HRMG200 Essay: Global HRM Strategies for ANZ Bank's Indian Operations

This essay delves into the realm of global human resource management (HRM) through the lens of the Australian banking giant, ANZ, and its strategic move to offshore operations to India. The essay meticulously examines the significance of global HRM in achieving organizational objectives, particularly in a multicultural context. It focuses on three core HR policy areas—recruitment, training and development, and performance management systems—and discusses their implementation within the context of ANZ's offshore venture. The analysis incorporates the impact of cultural aspects, using Hofstede's cultural dimensions to determine the need for policy adaptations. The essay explores the challenges faced by ANZ, including external and internal influences impacting HR practices, such as labor laws, skill sets, and cultural nuances. It emphasizes the need for strategic HR planning and the adoption of a geocentric staffing policy. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of staff training, cultural training, and effective performance management systems, considering India's unique socio-economic factors and cultural values to ensure the successful offshoring of business operations. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of a robust HR foundation to support successful outsourcing and global expansion.

Running Head: HRM
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Human resource management
5/20/2019

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Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Importance of Global HRM...................................................................................................................3
ANZ Overview......................................................................................................................................3
Policy1: External and Internal influences (Recruitment)...................................................................4
Policy 2: Training & Development....................................................................................................5
Policy 3: Performance Management Systems....................................................................................6
Culture and related aspects in the new offshore business......................................................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................7
References.............................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The essay brings about the discussion on the concept of global human resource management,
i.e. HRM and their relevance to the organisations. International HRM studies all human
resource management activities, and their impact on managing human resources within
business at global level. Therefore, the assignment will be based on an Australian company,
i.e. ‘ANZ’ who wants to offshore their business into another country, i.e. India
(Wickramasinghe, 2015). Moreover, then discussion will determine three core areas of HR
policy, and their implementation in context to offshore situation. Thus, three major HR
policies will be used in this essay, i.e. recruitment, training & development and PMS. In the
later part, the discussion will also analyse the aspects of culture while moving overseas,
applied with the concept or Hofstede cultural dimensions, to determine the need of change in
the policy.
Importance of Global HRM
Global HRM or global human resource management includes all the aspects of an
organisation’s HR, payroll, and other processes such as talent management operating at a
global level. Due to increasing level of globalisation, it has been found that global HRM
contributes in attaining the organisational goals and objectives. In general terms, it can be
stated that the focus of the global HRM aspects, is to enhance the management of people in
multi-cultural contexts. Practising HRM in different environment, ethics, and culture often
leads to multiple challenges, and issues affecting their operations (Willcocks et al., 2017).
Some of the typical challenges might include cultural issues, ethical issues, challenges related
to HR policies such as recruitment of employees, training and development, remuneration,
and performance management or appraisal system (Brewster, Chung and Sparrow, 2016) .
Therefore, these issues and HR policies leading to management of human resources in
multiple countries will be demonstrated with the help of an example.
ANZ Overview
The Australia and New Zealand Banking group, also known as ANZ, is an Australian based
multinational finance and banking company. The company is headquartered in Melbourne,
Australia and has been recognised second largest in terms of assets, and third largest in

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context to market capitalisation within country. The company or Australian banking group
has been also identified as the largest bank in New Zealand. The company, ANZ wants to
offshore their business to Indian countries, in order to enhance their effectiveness in banking
services. The rationale behind the offshoring also defined their goal to becoming a leading
employer (ANZ, 2018). From the recent research and published newspapers and articles, it
has been found that ANZ currently employs people in India to gain support in terms of
technology, and shared services, and to gain economies of scale by reduced costs. The
business culture of India is different or strict and often involves change in the management
style and other policies. Therefore, the element of culture while offshoring, change in HR
policies will be discussed in the below section (Howcroft and Richardson, 2017).
Policy1: External and Internal influences (Recruitment)
ANZ’s back office and technology operations in Bangalore form a major part of the global
hubs. Now, the group is planning to offshore their business and higher value jobs and
functions to India. These functions mainly include credit analysis, risk analysis, and various
functions of HR such as payroll, and compensation. It has been declared in the annual
general meetings of the company, that India will be recognised as the core hub for most of
their Asian banking operations (Gerbl et al., 2015). Therefore, to offshore the banking
services, and other mentioned core activities, the company ANZ will have to analyse the
policy of recruitment. The managers will have to recruit new employees in India who would
handle their operations. Management of human resources is essential for the banks due to the
reason that banking is a service industry. To ensure survival and growth, ANZ will have to
focus on the HR practices of India for offshoring. A number of challenges have been faced
by the banks, while offshoring their business overseas. These challenges relate to HR
practices, acquiring the right kind of people, and retaining them in the organisation
(Anderson, 2015).
The recruitment policy as major HR practice in India differs from that of Australia as they
focus on the efficient skills and abilities of person. Moreover, they have their own labour
laws, and strict code of conduct for carrying out their operations (Wickramasinghe, 2015).
Regarding leaves, India observes three national holidays for banks, and an employee cannot
work for more than 9 hours in a day. However, the primary banking regulator in India is
RBI, and the Banking regulation act 1949 governs all the banking firms. Therefore, ANZ

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established within Australia to offshore their business, will face certain external and internal
challenges.
The HR in the new offshore environment will have to analyse the requirement of labor as per
their work or job roles. Moreover, the HR may require making changes in their hiring
policies, in the new country like India. It is the country with a large number of people, to be
employed but with different skill set. Diversity in workplace is one component,that HR
manager will have to consider in implementing the HR policies in offshore business.
Some of the external influences or factors that will influence the HR practices of ANZ in
India include Absence of specialists or experts, high risk factor, socio-economic factors,
labour market condition, competition, and others. On the other hand, some internal
influences may affect the offshore of ANZ into India such as Organisational culture, package,
and outsourcing due to lack of trained and skilled man power. In this context, several cultural
issues will also be faced by the banking company, ANZ to carry out their operations at global
level. Geocentric policy of staffing must be adopted by the company (Brewster, Chung and
Sparrow, 2016)
The concept of Culture is considered an important element in business organisations to
conduct operations at global levels. It is the collective mental programming of the mind of an
individual that helps in distinguishing one person from another. Hofstede cultural
dimensions are referred to the framework that defines the aspect of cross-cultural
communication and the effect of the cultural values on the behaviour of individuals. There
are six dimensions as provided by the framework of hofstede, or values, which include –
individualism, collectivism, uncertainty-avoidance, power-distance, and masculinity-
feminity. Here, India score for the element of masculinity-feminity is 56, and is considered
as masculine society. Therefore, it is essential for HR to hire male employees, for their new
offshore business in India.
Policy 2: Training & Development
Now, moving on to another major HR practice in any organisation is training, and
development. Talent identification and development is essential for offshoring operations.
Training and development refers to the
Staff training plays a vital role in context to the offshoring businesses, as it leads to several
benefits and helps business achieve efficiency in operations. It has been found that recruiting

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staff in offshore countries, but retaining those does not only involve basic salary. ANZ will
have to make investment into well-planned learning and development of the staff, workshops,
conferences, and in-house training sessions. Imparting training to the staff in off-shore
countries is essential to establish better or strong connection with the offshore staff. This will
help the bankers and managers m at ANZ to develop a perfect model for collaboration and
assistance among offices (Bruccoleri et al., 2018).
Besides this, an issue of data theft and fraud are commonly found in the offshore industries.
The role of HR is crucial to provide training and development to the employees in the new
offshore environment, as Indian employees will not be aware of the work processes and
technologies used in the Australian banks. Therefore, HR need to ensure, staff training and it
needs to be conducted by the security standards, and existing procedures of the country, i.e.
India in this case. This would not make them break rules or leak any kind of information, and
the role of HR is vital in analysing and enhancing existing skills to facilitate their work. Thus,
it has been found that ANZ offshore their operations into India and other nations, by
providing training to their staff. However, ANZ supports the culture of each country, and let
individuals work according to their standards. In India, there is a high level of uncertainty in
the economic or market conditions, therefore an appropriate plan or HR practices are
required. Thus, it stated another major element or reason behind the training and development
of the staff (IT news, 2012).
The role of cultural training is important here, as it will involve an HR to understand the
culture of India, and accordingly, they will enhance effectiveness, and formalisation before
formal transfer.
Policy 3: Performance Management Systems
From the above mentioned definition of global human resource management in organisations,
it can be stated that offshoring businesses require focusing on the evaluation of performance.
Global human resource managers need to assess, evaluate, and give rewards to the employees
based on their performance.
Performance management systems (PMS) refers to the set of activities that ensure that goals
are achieved in an effective and efficient manner. The system helps to focus on the
performance of the employees,or the processes carried out in an organisation (Noe et al.,
2017). To examine the current performance management systems, is that they focus on the

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top-down approach, and emphasize past performance more than future. The role of HR in the
evaluation of performance of the employees, and rewarding will require a change in
approach, as ANZ’s PMS (Performance Management System) has been facing challenges, in
terms of the system of ranking and rating of employees, change in the workforce and
workplace. Thus, for offshoring business in India, HR will have to incorporate effective
system of ranking, or rewarding people based on their performance. This will ensure positive
attitude, leading to high performance in the organisation, increasing overall efficiency. ANZ
bankers need to analyse the completion of the processes of risk management while offshoring
their businesses to other countries. As, the performance of the employees staff is essential for
efficiency of operations (Hirakawa, 2017).
To explain the idea of the banking company, ANZ who wants to offshore their business
processes outside, i.e. in India (Gerbl, McIvor and Humphreys, 2016). Therefore, according
to the cultural dimensions as stated by Hofstede, India have high-levels of uncertainty
avoidance, which includes the people from society embrace the aspect of something unknown
or unexpected. Therefore, these people follow a strict code of behaviour, guidelines, and law
which bound people within groups. Thus, HR managers at ANZ must emphasize this aspect
and develop positive aspects of culture to successfully offshore business operations in India
(Chuang and Hu, 2015).
Conclusion
To conclude the above discussion it has been analysed that the concept of offshoring business
is widespread, in modern business organisations. The above discussion has been related to
the Australian banking company ANZ, working towards offshoring their business into other
country, as India. Several aspects of the HR policies, and practices such as recruitment,
training and development of staff and PMS has been elaborated. ANZ has achieved greater
efficiency in utilising their resources to offshore their business and processes. Hence,
business managers of ANZ must consider the fact that a strong base of HR policies must be
established to outsource work or processes successfully.

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References
Anderson, V. (2015) International HRD and offshore outsourcing: A conceptual review and
research agenda. Human Resource Development Review, 14(3), pp.259-278.
ANZ. (2018) Employee Engagement. [online] Available from:
https://www.anz.com.au/about-us/sustainability/workplace-participation-diversity/employee-
engagement/ [Accessed 20/05/19].
Brewster, C., Chung, C. and Sparrow, P. (2016) Globalizing human resource management.
United Kingdom: Routledge.
Bruccoleri, M., Perrone, G., Mazzola, E. and Handfield, R. (2018) The magnitude of a
product recall: offshore outsourcing vs. captive offshoring effects. International Journal of
Production Research, pp.1-17.
Chuang, C.C. and Hu, F.L. (2015) Technology strategy-innovating for growth of ANZ
Bank. International Review of Management and Business Research, 4(3), p.682.
Gerbl, M., McIvor, R. and Humphreys, P. (2016) Making the business process outsourcing
decision: why distance matters. International Journal of Operations & Production
Management, 36(9), pp.1037-1064.
Gerbl, M., McIvor, R., Loane, S. and Humphreys, P. (2015) A multi-theory approach to
understanding the business process outsourcing decision. Journal of World Business, 50(3),
pp.505-518.
Hirakawa, H. (2017) Global ICT-based services offshoring and Asia. In Innovative ICT
Industrial Architecture in East Asia (pp. 1-31). Tokyo: Springer.
Howcroft, D. and Richardson, H. (2017) A gendered analysis of IT-enabled service work in
the global economy. In Gender in Transnational Knowledge Work (pp. 11-30). Cham:
Springer.
IT news (2012) ANZ’s IT Offshoring Challenge. [online]. Available from:
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/anzs-it-offshoring-challenge-322896 [Accessed 20/05/19].

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Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M. (2017) Human resource
management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Wickramasinghe, V. (2015) Effects of human resource development practices on service
quality of services offshore outsourcing firms. International Journal of Quality & Reliability
Management, 32(7), pp.703-717.
Willcocks, L.P., Lacity, M.C. and Sauer, C. (2017) Outsourcing and offshoring business
services. Berlin: Springer.