British Airways (BA) is the largest international airline company in the United Kingdom (UK). It has flights to over 550 destinations around the world. The BA has won global awards regarding providing its clientele with first-class services (Hoeffler and Keller, 2002). One of the strengths that BA prides itself in, is the ability to have modernized planes which increase customers comfortability. Like any other Multinational corporation, the role of human resource management is at the center of BA’s operations. Further, managing performance management is also vital for ensuring consistent results regarding profitability. This paper will highlight the challenges faced by BA in human resource management and the different strategies they used to manage these challenges. The paper will also evaluate the possible pros and cons that BA could be experiencing when applying a uniform system of performance management bearing in mind that it is a Multinational Corporation.
Human resource management resource management is a vital component in an organization if it seeks to obtain maximum performance from its employees (Cascio, 2018). Normally, the human resource department provides a framework that can tap into the different qualities of employees hence utilizing this diversity to the organization’s advantage. Furthermore, organizations have realized that having the right employee for the right job increases both efficiency and profitability of the organization. Hence developing and maintaining human capital is a major problem, since it directly determines the performance of the company at different levels and its ability to survive in the ever-changing and competitive business environment. Some of the roles that the human resource department seeks to accomplish for an organization include; recruitment of workforce, staff development, ensuring they match compensation rates with employees’ tasks, aligning the goals of employees and those of the organization, and making sure that employees have access to functioning public allocations (Jiang et al., 2012). Like many other companies’ BA has greatly invested in human resource departments to ensure it has consistent operations and profitability. However, being a Multinational cooperation (MNC), the human resource department is faced with different challenges in their attempt to ensure efficient management of operations.
One of the challenges faced by human resources in the BA company is the inability to transfer best practices among countries (Briscoe et al., 2012). Normally, the universalist approach in human resources argues that the best practices meant to increase the performance of human resource management can positively contribute to all organizations regardless of their industry, size, and location. The BA company has models that have worked very well already in some countries, and there is the desire to transfer these models to other countries. However, taking this universalist perspective in the application of best practices in BA has proved to be futile. This futility is mainly because transferring best practices in human resource management is mainly applicable at an organization level, and it is centered on the idea that the different departments are in one country. Further, this transferability of models does consider the social context under which the practices were successful, which is a major concern for BA with regards to determining which practices to use in different contexts.
Secondly, the BA company also faces the cultural divide constraint when it comes to the application of its human resource strategies. Normally, human resource in MNCs are required to have a global employee community that consistently identifies with the parent company. However, diversity in terms of languages, culture, and customs hinder this alignment for MNCs (Jackson et al., 2014). THE BA company has to apply caution on the kind of method it applies in different countries, and it should not overlook the cultural definitions of a particular destination. Further, current research has demonstrated that organizations face the risk of losing their overseas workforce when most of their promotion and employee relations activities are performed from the home office.
Thirdly, BA like many other MNCs face complex ethical and legal issues in their attempt to do business abroad (Vance & Paik, 2014). Further, BA is normally confronted with diverse human rights, environment, and social equity problems, which greatly affects their competitiveness in the global market. In BA, the human resource has the role to ensure compliance with employment laws and regulations and tax codes globally. The laws might be sometimes conflicting and complicated as compared to the laws in their home country, which poses a lot of challenges to human resource department.
Fourthly, safety and security also pose a major threat to human resource department in BA. Lack of security has been cited as one of the main challenges facing human resources in MNCs (Deresky, 2017). More to this disaster such as tsunami and floods have also proven to be challenging for Human Resources (HR) in MNCs. Normally, it is the responsibility of the HR to ensure employee safety at their workplace. However, this component is in jeopardy for MNCs operating in areas with high political instability.
The BA company needs to adopt a divergent approach regarding applying different strategies it uses for human resources. Different countries might have different specifications, and hence it can be difficult to replicate the success of a strategy that was applied in one country to a different nation. For instance, developed states have well-functioning systems in place that makes their systems work fully. However, for developing countries, their systems are still slow, and they cannot quickly respond to some business needs. Hence, it is quite important for BA to apply context-specific strategies regarding human resource activities. This has already been witnessed by the way BA changes the qualification levels of its staff across different destinations.
The second challenge faced by BA in its human resource activities is the diversity of culture in their different countries of operation (Nickson, 2013). The BA company has formulated a method to work against this constraint. The main method used is through hiring nationals of a particular country to head the BA departments so that they can ensure BA’s operations reflects the values and culture of the destination.
The BA has put together a team of legal experts that are constantly reviewing the various legal aspects and ethical issues that may cause potential problems if they seek to upgrade their activities to different countries abroad (Claeys and Cauberghe, 2012). The legal department has saved BA a lot of revenue regarding penalty fees for being charged for violating different laws. The law department also liaises with a human resource to ensure compliance with different country rules.
Lastly, in light of the effect of unstable political and social environments on human resource. The BA has invested a lot of resources that are used for screening for potential political tension before deciding to upscale their operations to different countries. More to this, they only expand their outreach in countries with manageable levels of risk factors. This has provided their human resource department with the ability to guarantee their employees safe working and living conditions.
It is defined as the cooperation between employees and management staff regarding planning, monitoring and reviewing the work objectives of each employee in the desire to accomplish organizational goals (Gruman and Saks, 2011). Performance management is not a one-time event in the organization but rather a continuous process of defining goals, determining employees progress and enhancing the capacity of employees to ensure that both their personal and organizational goals are aligned and met (Moynihan and Pandey, 2010). This section will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having a uniform performance management system for British Airways (BA) company which is a multinational corporation.
A uniform system of performance management in an MNC ensures that employees performance improves and they have a chance of developing their skills further (Van Dooren et al., 2015). Through performance management, the human resource can evaluate the level performance of each employee and know the kind of problems that hinder them from reaching their potential. Through this, they can design both on and off the job training to increase their capability.
More to this, a uniform performance management system will ensure that the British Airways company achieves employees’ loyalty since through this they can discuss with the employees the different career opportunities, challenges and goals they have. Knowledge of these factors enables the organization to respond to employees’ expectation hence fostering their growth fully.
Having a uniform performance management system in BA’s international operations has the potential of generating biased results since different countries have different business environments. Hence if employees in different countries are evaluated through one criterion without taking into account the differences in their business environments, the results generated will not be a true reflection of the situation.
Additionally, having a uniform performance management system for an MNC like BA will lead to lower self-motivation among employees (Kim et al., 2010). When the results of the evaluation are made public, and employees in one area that has a tough regulatory framework always seem to be achieving low results, yet they give their best in terms of work. There is a possibility of low self-motivation which sometimes might advance to high turnover rates.
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to highlight the probable challenges faced by MNCs in their human resource activities and how they cope up with these challenges. Further, the paper also highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of an MNC using a uniform set of performance management in its international operations. The paper used British Airways as an MNC to explore these issues. Through this exercise, I have been able to understand the different challenges faced by human resource departments in MNCs. I have also developed my skills regarding critical thinking, research, and analysis as well as synchronizing my thoughts. It is important for MNCs to evaluate their business environment before deciding whether or not to invest in a particular country
References
Briscoe, D., Tarique, I. and Schuler, R. (2012) International human resource management: Policies and practices for multinational enterprises. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.
Cascio, W., (2018) Managing human resources. 12th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Claeys, A.S. and Cauberghe, V. (2012) Crisis response and crisis timing strategies, two sides of the same coin. Public Relations Review, 38(1), pp.83-88.
Deresky, H., (2017) International management: Managing across borders and cultures. 9th ed. England: Pearson Education India.
Gruman, J.A. and Saks, A. M. (2011) Performance management and employee engagement. Human Resource Management Review, 21(2), pp.123-136.
Hoeffler, S. and Keller, K.L. (2002) Building brand equity through corporate societal marketing. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 21(1), pp.78-89.
Jackson, S.E., Schuler, R.S. and Jiang, K. (2014) An aspirational framework for strategic human resource management. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), pp.1-56.
Jiang, K., Lepak, D.P., Hu, J. and Baer, J.C. (2012) How does human resource management influence organizational outcomes? A meta-analytic investigation of mediating mechanisms. Academy of management Journal, 55(6), pp.1264-1294.
Kim, S., Wright, P.M. and Su, Z. (2010) Human resource management and firm performance in China: A critical review. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 48(1), pp.58-85.
Moynihan, D.P. and Pandey, S.K. (2010) The big question for performance management: Why do managers use performance information? Journal of public administration research and theory, 20(4), pp.849-866.
Nickson, D., 2013. Human resource management for hospitality, tourism and events. Routledge.
Van Dooren, W., Bouckaert, G. and Halligan, J. (2015) Performance management in the public sector. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge.
Vance, C.M. and Paik, Y. (2014) Managing a global workforce: challenges and opportunities in international human resource management. 2nd Ed. London: Routledge.
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