HRM Assignment: Managing a Global Workforce - Recommendations

This report addresses the challenges of managing a global workforce, a key people management issue. It begins with an introduction highlighting the importance of globalization and the arising complexities. The report delves into the literature, examining issues such as cultural differences, communication barriers, local talent acquisition, resistance to change, diversity management, and remuneration expectations within a global context. The analysis includes a detailed discussion on diversity management and human resource development, two critical aspects of effective global workforce management. The report then provides recommendations for addressing these challenges, including fair recruitment and selection processes, tailored training programs, and fostering a culture of respect and transparency. The conclusion emphasizes the need for long-term planning, stakeholder involvement, and the use of third-party resources to support employee development. Overall, the report offers a comprehensive overview of the issues and provides actionable recommendations for organizations seeking to effectively manage their global workforces.

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People HR Management

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Contents
Topic issue: Managing a global workforce.....................................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Review of the literature...................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................................6
Reference List..................................................................................................................................7

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Topic issue: Managing a global workforce
Introduction
Global workforces indicate as the international labour pool of workforces, entailing those
employed through multinational companies and linked by the global system of networking and
immigrant workers. Globalization has taken place in the world by which the corporations are
living in a brave new world with technology (Herring, 2009). There are number of issues arise
in managing a global workforce such as culture and communication, local talent, resistance to
change, execution of diversity in the workplace polices and remuneration expectations. The
main aim of this report is to highlight the points that are related to manage a global workforce.
The idea for the assignment is to “highlight the factors that can impact the global business team”.
There are number of employees within the organization who will deny accepting the fact in
which the social and cultural makeup of their workplace is amending. This report indicates the
two major issues in the modern day human resource management i.e. diversity management and
human resource development. In the last section of the report recommendation has been provided
in order to confront the challenges related to diversity management and human resource
development.
Review of the literature
According to Klitmøller & Lauring (2013), globalization of business facilitates in developing the
productivity of the company along with it helps in reducing the costs of the companies. It
increases innovation and performance of the organizations which facilitates it in expanding the
industry at global level. Global teams are considered as that team which are developed across
number of geographical locations in order to gain various expertise and knowledge. It facilitates
companies in lowering down the costs for the purpose of attaining the number of advantages in
comparison of managing the teams at a local level (Benton & Ferguson, 2017). The global
business can be handled in an effective manner if the mangers are ready to give their time to the
team and present for all to provide guidance in order to reduce the stress of work. There is some
adjustment required when you take someone from one environment into another. Crane &
Matten (2016), stated that managing global workforce is not easy to handle as the managers of

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the organization has to face various difficulties in it. One of the major issues is unpredictable
nature of visa processing which can extend the troubled time for candidates at the time of
moving from one job to another. It is not required that this process take a long time every time as
one can get visa approval in four days. Along with that it has been observed through analysis that
the remuneration expectations are another challenge for managing global workforce because due
to changes in the tax and the structure of gross salary can hamper the expectations of employees.
It has been analyzed that the local talent is another critical challenge which is related to help
locals on local terms and conditions (Lilian, 2014).
The survey has been conducted by Deresky, (2017), on different countries for the purpose of
analysing confronts and issues that are faced by number of organizations. It is the study which
was conducted on the hypothesis that the consumer in the automobile company from US and
technical design partner is from Germany. The production of the project is being done in China
where the manager of the company is in States. According to results, it was apparent that the role
of the local practices in each country is different from others which may impact on the work
performance of the employees. The work philosophy is different from each country which is
followed at the time of accomplishing the project. It is quite tough for the organization to amend
the local mind-set of people. For instance, the whole project is divided into different parts and
goes ahead by following such steps. It shows that the leader of the China follow autocratic
leadership (Deresky, 2017). On the other hand, people of Germany have different understanding
towards taking work as they consider them according to their knowledge. Due to different
culture, they work according to schedule and observe the process of the work. It has been found
that Americans are the combination of Chinese and Germans. They analyse the objectives of the
company firstly before taking action (Marković, Krumov & Nikitović, 2014).
There are various factors such as different viewpoint of the employees and different cultural
backgrounds can impact over the performance of the global team. The workforce should be
effective was adverse workforce that feels comfortable interacting varying factors that provide a
huge pool of ideas and experiences. The depth analysis of two topics is mentioned below:
Managing Diversity

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In the modern day business this has become one of the major issues that company is facing in
their business. Since people that are working under same roof are from the different cultures
from both the genders. As diversity brings new ideas to the business, it needs to be managed in
an appropriate manner. This is the reason that company should give diversity management at
most priority. Almost all the countries have made rules regarding no partial treatment of their
employees (Pitts, 2009). This is essential for maintaining healthy work environment. It is also
crucial for the organizations to understand the challenges. Company must be able to identify the
needs of all the employees so as to ensure that they do not have to face challenges working
together. It is seen that in today’s business environment people from every sections of the society
has its own motivational needs and hence companies are facing challenges in answering to these
needs. Any kind of discrimination can result in long term image loss and can create disturbance
in the internal environment of the company.
A person of all age group works within the organization and it is crucial for the company to take
them all in their strategic matters. Opportunities must be provided to all the people irrespective
of their differences. Challenge is managing diversity at every levels of the organizational
structure. Since in many companies the problems such as glass ceiling exists that reduce the
chances of women workers to achieve higher positions within the organization. In some
companies the problem is of the fact that most of the employees come from the same community
(Shen, Chanda, D'netto & Monga, 2009). This does not allow the people to come in the
organization or achieve a higher position within it. This has often resulted in high employee
turnover from the companies. Respecting each other’s culture is also essential in the modern
times as when employees do not value each other culture, the chances of conflict also increases.
It is also seen that in promotions and appraisals if the diversity is not managed in an appropriate
manner than the chances of negative motivational environment arise within the firm.
Human resource development
In any organisation, their human resource acts as a one of the best resources that help in the
development of other resources as well. Human resource development is also essential for
managing the talent pool within the organisation. Since the requirements of the organisations
keeps on changing hence it has become essential for the firms to improve the skills of their
employees (Syed & Kramar, 2009). It is not one time process rather company needs to do it on

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the long term basis. This particularly gets bigger in the case of technological advancement as
these advancements require the technical skills to be developed within the person. Since people
are from different cultural backgrounds hence company will have to ensure that the training
programs must be developed as per their requirement (Bleijenbergh, Peters & Poutsma, 2010).
The requirement differs from person to person and hence it is essential for the company to make
sure that they have a plan for each individual. In terms of human resource development company
also faces challenges in terms of the fact that the older employees are not so much familiar with
the technology while the younger employees are highly effective in working on the technological
mediums. In this situation, designing training module can be a serious challenge for the
organisation as it must be inclusive of all the requirements of the individuals having different
demands.
Apart from this, in the multinational organisations the numbers of employees that has to be
trained is also large. This will require large amount of resources to be used in the training and
development of the employees (Sabharwal, 2014). The most basic requirement in this regards
will be the fact that company needs to understand each and every employee’s requirement. There
are various methods adopted by the employees so as to understand these requirements but
carrying out these processes effectively that too from time to time is a serious challenge for the
company. Leadership development is also a challenge for the organisation and must be done on
the basis of qualities that a person has. It is also a challenge for the HRM to know the skills of
each and every employee and develop leadership within them. Company also needs to ensure
that the development program must not have any kind of communicational gap.
Conclusion
It has been concluded from above review that it is quite hard to manage different teams of the
companies that are located to different country. Managing global workforce is the specific issue
which has been elaborated under the assignment. The discussion has been made on the
challenges of managing global workforce in the assignment. It has been found that the
communication and culture issues are major in conveying message to others. The huge confront
is to reduce the gap between the teams which are handling their operations in different countries
and having different time zones. The issues related to diversity management and overall human

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resource management has become a major problem for the organisations. It is recommended that
recruitment and selection processes are fair and the trainings must be given as per the
requirement of the each and every individual irrespective of their cultural or gender.
Recommendations
It is recommended that people that company makes a long term plan for the development of their
employees. This must be on the basis of their made strategies and in the making of strategies,
company must include stakeholders from each organisational units. If the company do not have
enough capability to ensure training and development program for every employee, then they
must take the help of third party trainers that are specialised in training employees. It is also
recommended that company conducts surveys and auditing program with the help of
questionnaires and interviews (Bridgstock, Lettice, Özbilgin & Tatli, 2010). Each and every
employee must be involved in designing the training and development programs. Company must
enable the people to have self-development programs. This can be boosted up when the firm
provides opportunities to the people especially in the case of leadership development.
For the organisations that are facing challenges in terms of diversity management it is
recommended that company transform its recruitment and selection procedure. The selection of
the employees should only be on the basis of talent of the individual rest other thing must be
neglected. A strong policy will be required within the organisation so as to make sure those
discriminatory practices do not get practiced in the firm (Bailey, Mankin, Kelliher & Garavan,
2018). For the companies that are operating at multinational levels, they must have trainers from
all the cultural backgrounds. In order to remove glass ceiling organisation must adopt a policy
that helps women to come up in the order. Apart from this company must bring more
transparency in the promotions so that all the employees feel that there is no partial treatment. It
is also suggested that more members from all the groups must be present at different levels of the
organisational structure. This would help in boosting more diverse workforce at the lower levels
of the firm. More team work must be promoted within the organisation so that each and every
one can help others in their development process. The role of leadership becomes very much
essential in this regards as leaders have to take an approach of democratic leadership in the
strategy making process.

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Reference List
Bailey, C., Mankin, D., Kelliher, C., & Garavan, T. (2018). Strategic human resource
management. Oxford University Press.
Benton, D., & Ferguson, S. (2017). A wide-angle view of global nursing workforce and
migration. Nursing Economics, 35(4), 170-177.
Bleijenbergh, I., Peters, P., & Poutsma, E. (2010). Diversity management beyond the business
case. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 29(5), 413-421.
Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Bridgstock, R., Lettice, F., Özbilgin, M. F., & Tatli, A. (2010). Diversity management for
innovation in social enterprises in the UK. Entrepreneurship and Regional
Development, 22(6), 557-574.
Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2016). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and
sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
Deresky, H. (2017). International management: Managing across borders and cultures. Pearson
Education India.
Herring, C. (2009). Does diversity pay?: Race, gender, and the business case for diversity.
American Sociological Review, 74(2), 208-224
Klitmøller, A., & Lauring, J. (2013). When global virtual teams share knowledge: Media
richness, cultural difference and language commonality. Journal of World
Business, 48(3), pp.398-406.
Lilian, S.C., (2014). Virtual teams: Opportunities and challenges for e-leaders. Procedia-Social
and Behavioral Sciences, 110, pp.1251-1261.
Marković, D., Krumov, K. & Nikitović, Z., (2014). Challenges in managing cross-cultural virtual
project teams. International review, (1-2), pp.7-24.

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Pitts, D. (2009). Diversity management, job satisfaction, and performance: Evidence from US
federal agencies. Public Administration Review, 69(2), 328-338.
Sabharwal, M. (2014). Is diversity management sufficient? Organizational inclusion to further
performance. Public Personnel Management, 43(2), 197-217.
Shen, J., Chanda, A., D'netto, B., & Monga, M. (2009). Managing diversity through human
resource management: An international perspective and conceptual framework. The
International Journal of Human Resource Management, 20(2), 235-251.
Syed, J., & Kramar, R. (2009). Socially responsible diversity management. Journal of
Management & Organization, 15(5), 639-651.