BUSM3150: HRM in the Australian Fashion Industry - An Analysis

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of human resource management (HRM) within the Australian fashion industry. It explores the critical role of HRM in addressing industry challenges, such as increasing labor costs, skill requirements, and intense competition. The essay highlights the importance of attracting and retaining talent, leveraging technology for recruitment, and fostering innovation through a diverse workforce. It examines various HRM practices, including talent development programs, technological training, and employee engagement strategies. The essay also addresses issues like employee turnover, performance management, and the impact of labor laws. Furthermore, it discusses the challenges related to cost reduction, skilled labor shortages, and the need for sustainable practices. The essay concludes by emphasizing the significance of HRM in ensuring the long-term success and adaptability of fashion businesses in Australia. The essay draws on various scholarly sources to support its arguments and recommendations.

APPLIED MANAGEMENT

1
Human Resource Management in Australian Fashion Industry
Australian fashion industry has seen a significant growth in last few decades. In this industry,
human resource management plays a very critical role in the success of any firm or brand.
From increasing cost of labourers to enhanced requirement of skills, Australian fashion
industry is facing many kinds of challenges. Since this industry requires a skilled workforce
for producing products that can attract consumers hence the role of human resource
management becomes greater.
Throughout the employee lifecycle, it is the role of the HR to ensure that employees are
developing as per the changing need of the industry. This is because employees add value to
the products of company which becomes very much critical factor in the success of the
business (Gardetti and Torres, 2017). Competition in the industry has gone to such higher
levels that producing differentiated products from their competitors can be difficult. Rarity
and inimitable are difficult to manage in the present day competition and hence it is the
human resource that helps a company to show itself distinct in the industry.
Human resource management’s role in the fashion industry starts from attracting more and
more numbers of talents in the organisation. For this, every company needs to design
attractive job design and will have to take the help of the technology in this process.
Technology helps the HRM in reaching to maximum possible candidates. The use of social
media platforms such as LinkedIn becomes very much significant in this regards. There must
be use of technology based platforms so as to remove the challenges that company might face
in engaging with customers as the use of social media tools are helpful interacting with the
consumers (Nayak and Padhye, 2015). HRM in the fashion industry will help the company to
improve the efficiency of their processes. This can be understood by the fact that if the HRM
is able to hire employees that have innovative minds then there is higher chance that design
and the innovation in the products will be better than their competitors.
In fashion industry, idea plays the biggest role in the creating competitive advantage over the
rivals. For this, it is essential that HRM of the company maintains diversity at the workplace
which can be ensured when the policy towards hiring remains discrimination free.
Interestingly, hiring people from different cultural backgrounds can help the firm in gaining
ideas from those cultures. Since in every culture fashion is different hence adding people
from different culture into their firm will help the firm in adding to their consumer base on

2
the basis of design and variety they will have for the people of different cultures. Since
Australia is a society where people from different parts of the world lives hence it becomes
crucial for the fashion industry to improve their fashion range. Companies like Gangell prefer
to hire employees on the basis of the passion and attitude of the individual. They are giving
lesser importance on the resume and more importance to the candidate’s key attributes
(Bolza, 2016). They also prefer to hire people with video conferencing tools. Large numbers
of students from different parts of the world comes to study in Australia. It has become the
education hub. This makes it easier for the HR managers to hire new talents.
These days fashion industry in Australia is investing a lot of their money on their talent
development programmes. This is usually done by the HR by making innovation in their
methods of giving training and development. HRM in today’s time is concentrated towards
developing their employees in terms of their technological knowledge. HRM wants that all
their employees must be able to perform as per the changing needs of the market. For this, it
is crucial that employee remains technologically efficient which again explains the fact that
technological trainings have to be given in an appropriate manner (Acharya, et al. 2018). The
frontline employees have become the major focus for the company these days. In the time
when doing effective marketing and sales is the only ways in which companies can achieve
success, the role of the frontline employees have become very much important. They help the
company in their customer relationship management.
There is huge change in the Employees related laws within Australia especially the ones that
are related to minimum wage act or the laws related to compensation and benefits. It is
crucial that HRM find ways of managing their employees by designing an incentive and
compensation plans that suits them. The major reason for higher employee turnover the
Australian fashion industry is the fact that the incentive schemes and other kinds of benefits
that are given to their employees are poor than that of the other industry. This is creating a
kind of gap between the expectation of the employees and that of the company (Pucci,
Simoni and Zanni, 2015). It is also having critical impact on the employee relations. At the
same time, it is also a challenge for the organisations in the industry to make sure that they
reduce the cost of their operations. Maintaining the balance in between the two is the serious
challenge for the company.
There is also the complication about proper performance management system. Employees
often get frustrated when they do not find that their performance is being valued or properly

3
recognised. In this regards the major role is played by HRM who has the role to set up an
appropriate performance management system. Till now the role of the employees in setting
up the performance management system is not high hence often the conflicts gets created
between the management and the employees. Since the roles of the unions have not remained
significant in the modern day business operations hence HRM acts as a bridge between the
people and the management. Employee engagement in the policy development plays a bigger
role in properly implementing it in a better manner. If the employees get their chance to put
their view in the decision making process, then they can achieve higher motivational level
which is essential for the development of the fashion industry. It is also crucial for their
commitment that they have towards the organisation (Lasserre, 2017). Since the competition
in the Australian fashion industry has gone to cut throat level hence it is crucial that HRM of
the firms find the best possible ways to retain their consumers.
Fashion industry also has an impact on large numbers of stakeholders and it has become
essential for the HRM to ensure that they train their employees in such a manner that they
improve sustainability of the company. Since human resource plays a major role in managing
other resources appropriately hence HRM needs to ensure that they improve the skills of the
employees so that they ensure maximum utilisation of resources. Since the Human Resource
related issues such as establishment of proper compliance management team is the role of the
HRM. This will ensure that all complain about the employee mistreatment or any other
challenges they are facing is heard. In the last few years Australian fashion industry faced the
issues related to mistreatment of women in the workplace hence it is the role of the HRM to
ensure Zero tolerance policy on the women abuse (Craik, 2015). Since women are not very
much vocal when they have been mistreated by their senior officials hence giving the
protection and platform to the employees that they can express themselves is necessary.
HRM in the fashion industry of Australia is also facing the challenges related to reducing the
overall cost of the employees. Due to higher pay that companies have to give to its
employees, most of the firms are not setting up their production unit in Australia. At the same
time there is increasing shortage of the skilled labourers that are capable to giving new
strength to fashion industry. This is the major reason why companies are also moving
towards automation. This is not good for the future of the industry in the long run. Challenges
are also increasing in terms of the fact that companies have the responsibility to remove the
social evils such as unemployment in the society.

4
Apart from this, Australia is an aging society hence the HRM of the fashion industry will
have to design proper retirement plans for their employees. They will have to make sure that
long term sustainability of their employees gets ensured. It is also to be noted that companies
are not hiring talents from their own and most of the jobs are given to the third party
companies. This is the major reason why the commitment and loyalty towards the company is
reducing. HRM of the company needs to ensure that they motivate their employees with
proper tools and strategies so that their effectiveness increases (Tian, Cordery and Gamble,
2016). This is essential for improving the quality of their products. In conclusion it can be
said that since fashion industry requires fresh minds with new ideas in the business, the role
of the HRM becomes significant as they will have to ensure that appropriate people gets
placed at different levels of the organisational structure so as to remain ready for any
challenges faced by the company.

5
REFERENCES
Acharya, A., Singh, S.K., Pereira, V. and Singh, P., 2018. Big data, knowledge co-creation and
decision making in fashion industry. International Journal of Information Management, 42, pp.90-101.
Bolza, M. 2016. Fashion giant reveals industry’s HR secrets. [Online] Available at:
https://www.hcamag.com/au/specialisation/recruitment/fashion-giant-reveals-industrys-hr-
secrets/146936. [Accessed on 17th May 2019]
Craik, J., 2015. Challenges for Australian fashion. Journal of Fashion Marketing and
Management, 19(1), pp.56-68.
Gardetti, M.A. and Torres, A.L., 2017. Sustainability in fashion and textiles: values, design, production
and consumption. Routledge.
Lasserre, P., 2017. Global strategic management. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Nayak, R. and Padhye, R. eds., 2015. Garment manufacturing technology. Elsevier.
Pucci, T., Simoni, C. and Zanni, L., 2015. Measuring the relationship between marketing assets,
intellectual capital and firm performance. Journal of Management & Governance, 19(3), pp.589-616.
Tian, A.W., Cordery, J. and Gamble, J., 2016. Staying and performing: How human resource
management practices increase job embeddedness and performance. Personnel Review, 45(5),
pp.947-968.
.