Cross-cultural communication exists when people from differing cultures have reached a certain degree of understanding regarding their differences. For understanding to take place, both people must have some form of knowledge or awareness regarding the norms or customs that exist in each other’s culture. Verbal and nonverbal communications can contain implied meanings, as well as certain degrees of symbolism. For successful communication to take place, background knowledge concerning values, norms and perceptions is necessary in order for clear, effective communication to take place. The key to effective cross-cultural communication is knowledge. It is essential that people understand the potential problems of cross-cultural communication, and make a conscious effort to overcome these problems and important to assume that one’s efforts will not always be successful, and adjust one’s behavior appropriately. For example, one should always assume that there is a significant possibility that cultural differences are causing communication problems, and be Continue reading
Modern HRM
HR Strategy Formulation: Organization Mission and Goals Analysis
Even similar organizations often pursue different goals; a thorough organizational analysis of the organization’s overall mission and goals is a second integral aspect of identifying human resource strategies. All organizations exist to accomplish something in their larger environments. The mission — the purpose of an organization’s existence — should guide its strategic thinking. For example, two similar electronics manufacturers may have varying missions. One may want to “be a successful organization in the entertainment business,” while the other may define its mission as “occupying a technological leadership position in the industry.” The associated strategies are likely to show significant differences. Apart from manufacturing electronic goods used for home entertainment, the former firm may acquire video and film production firms and get into the music industry (e.g., producing music DVD’s); while the second firm may be more committed to innovative electronic products through research and development. The associated human resource strategies Continue reading
Personnel Action Systems (PAS)
As the name itself specifies, Personnel Action Systems (PAS) supports the activity of the personnel department in taking actions on the following: Filling job openings and Recording and reporting promotions, transfers, terminations and other employee status changes. Two systems involved in Personnel Action Systems (PAS) are: Placement data system and Personnel activity reporting system. The details vary from organization to organization. Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action concerns in USA are making more extensive data systems necessary with respect to both the above systems. There is a growing need to document the search procedure employed to job applicants and the decision procedure by which the new applicant is selected. Promotions, transfers and termination need more justification than they were in the past. 1. Placement Data System Placement data procedures center around the development and use of more applicant files (generally more than one). Separate files are required for jobs that Continue reading
The Importance of Human Capital in Business
Managers may ask the question what is the most important asset in their company? The greatest asset of a company is not its financial capital, the number of building or it’s properties, nor it is the equipment or products that the company own. The greatest asset that a company own is it employees. Then again, what exactly is human capital? The term human capital is recognition that people in organisations and businesses are important and essential assets who contribute to development and growth, in a similar way as physical assets such as machines and money. The collective attitudes, skills and abilities of people contribute to organisational performance and productivity. Any expenditure in training, development, health and support is an investment, not just an expense. The importance of human capital is rising tremendously since the last few decades. Human capital is now regarded as the most important factor in an organization Continue reading
Wastage of Human Resources
The term wastage of human resources is the loss of employees other than by redundancy. Redundancy points out the position of the employee as no longer needed for any available job and therefore liable to dismissal. In an organization, the wastage of human resources is mainly caused by the factors Labor turnover, Idle Time and Absenteeism. 1. Labor Turnover The change in workforce is known as labor turnover. It is the rate of change in the composition of the labor force in the organization. Whenever an employee leaves the organization, the management, has to sustain loss and wastage arising from the replacement of the leaving incumbent, by inexperienced new labor force. This replacement cost also includes cost of recruitment, selection and training of new employees. Loss of output due to the gap in obtaining new workers, loss due to inefficiency of new workers, cost of accidents due to lack of Continue reading
Importance of Work-Life Balance in Organizations
In today’s world, people have become more focused on their professional life, as they want more finances to manage their things. Most of them want to sustain their professional life as they believe that it grants them freedom for achieving the goals. Most of the people want to achieve the work-life balance as it grants them good amount of peace and satisfaction. The work-life balance helped to bring the goof level of satisfaction among the people leading to the achievement of the goals. Due to the globalization and digitization, there is increasing pressure on the individuals to be available for the duty 24 hours when required. Such pressure creates misbalance in their professional and personal life making them less productive and energetic to do the chores in the best possible manner. Around 85 percentage of the people working in corporate complain of their inability manage their work and personal life Continue reading