts and a host of other issues.

Effect-3:

Restructuring comes with its own issue as it could force staffs to move out form what the know best to new descriptions that are unfamiliar to them. 

Effect-4:

Although the issue of restricting is solved by the right training and development program, it should be noted that the process of training and developing staffs is very rigorous. In some cases, employees need to be trained in customized skills. The whole process of training and development is very expensive for the company as well.

Effect-5:

Recruitment and selection has its own issue of identifying and assessing the right staffs. If the company employees the wrong staffs, resources will be wasted.

Step 4: Recommend five HR strategies to overcome the challenges identified in Step 2.(25 Marks)

Recommended HR Strategy-1:

The issue of diversification of competence can be resolved put putting the staffs through the right training and development programs in order to ensure that they have the skills to effectively work in a diversified workforce.

Recommended HR Strategy-2:

HR management issues can be handled with the right HR policies, defining what the company wants and what it expects from all parties involved.

Recommended HR Strategy-3:

Restructuring issues can be handled by adopting a restructured HR system that features the company’s present economic conditions and market expectations.

Recommended HR Strategy-4:

On the test training will be necessary to handle issues of training and development. This is because it will allow the company feature their present economic conditions and set corporate objectives on the training and development plans for the employees.

Recommended HR Strategy-5:

Finally, the issue of recruitment and selection can be solved by critically assessing applicant’s skills and ensure that the meet set requirement for the particular position they will be employed in.