1HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (3) Briefly outline the major contemporary changes in work and employment patterns in Australia. Select TWO key changes to analyse in-depth and examine the implications for HR managers. Answer-Change is inevitable in every aspects of life, be it in personal or in business. Like many other countries in the world, the business operations in Australia are also changing with the change in time and trends. Over the past century, Australia has significant witnesses a dramatic change in the composition of the labour markets (Randolph and Tice 2017). The behaviour of the employees are also changing from immobility within the workplaces to much more flexible and diversified work. The two major contemporary changes in the work and employment patterns in Australia are the change in the labour force and that of skills shortage. Change in the labour force- Majority of the world labour force is living in the developing nations now. Within the developing nation, the populous Pacific region and Asia dominates, as per more than 57% of all the employment. The two big nations, the China and India have about 26.0% and 14.8% of the total world’s employment. South Sahara and Africa has about 9.3%. As per Chand and Tung (2014), India and China comprise of majority of the world’s workforce. This is increasing the level of unemployment in Australia. With the same, more numbers of women are entering into the Australian workforce. This is further making it essential for the organisational managers to ensure that the processes and policies in the workplace are taking into consideration the health and benefits of the women too. Moreover, unlike a decade ago, when about 218 millions of children were trapped in child labour practices, the modern Australia has witnessed a significant change in terms of child labour. Child work is declining and the participation of women in the Australian workplaces are increasing.
2HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Skills shortage- it is to note that Australia is undergoing some serious issue in terms of employment because of the shortage of skills, particularly within engineering, technology, science and the field of mathematics. These shortage of skills are further extending into the professional occupations areas that comprise of the veterinarians, the health professions, the construction engineers, the surveyors, the architects, the science professionals and the marketing professionals. According to the data of 2019, about half of the whole workforce is facing this challenge (Du and Tang 2014). The Australian business managers need to address this mismatch between the skills that the young people are gaining as well as the skills that the businesses need, starting with ensuring that are schools are making the students aware of and are promoting the breadth of the options that are available are the time of and after schooling and giving more exposures to the meaningful working experience. (5)Despiteitsabovepareconomicperformance,Australialagsbehindother comparable OECD countries with respect to worker productivity. What is the role of HRinimprovingproductivityacrossAustralianworkplaces?Howcanthisbe achieved? Answer- According to Dixon-Woods et al. (2014), a culture of productivity comes from certain sets of behaviours that are exhibited by each and every employee working in the workplace, but, HR and the leadership team have a crucial role to play in this process by enhancing productivity. One of the primary reasons for which Australia is lagging behind the other competitive OECD nations could be non-effective Human Resource Management (HRM) and HR professionals. HR professionals have a significant role to play in the overall success of a business or an organisation. The Australian workplaces are highly busy and digitalised workplaces and like any other employee, the employees in these workplaces are highly motivated through performance based pay programs. The digitization of the businesses is intensifying all around the world, while changing the rules that are driving the Australian
3HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT companies for reflecting on how they can optimise their talents for gaining a competitive edge. They are transforming how employees work, how the businesses are created and at the same time, how the management and technology tools are used in place. Majority of the companies in Australia adopt this policy and practice in order to ensure high workplace productivity. Furthermore, it is the role of the HR professionals to ensure that each and every digital platform are usable, fun and are modern. In these highly digitalised workplace, it is the role of HR to give the employees fast and reliable access to the resources, connections and information that are required for excelling in their respective roles. The main focus should be in delivering the result oriented interaction that empower and engage the employees. HR professionals are required to assess all the sources of connection, information and resources that the company is providing its employees to engage and communicate well. They should ensure that they are fast, safe, reliable and authentic so as to create a holistic digital workplaces and enable the employees to deliver and perform better (Purvis 2015). With the same, it is also to mention that HR professionals in these workplaces need to apply greater control and governance over the designing and implementation of the performance based pay programs all over the Australian businesses. They need to educate the managers as well as the entire workforce on what actually the term “productivity” means for the business and the way they can aid to the improvement. Furthermore, HR professionals also need to review the effectiveness and efficiency of the existing performance based pay programmes in the workplace on an annual basis while testing the link back to the key business as well as the outcomes of the productivity. They also need to leverage the online portals and technology for communicating and monitoring the total rewards program for increasing the motivational impact of the performance based pay on the employees. Lastly, the HR professionals of the Australian workplaces need to focus more on improving the manager capability all around
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4HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT the implementation process and the communication of the performance based pay programs that are further focused on the target and the goal setting practices. (7) Assess how technology and automation will affect the future of work. Examine the role of HR in managing the effects of this in TWO industry sectors in Australia. Answer-In the contemporary world, automation, digital platforms and innovations are widely changing the fundamental nature of the present workforce. Gaining a deep understanding of these shifts could help the policy makers, the leaders of the business as well as the workers to move forward. According to Greenblatt and Shaheen (2015), “the world of work is in a state of flux”. This is further causing significant anxiety and that too, with some good reasons. It is to note that there is an increasing polarisation of the opportunities in the labour market in between the high and the low skill jobs, the underemployment and unemployment,particularlyamongtheyouths,stagnatingincomeforlargepartsof households as well as the income inequality in Australia. With the same, the issue of migration and its impacts on the jobs has now become a significant and important political issue in several advanced nations including Australia. The growth and development of automation by the technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics has brought in higher level of productivity, safety, convenience and increased efficiencies. Several activities that the workers of contemporary workplaces carry out today have the possibility of being automated. Impact of technology and automation on the future of transport industry of Australia- It is to note that the main focus on technology and automation development is on the technological changes that the transport industry is currently undertaking for effectively interconnecting the world with the help of international trade (Bagloee et al. 2016). Both automation and technologies are influencing the transport industry through both the creation
5HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT of jobs and displacement and might lead to difficulty in the transitions of several employed workers in the transportation industry. The trends in the maritime, rail, road and air transport are continuously growing and developing and it can be said that the future of transport industry of Australia would be evolutionary instead of revolutionary and despite of the high degrees of automation in place, the qualified human resources with right sets of skills would still be required in the coming future. Impact of technology and automation on the future of retail industry of Australia- The Australian retail industry is under high pressure and the margins are stressed from all the sides including the higher costs of the manage e-commerce supply chains, the highest investments for matching the new competition, the increasing demands from the suppliers for passing on the cost of raw-materials and the rising costs of labours. As the retailers are struggling for adapting and for surviving in the current market, they are highly using automation for addressing the margin strain as well as the more demanding customer expectations. Automation is likely to reshape the retail business models of Australia along with the broader value chain while creating the companies with fewer layers and some well trained and trusted workforce that are likely to be empowered by the real time data and the analytics (Taylor 2016). The winners in the Australian retail sector would be the ones who would understands all these implications and can act quickly for addressing them. (8)Candataanalyticsreplacepeople-drivenhumanresourcemanagementfor workplace planning and measuring employee performance? Critically analyse this question using relevant examples. Answer-It is to note that the data analytic are the data driven approach for managing the people at work. Using it in the workplace for measuring the employee performance is much more objective and scientific as compared to the human decision making and at the
6HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT same time, it is claimed to be achieving better results. However, there are also certain signs that the conventional wisdom and knowledge around the use of the big data is starting to be challenged by many and very recently, in a study conducted by Raghupathi and Raghupathi (2014), it is claimed that people driven human resource management is better than data analytics. The emergence of data analytics tolls for the workplace management and planning has been highly impactful in the HR profession where the companies are making use of the aggregated big data information regarding the employees for making decision regarding firing, engagement, hiring, future planning and on-boarding. The Australian industries that are making use of this in place are the service industry, the designing companies and the hospitals.TwooftheexamplesincludeGoogleandAmazon.Googlehasrecently implemented the use of data analytics for making daily decisions on the staff management. Amazon too is doing so for helping the HRM assess the needs of the company and allocating the resources for training the employees most possibly for filling up those needs and for evaluating the results. Their main goal is to close the gap of skills so that they can compete well with their highly agile global competitors. Using it in the workplace for measuring the employee performance is much more objective and scientific as compared to the human decision making and at the same time, it is claimed to be achieving better results. However, it is to note that there are also some growing evidences of decline in the degrees of trust in the statistics. The sentiment in the populist thinking claims that “there is something arrogant and elitist about reducing social and economic issues to numerical aggregates and averages”. Statistics alone are the poor reflection of the lived experience. There are some companies that consider data as highly objective, scientific and faster as compared to the decision making of human beings. On the other hand, there are some companies that worry about the inaccuracy of the same (Chen and Zhang 2014). It is to mention that less active an individual become in the process of decision making, the less
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7HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT skilled he or she could become as manager. Analytics can never capture what is involved in the management of people in the workplace or show someone the way of mastering the skill. It could also led to a breakage in the process of effective people management. For example, when an algorithm is used as a core for any action or activity, the human beings are extraneous for the process of decision making. (10) How does HR affect business decision-making? And how can HR be accountable for its own ethical choices? Answer-It is to note that the HR professionals and the business leaders differ in terms of their mind-set. The business leaders are more focused on increasing the development and growth of the company while increasing the profits. On the other hand, the HR professionals are trained for considering the views of risk, culture of the company and compliance. It is not uncommon for the executive for feeling like the human resource department slows down their process of decision making when all they want to do is taking a swift action (Ceschi, Dorofeeva and Sartori 2014). In the process of recruitment and staffing, HR has a key role to play and their impacts are high in these two domains. They work with the managers for hiring and firing the employees and while managing the benefits and compensations related issues and matters. They play an active role in deciding who to hire and who to fire as well as how to provide the compensation and benefits to the employees all around the workplace. In this process, one of their main roles is offering advice to the management on what sort of staffs are requirent for hiring to make the business run in effective manner. While the management needs to have a good idea of what the workplace employees are required for running the company, the HR professionals could give the professional a deep insight on precisely what positions the firm would require. It is also to mention that the final decision about the organisational structure are taken by the upper management of the company. After a firm has identified its organisational structure, it starts
8HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT recruiting for those positions and all the decisions related to it are left on the part of the Human Resource Management. The function of the Human Resource department of a company deals with many ethical challenges as it is the department that deals with the people who are employed by a company. It includes many limitations that are likely to damage the reputation of the companyorcancausefinancialsustainability.Gainingagoodunderstandingofthe importance of ethics in the HR department is very important for the business owners. Breaches of ethics in the HR could result in companies to get involved in a world of legal trouble in both the criminal as well as the civil arenas (Stone and Deadrick 2015). Breaches of ethics in the Human Resource department are more or less likely to be reported by the victims to the Better Business Bureau, the Equal Employment opportunity Commission and the other many regulatory agencies than the ones who are committed in the other areas like the product development or accounting. Also, HR is responsible for safeguarding the company reputation by means of ensuring that no cases of sexual harassment, discrimination issues, and any kind of unfair employment policies are taking place in the company.
9HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT References: Bagloee,S.A.,Tavana,M.,Asadi,M.andOliver,T.,2016.Autonomousvehicles: challenges, opportunities, and future implications for transportation policies.Journal of modern transportation,24(4), pp.284-303. Ceschi, A., Dorofeeva, K. and Sartori, R., 2014. Studying teamwork and team climate by using a business simulation: how communication and innovation can improve group learning and decision-making performance.European Journal of Training and Development,38(3), pp.211-230. Chand, M. and Tung, R.L., 2014. The aging of the world's population and its effects on global business.Academy of Management Perspectives,28(4), pp.409-429. Chen, C.P. and Zhang, C.Y., 2014. Data-intensive applications, challenges, techniques and technologies: A survey on Big Data.Information sciences,275, pp.314-347. Dixon-Woods, M., Baker, R., Charles, K., Dawson, J., Jerzembek, G., Martin, G., McCarthy, I., McKee, L., Minion, J., Ozieranski, P. and Willars, J., 2014. Culture and behaviour in the English National Health Service: overview of lessons from a large multimethod study.BMJ Qual Saf,23(2), pp.106-115.
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10HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Du, Y. and Yang, C., 2014. Demographic transition and labour market changes: implications for economic development in China.Journal of Economic Surveys,28(4), pp.617-635. Greenblatt, J.B. and Shaheen, S., 2015. Automated vehicles, on-demand mobility, and environmental impacts.Current sustainable/renewable energy reports,2(3), pp.74-81. Purvis,J.,2015.Humanresourcesmarketingandrecruiting:Essentialsofdigital recruiting.Handbook of Human Resources Management, pp.1-19. Raghupathi, W. and Raghupathi, V., 2014. Big data analytics in healthcare: promise and potential.Health information science and systems,2(1), p.3. Randolph, B. and Tice, A., 2017. Relocating disadvantage in five Australian cities: Socio- spatial polarisation under neo-liberalism.Urban policy and research,35(2), pp.103-121. Taylor, E., 2016. Mobile payment technologies in retail: a review of potential benefits and risks.International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management,44(2), pp.159-177.