Human Resource Management: Challenges and Solutions

This report analyzes the challenges faced by Adecco in recruiting different generational groups and provides recommendations for effective Human Resource Management strategies.

Human resource management
Contents
Introduction------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1
key theories and principles-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------2

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Evaluation..............................................................................................................................................3
Discussion.............................................................................................................................................3
Conclusions & Recommendations.........................................................................................................4
Recommendations.................................................................................................................................5
Reference list.........................................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
The ADDECO Group is a global identity who leads the way in Human Resource (HR)
services. ADECCO Group recruits for over 1000 organizational clients to help them develop
and grow employees suitable to the organization's strategy. The multinational enterprise
currently operates in 60 different countries, employing over 34,000 people and recently
‘turned over' a profit of 23.9 Billion EUR (37.8 Billion AUD) in the 2018 financial year.
(Adecco Group, 2019). They're also "the world's leading provider of temporary staffing,
permanent placement, career transition and talent development" (Adecco Group, 2019).
Adecco Human Resource Management (HRM) plays a significant role in meeting
organizational standards and executing their strategy. HRM must ensure resource efficiency
and service quality, (III, 2008) this includes; hiring, developing, training staff. HRM must
have extensive knowledge of strategic goals and the skills needed to achieve these, e.g.
ADECCO aiming to employ 10 millennial a month for a 12 month period. They must also
identify and apply suitable models and theories (Best Practice Approach, Teamwork
Effectiveness Model) develop and implement policies and practices (diversity, equality,
performance appraisal, development programs, etc. best suited to ADECCO to overcome the
difficulty of recruiting millennial and having a multigenerational workplace. Specific models
and theories, as well as correct policies and practices, will enhance the possibility of doing so,
hence the extraordinary weight on the role of the HRM.
This report analyses those HRM theories and models which include soft Human Resource
Management policies as well as the best practice approach, teamwork effectiveness model.
The evaluation of current Human Resource (HR) policies which include; workplace diversity,
gender equality, professional development and training, healthy and flexible work
environments, performance appraisal and maintaining values, as well as the current HR
practices including; development programs, adaptation to cultural shifts, internal recruiting,
internships, flexibility etc. The overall benefits are broken down into concepts such as;
increase in productivity, perspective, and creativity to ultimately display the complete benefit
of recruiting different generational groups. We also explore recommendations in which we
offer to the ADECCO group to break down the challenges of recruiting different generational
groups.
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Key theories and models
One of the main issues faced by Adecco is the challenge of recruiting different age groups
such as millennial / graduates. These millennial are said to have different values, learning
styles, communication habits and interests than the previous generations (Emerald Group
Publishing Limited, 2011). Talent recruitments are harder for Adecco because the job of
"recruiter consultant' isn't being sold well to these millennial. In order to solve this issue,
Adecco needs to take into account that millennial are job hoppers. These young individuals
prefer going from job to job and not be chained to one particular business. Therefore, in order
to recruit millennial and keep them intact in the business, Adecco should aim at using Soft
HRM policies to treat millennial as their main priority of the business and empower them to
seek delegations and take up responsibilities to work in challenging tasks. According to
research gathered Soft HRM is associated with human relations movement, the utilization of
individual's talents and McGregor's Theory Y perspective on individuals and is equated with
a concept of a "high commitment working system" (Bailey, Gratton, Hope-Hailey, McGovern
and Stiles, 1997).
In addition, Adecco providing programs such as the global CEO of the month will allow
millennial to shadow the Adecco Group's CEO whilst getting paid and they're also provided
with the chance to participate in executive meetings, travel and also shadow global CEO's in
Switzerland. As a result, this will provide them with the opportunity to take up various
responsibilities at Adecco and gain knowledge of various skills. Therefore, when they notice
that they're gaining a range of experiences in working at Adecco, they'll realize that they don't
have to hop from business to business but instead continue to grow in their field of work at
Adecco.
Moreover, the company should focus on developing a culture of empowerment in the
workplace when trying to recruit millennial into the business. They should aim at promoting
these new developments through their paid campaigns with Snap-chat or by partnering with
universities such as RMIT to help young talent be more aware of what Adecco is providing
for millennial in their business. In addition, at moment Adecco has a fear for the graduation
programs because it creates a gap in the knowledge and experience between graduates with
none to 3 years of experience compared to staff with 6 to 10. Therefore, to overcome this
challenge and reduce the gap in knowledge and experience, Adecco should aim at using the
"Best Practice" approach of HRM. This approach can be best described using 3 models that
include the High Commitment Management Model (HCM), High Involvement Work
Systems (HIWs) and High-Performance Work Systems (HPWSs).
According to Stephan Wood High, Commitment Management Model is considered to be a
key element in the increasingly salient discussions of Human Resource Management (Wood,
1995). Thus the HCM model will help Adecco to encourage millennial commitment towards
the business goal through positive incentives and help better recognize the company's culture
rather than monitoring their behavior through the number of hours they spent at their desk.
Furthermore, millennial are said to learn best by collaborating with others, thus the use of the
HIWS's model will help Adecco involve millennial in the decision-making process and
therefore this will help these young employees to feel a part of the business and help learn
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from others and contribute their opinions into Adecco's decision-making process. In addition,
this can be supported by their increased intentions that will help millennial become more
involved in quality internship experiences. Finally, building a High-Performance Work
System creates a competitive benefit to the business. This is because the HPWS model helps
increase the involvement of millennial and invests in their skills and the changes in their
performance incentives. Therefore, Adecco will be able to judge these young individuals on
their level of productivity in the workplace and thus attracting them to join the business. In
addition, using this model will help make employees become happier with their workplace,
thus Adecco will be able to increase their ranked position from 5th to 1st in the world for how
happy their employees/millennial will become by using these strategies.
Furthermore, Adecco should aim at creating a destination workplace that enables
collaborations when trying to recruit millennial. This is because millennial enjoy working in
teams and learning from one another. Therefore, Adecco should focus on using the Work
Team Effectiveness model to help form effective teams amongst these millennial. Using this
model will help Adecco to form teams based on different organizational context, which could
either be Leadership, reward conflict system, culture, strategy or environment. In addition,
this model will also help Adecco to form teams by distinguishing the team type (Formal,
Self-managed and Virtual), team characteristics (size, diversity, and roles) and also the team
compositions (knowledge and skills).
Furthermore, this will provide millennial with the opportunity to share information and thus
Adecco will be able to educate them on team cohesiveness, team norms and conflict
resolutions a team would face. As a result, this model will enable millennial to benefit from
productive outputs, personal satisfaction and the ability to adapt and learn. Introducing this
model will attract millennial and make it easy for Adecco to recruit them into the business, as
conducting this model will help these young workers to feel more challenged in the
workplace and as result would give them an opportunity to grow. As millennial want to be
judged on the results they produce, rather than the number of hours they slogged at the office.
Evaluation
The overall evaluation is evident through Angus.
Discussion
Human Resource Management solving the challenges of recruiting multigenerational groups
will have a significantly positive impact on the company overall, both externally and
internally. Internally, there are a huge plethora of benefits. Millennials bring a fresh
perspective to the workplace which allows ADECCO to get feedback from a different point
of view, helping employees understand ‘the other side' (Myers, 2010). This will boost team
morale as well as boost the overall culture of the workplace as per (Swan, 2012). Feedback
may also mean learning, understanding and maximizing technology for the earlier
generations as millennials have a better grasp on the modern age technology. This allows for
a creative environment for different employee generations to ‘bounce' off each other, creating
a much more effective and productive organization. (Espinoza, 2012) The internal benefits
will then have an overall impact on the external benefits, as the company is successfully
acquiring temporary staffing, career transition, and permanent placement for their clients.
This leads to a steep incline of trust of the ADECCO group from clients and external
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stakeholders. Therefore, increasing the reputation can help in offering internal benefits of
higher wages for employees, higher revenue and profitability.
Conclusions & Recommendations
Most of the management teams have the perception that young workers have different
aspirations, ideas, aspirations, and working styles that are different compared to older
employees. The Adecco Group is one of the companies that recruit employees from different
generations. Adecco has faced several challenges emerging from its team due to generational
gaps (Guillot-Soulez and Soulez, 2014, pp.319). It can be observed that the first challenge
that Adecco experiences relates with the communication style. The communication styles
between young and older people are different. The generation y is fond of communicating via
tweets, instant messages, and text messages while the older Gen X prefer using phone calls
and emails (Festing and Schäfer, 2014, pp.262). On the other hand, Gen Y mostly uses
abbreviations, colloquialisms, and informal language (Schullery, 2013, pp.252). This may
lead to communication breakdown when Adecco recruits and employees from different
generations. Since different generations' value different communication styles, job sparks,
team structures, it has been a challenge for Adecco to understand what motivates the
employees and what they value. Therefore, Adecco has faced the challenge of
communicating its job expectations effectively.
Another challenge that Adecco has faced in recruiting from different generations is negative
stereotypes. Adecco has faced challenges in overcoming the existing stereotypes since
employees need to align their visions and success with ethics in the workplace. This takes
quite some time and has a challenge to the organization that Adecco has sent the recruits
(Cogin, 2012, pp.2268). The stereotypes have caused generational judgments and
misunderstanding among the employees that Adecco has recruited. Some organization that
depends on Adecco for sourcing has gad issues to do with young employees. It is perceived
that young people know less and has less experience in the job market. However, according
to Adecco, age does not matter as long as a person has the required skills and can deliver
quality work.
Cultural expectation is another challenge facing Adecco recruitment firms. The changing
mobile trends and technologies in organizations has made the workplaces places to change
and caused a change in the cultural expectations of people. The older generation has been
affected a lot compared to the young generation. The family backgrounds may influence the
work expected of the young generation and the old generation. The young generation aims at
balancing work and outside life while the old generation may sacrifice their personal time for
a job since they have seen loyal workers losing their jobs. This challenge has affected the
recruitment process at Adecco.
Recommendations
The leaders of Adecco should design should utilize soft human resource management
techniques so that employees are treated as their main priority and so that they may be
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empowered and encourages to take up responsibility. I would recommend Adecco do this by
rewarding staff with incentives such as employees of the month for those completing
challenging tasks. In order to have both generations to work in a style that suits and
acknowledge the efforts of each employee irrespective of their work styles, I recommend
Adecco incorporate the best practice approach. This consists of 3 models being high
commitment management model, high involvement work systems and high-performance
work systems. Adecco should utilize the high commitment management model by allowing A
more fluid managerial structure with laissez-faire management enhancing responsibility and
undependability, working to reduce the communication barrier (Costanza, et al., 2012,
pp.375).
Adecco should educate and help employees to adopt the team effective which enhances team
leadership, team problem solving, team relationship, and organization environment with the
right culture. This assists Adecco to reduce the challenges that come as a result of
generational recruitment, align the organizational objectives with employees and enhance
overall key performance indicators for Adecco allowing in to overcome its problem with
hiring different generational groups.
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Reference list
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Guillot-Soulez, C. and Soulez, S., 2014. On the heterogeneity of Generation Y job
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Myers, K.K. and Sadaghiani, K., 2010. Millennials in the workplace: A communication
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