Managing People In A Global Context

HRM Practices

Discuss about the Managing People in a Global Context.

This paper is about the human resource management practices for AirAsia, an air transport company, between two countries Malaysia and Indonesia with Malaysia as the parent country. AirAsia is a Malaysian low-cost airline. It was established in year 1993 but it starts its operations towards the end of 1996. At first it was a government owned corporation but due to heavy debts the airline was sold to Tony Femandes in 2001. Before it was sold to Tony AirAsia was unable to attract sufficient customers from Malaysia Airline thus failed to establish its market (Jiang and Li 2016). As a matter of fact, Malaysia Airlines is among the leading award charming as well as the biggest less costly airlines across Malaysia and has been growing up rapidly since dawn of the millennium. AirAsia flies to over 60 domestic and international destinations with over 100 routes, it also runs over 400 air travel on daily basis from centers located in Malaysia and Indonesia. The airline has a fleet of over 70 airlines which has flown millions of people across the region and it keeps on creating far-reaching route networks in the country and through its associate company in Indonesia.

Air carriage is one of the world’s greatest significant businesses that every organization cannot be successful in. Over the various progress and its technical services accomplishments makes it one of the utmost providers to its development in the current society. The carrier conveyance development is an exceptional one as equated to other methods of transport as it is necessary to the trade and industry progress (Nugraha, 2016). Consequently, AirAsia through its business idea “Now Everyone Can Fly” opens the skies for everyone. AirAsia is selected as the favorite choice of transport.

Training personalities is a process that is directly related to skills, knowledge and strategies which are necessary for any given specific job. This may include coaching of workers’ innovative skills, uncovering them to inexperienced planning, providing employees with a chance to practice and get feedback on certain styles of working with people and also buoy up people to discuss their work with each other. This can be an ongoing process throughout a staff member’s employment.

This kind of job lets staffs learn through real performance of specific tasks. The employee will have to perform the job and through that will be learning as they goes. This kind of job may be structured by use of hands on application by the support of classroom instructions or may also be unstructured by making use of only hands-on instructions. Consequently, this type of training has got an advantage since there is immediate feedback on performance (Cummings, and Worley 2014). On the other hand it may be of disadvantage to the company since it may slow down production for the trainer and also interrupt the workflow.

Training and Development

Job mentoring involves providing employees with a skilled instructor to supervise the workers learning experience. The instructor plays the role of providing advice, instructions and not performing the job together with the employee as it is the case with on-the-job training. Here the learner worker will have to learn the job as firsthand and only consult the mentor at any given time for assistance. This kind of training is beneficial in that it inspires one-on-one training, the advisor is there to offer advice and the mentee will have to experience growth within the company (Cummings and Worley 2014).

This type of training teaches workers ways on how to carry out various jobs over time. The employees will have to take turns around on different jobs in the company, carrying out various different responsibilities that are not linked from the original work. However, it has its own flaws such as workforce not being contented with the new cycle, the morale of employees may drop if they are shifted for an extensive period of time and to some point may also disrupt the workflow since employees get to learn new tasks.

On the other hand, as a human resource boss it is essential to shape up an upright association among cultural teams within the company since employee work in a diversified society. Indeed it is a necessity to interact with the native people who serve as agencies in order to provide occupation information and services so that to enable employees to study and comprehend the company’s programs (Saks, Haccoun, and Belcourt, 2010).Over and done with such programs the corporation will get to recognize the traditional settings, lives as well as the wellbeing of workers outside the place of work; on the same note it constructs a durable link by increasing appreciative and trust among employees.

Accordingly in order for a company to triumph the human resource section is obliged to make sure that it battle any form of discernment so that to realize a reasonable gain over their adjacent rivals. As a result there is need to understand that there is no single organization that can flop to develop an upright crew of operational specialists minus a deep-rooted human resources team. The essential duty of the human resources management crew comprise hiring staffs, teaching them, performance evaluations, work communication, care and not over looking incentive to teams. In respect to this, individuals any known company is titled to perform a number of important activities that will make the business recognize and attain its aims and ideas. It is the duty of directors as well as human resource experts to ensure that they bring together individuals so that to efficiently be in position to carry out different undertakings that takes place inside the company. As a result, for a company to be able to operate its undertakings in a well manner it is supposed to observe and view the workers in the corporation as resources and not liabilities to the firm. Looking at individuals as resources is one of the greatest vital parts of modern human resource management (Daley, 2012).

On-the-Job Training

Ultimately human resource executives need to have a clearly understanding of the word diversity, diversity means substantial dissimilarities among personalities, therefore, this comprise different perceptions that are looked at as unique state of businesses and environments. In addition diversity administration is an endless practice that work together and identify the labor force and customers variances into all the various corporate management basics that consist of employee interaction, roles, services and processes, creation of comprehensive, pleasant, original and active business.

An effective performance management system is one that enhances workers morale, loyalty which increases general productivity. The main goal of talent management in most corporations is to create a maintainable and high performance organization that is be able to meet the operational and planned goals of the organization (Giacalone, and Rosenfeld, 2013). Diverse firms have their own ways of conducting team management but the general goal of the process is common in all businesses. Many employees will be forced to look for new jobs with the development of economic conditions with globalization. AirAsia is determined to spend more time to ensure it develops and retain talent not like other organizations that put tremendous efforts in attracting workers to their companies.

AirAsia has confidence that a business with the right talent has the highest probabilities of succeeding and countering competition in the market. This is a crucial duty that human resource is eligible to. Talent management elements are the set of tools that a company can use to ensure that it is able to stay in the marketplace and counter all rivalry that might come about. In line with this, talent management help an organization to streamline the process of hiring and training new employees and help it to focus on activities that are related to the business (Gruman, and Saks, 2011). Moreover, it is important to note that commitment of employees, management development, and structural cultures also have abundant significance when it comes to talent retention in an organization.

Talent management is a fundamental part of all teams at AirAsia Company since it helps the business in various ways such as:

Engagement of employees: It is with much importance for the human resource department to see to it that it continuously keeps its personnel involved as a way of giving them a sense of belonging and development. Conversely, this is not an easy undertaking, given the overall involvedness of the function. Thus human resource managers tend to lean upon talent management applications in the development of a streamlined process.

Job Mentoring

Carrying out consistent employee evaluations to keep workforces performance on track: Working according to performance evaluation is of great importance because it offers managers and staff an opportunity to discuss their performance, places of interest, goals, challenges, development needs and competencies. For workers to be in the position of performing at the best of their ability it is essential that the company gets regular feedback on what they are doing well and the areas that require improvement. Consequently, this is the time where leaders together with their employees put plans in place and be able to address these performance gaps (Walker, Damanpour, and Devece, 2010).

Deliver constant feedback to maximize performance: It is beyond reasonable doubt that continuous feedback plays a significant role in ensuring expansion of return among workers. The process allows for faster corrective action in case things start to go off the rail, since it enables managers and the staff to address the issue when it is still small (Van Dooren, Bouckaert,  and Halligan, 2015).

Localization refers to the adaptation of products or services to meet the needs of local people of particular culture, language or other variables. When expanding internationally, AirAsia may consider localizing to Indonesian culture. As multinational gains valuable local resources, the local management shall face little resistance. It is cheaper to maintain a local manager than a foreign manager in the country. The culture and environment dictates the individuals based on their achievement but recruited based on their teamwork skills. The training and development standards need to be maintained. As one size does not fit all, training and development programs need to be provided to the people based on the local culture or language. A cross-cultural training program must be designed by thoroughly assessing the workforce and its needs (Xing et al. 2016).

Further, AirAsia can also use the performance management tool by linking to the organizational strategy. As the culture of home country, Malaysia differs from that of host country, Indonesia. Often the corporate home office will not accept common practices and procedures found in Indonesia as a best practice and require Indonesian managers and staff to adapt to the international corporate culture. The workplace culture in Indonesia is paternalistic where the managers are treated as father figures. The employees do not voice their disagreement with the managers. In Indonesia, the collective working culture contradicts bonuses by performance. The deadlines do not matter much that leads to failure and incompetence. Further, the standardization methods in managing employees may not be successful as people across the world are not the same. The employees in Indonesia have different needs from that of Malaysian employees. Therefore, the norms and approaches followed to manage the Malaysian employees may not be successful in Indonesia. Therefore, AirAsia may consider localizing IHRM practices (Edwards et al. 2016).

Job Rotation

An organizational structure is daunting to achieve the core objectives of the business. An organizational structure is important for the decision making, communication, evaluating employee performance, achieving goals and objectives. As airlines have multiple functions and subsidiaries, they have numerous employees working under them to satisfy millions of customers regularly. A structural-formal or bureaucratic structure may be appropriate for the organization. As organizational structure provides backbone for all operations and processes, flow of ideas, information, decisions and reporting relationships, AirAsia may follow bureaucratic processes. There are many layers of management and there is a chain of command (van der Voet 2014).

The employees in the airlines shall have specific tasks and roles for the particular departments in the airlines. The duties and responsibilities shall be followed strictly as AirAsia shall have stringent policies and procedures. The formalized proponents of bureaucracy can bring out efficiency and predictability in the organization. The officials follow procedures and instructions for managing performance. There shall be no scope for favoritism in case of bureaucratic structure. Usually, there are fairly rigid vertical structures, so a performance review typically results in a promotion within the department but usually not into other departments, limiting growth and development (Harper 2014).

According to a number of studies conducted on subsidiary typologies, the different types of subsidiaries are global innovators, integrated players, implementers and local innovators. The global innovators refer to the firms having low knowledge inflow and large knowledge outflow. The global innovators are independent of their parents. The integrated players are the ones that highly engage in managing heavy information inflows as well as outflows. Further, the implementers have very low knowledge outflow as they do not engage in knowledge transfer. They rely knowledge acquired from parent firms having high knowledge inflows. Lastly, the local innovators are the subsidiaries that engage in very less in acquiring knowledge from or into the parent firms (Audretsch et al. 2012).

The subsidiary of AirAsia may play the role of integrated player that is very important for its development. As there is high knowledge inflow, the parent company in Malaysia can educate with the training and development practices they follow. The approaches and practices such as job rotation, job mentoring and on-the-job training can be provided to the Indonesian subsidiary. The performance management practices such as rewarding the employees with incentives and bonuses may also be communicated to the subsidiary. Also, the practices followed in the subsidiary at Indonesia can also be communicated with Malaysian organization. The practices that shall suit the employees in Indonesia regarding training and development and performance management can be communicated with Malaysia. The parent company can adapt to the practices of managing employees and train the employees if the subsidiary finds it successful. Therefore, the role of integrated player shall be suitable for AirAsia the most (Boutellier, Gassmann and Zedtwitz 2014).

Performance Management

Conclusion

According to the above it is true that AirAsia has an exclusive way of managing its staff. The corporation chiefly focuses on staffs that are related to managerial activities by providing them with assistance in career planning and the need to retain employees. Actually this is an opportunity as employee feel contented and this makes them get driven to work to the best of their ability. AirAsia understands that the only viable competitive advantage is to make sure that workers are happy and motivated towards their work.

From the above discussion Indonesia will require more financial support so that it can be in a better position to carry out efficient training and development practices as well as performance management practices. This is not an easy task because each option demands a large sum of money in order to engage in equipping its employees with the necessary skills. In addition Malaysia is supposed to take some of its instructors to Indonesia to provide workers there with job mentoring skills.

References

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Boutellier, R., Gassmann, O. and Zedtwitz, M., 2014. Managing global innovation. 1st ed. Berlin: Springer.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

Daley, D.M., 2012. Strategic human resource management. Public Personnel Management, pp.120-125.

Edwards, T., Sánchez-Mangas, R., Jalette, P., Lavelle, J. and Minbaeva, D., 2016. Global standardization or national differentiation of HRM practices in multinational companies? A comparison of multinationals in five countries. Journal of International Business Studies, 47(8), pp.997-1021.

Giacalone, R.A. and Rosenfeld, P., 2013. Impression management in the organization. Psychology Press.

Gruman, J.A. and Saks, A.M., 2011. Performance management and employee engagement. Human Resource Management Review, 21(2), pp.123-136.

Harper, C., 2014. Organizations: Structures, processes and outcomes. 1st ed. Florence: Taylor and Francis.

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Nugraha, R.A., 2016. Airasia: Flying Cabotage Under Cloak In Indonesia And Asean. JurnalHukum& Pembangunan, 45(2), pp.163-183.

Saks, A.M., Haccoun, R.R. and Belcourt, M., 2010. Managing performance through training and development. Cengage Learning.

van der Voet, J., 2014. The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public organization: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic organizational structure. European Management Journal, 32(3), pp.373-382.

Van Dooren, W., Bouckaert, G. and Halligan, J., 2015. Performance management in the public sector. Routledge.

Walker, R.M., Damanpour, F. and Devece, C.A., 2010. Management innovation and organizational performance: The mediating effect of performance management. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, p.muq043.

Xing, Y., Liu, Y., Tarba, S. and Cooper, C., 2016. Intercultural influences on managing African employees of Chinese firms in Africa: Chinese managers’ HRM practices. International Business Review, 25(1), pp.28-41.