BUS 303 week 5 discussions

Discussion 1

HR planning is the process of assessing the demands and supply of various types of human resources of an organization within a given period of time. Human resource planning consists of goal setting, forecasting, strategic planning, and programme implementation and evaluation.

Some of the areas of human resource planning affected by current global trends in HRM include labor relations, benefits and compensation. Expatriates are compensated and generally get higher benefits than comparable pay in the employee’s home country. However, elements of compensation that motivate and retain employees may vary in different countries.

Hofstede looks at variations in Human resource management practices across cultures. Hofstede (1980) came with four basic cultural dimensions: individualism vs. collectivism looks at the relationship that exist in a given society between an individual and collectivism, power distance explains differences between people as legitimate and expected. The third dimension is uncertainty avoidance refers to the degree with which are comfortable with ambiguity. The fourth cultural dimension is masculinity vs. femininity refers to the degree that people exhibit masculine or feminine values and characteristics.

Trompenaars cross-cultural dimension argue that there are major cultural differences between nations and that they affect the process of doing business and managing organization, they found out that there is no “one best way of managing” organizations (Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 2004). Furthermore, Globe cross-cultural dimension is a research effort aimed at exploring the effects of culture on leadership, economic competitiveness, organizational effectiveness and the human condition of members of the societies studied. It develops nine cultural dimensions that entails both values in the different cultural settings and actual society practices.

Reference

Hofstede, G. (1980). Motivation, leadership, and organization: Do American theories apply abroad? Organizational Dynamics, 9, 42–63.

House R.J., Hanges P.J., Javidan M., Dorfman P.W., and Gupta V. (2004). Culture, Leadership, and Organizations. The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Trompenaars, F. & Hampden-Turner, C. (1997), Riding the Waves of Culture: Capstone Publishing Ltdc

Discussion 2

The use of social media for job seeking has increased in the recent past, according to Nigel Wright recruitment (2011) more than half of job seekers in the UK use social media to search for employment.

Social networking sites (SNSs) can be a great tool in the hands of HR practitioner in finding the right candidate because it is used to attract and target a specific group of potential employees. It is also efficient, reduces recruiting costs and time involved, compared to traditional forms of recruitment (Smith and Rupp, 2004).

SNSs enable HR managers to reach a wider audience of potential employees, both locally and internationally and hence enabling them to attract more qualified candidates. SNSs also help to gather much more information about potential employees than what they would otherwise present in a cover letter or CV, however this can also attract charges of discrimination by unsuccessful job applicants based on information posted on SNSs for instance, Bohnert and Ross (2010) argues that unprofessional behavior such as alcohol consumption and drug taking displayed on social media can hurt a person’s chance of being hired or may even result in a lower salary.

It is also important to note that the use of social media as a recruitment would have great impact on HR policies such as anti-discrimination, organizations could be in danger of violating civil rights laws by excluding older applicants who might not be using SNSs according to Davison, Maraist and Bing (2011) .Screening of candidates based on information posted on SNSs may also attract charges of breach of employee privacy and this can lead to lawsuits and resulting in hefty fines.

Reference

Davison, H. K., Maraist, C. & Bring, M.N. (2011). Friend or foe? The promise and pitfalls of using social networking sites for HR decisions. Journal of Business Psychology, 26 (2), 153-159

Bohnert, D.Ross, W.H (2010). The influence of social networking web sites on the evaluation of job candidates.Cyberpsychology,behavior and social networking ,341-347