University HRM Essay: Addressing Workplace Challenges in Australia

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of human resource management (HRM) challenges within Australian workplaces. It identifies three primary issues: unlawful discrimination, ineffective work health and safety practices, and the need for improved employee retention strategies. The essay delves into the specifics of workplace discrimination, referencing the Australian Human Rights Commission Act and providing examples of gender and sexuality-based discrimination. It also examines the issue of work health and safety, highlighting the importance of workplace health models and employee training to mitigate risks. Furthermore, the essay discusses the importance of employee retention, referencing the ERC’s Retention Model and suggesting strategies such as providing varied assignments, sufficient resources, opportunities for learning, and positive feedback. The essay offers practical implementation strategies to overcome these challenges, including educating employees on policies, providing training, conducting surveys, and improving recruitment processes. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and reiterates the importance of addressing these HRM issues to foster a more equitable, safe, and productive work environment. The essay uses various sources, including academic journals and news articles, to support its arguments.

Running head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
HRM201 Human Resource Management
Assessment 2 - Individual Academic essay
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Reilly and Williams (2016) depicted that the main function of the human department is
not only to maintain the recruitment and upholding salary structure of the employees but the
concerned department is also liable for analyzing the benefits attained from developing
partnership with a third party or a consultancy services for the organization. (Flamholtz 2012)
furthermore depicted that HR are well aware of the necessary skills and expertise needed for
accomplishing the organizational goals and utilize this knowledge for recruiting personnel and
developing partnership. HR of an organization should also have to concern about safety and risk
management, Training and Development, assuring maintenance of dignity and respect of every
employee, assessing employee attrition rate and evaluating whether or not all the stakeholders
properly follow the code of conduct. In spite of these responsibilities modern Australian
organization suffers from many human resource management challenges like- unlawful
discrimination, adhering to work health and safety complaints and incorporating effective
strategies to retain the employees.
This business report thus highlights human resource management challenges in
Australian workplace (1) unlawful discrimination, (2) unproductive maintenance of the work
health and safety and (3) ineffective strategies to retain the employees. Moreover, the solution to
overcome the challenges along with the effective implementation strategies will also be
highlighted in this report. The report is then followed by a conclusion based on the entire
discussion made.

2HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Discussion
According to the Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (AHRC Act 1986),
nullifying or impairing equality including opportunity among the employees in a workplace is
known as workplace discrimination (Humanrights.gov.au 2018). The main areas where the
unlawful discrimination occurs are promotions, transfers, training opportunities and redundancy
or dismissal (Humanrights.gov.au 2018). Australian workplace suffers from the discrimination
based on the sexuality of the staffs and one such incident is found that in schools the recruitment
of LGBTI people is opposed on the basis of religion (The Guardian 2018). Moreover, in some
workplaces, men are recruited more in the place of managerial position and women also have to
face pay gap compared to their male counterpart. It has been also found that on an average 200
female judges were paid $20,000 less than their 546 male counterparts (The Sydney Morning
Herald 2018). Additionally, the taxable income of a female anaesthetist is $265,923; while that
of the men that is $402,384 which makes the difference of $136,461 (The Sydney Morning
Herald 2018). According to the social dominance theory the major components of the
discrimination are sex and gender discrimination, status discrimination, socialization
discrimination and temperament (Dipboye and Colella 2013). Thus, based on the analysis made
through this model, it can be stated that the HR should educate all the employee of the
organization regarding the policies and punishments that can be implemented once anyone
breaches the policies. The HR should also invite other people with different background to work
collaboratively.
Furthermore, the HR is also liable for maintaining the work health and safety incidents of
the staff and listen to the complaints related in this aspect. Vickers (2016) argued that Work
health and safety legislation are typically enforced by regulators and provides no individually

3HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
enforceable cause of action. Coles in Australia suffers from employee bullying, which is also a
part of the HR management issue. Most workers fewer than 25 years age old are harassed in
their job and 36.9% of the employees recruited informally in retails and sales; while the number
is 23% for hospitality and tourism (Canberra Times 2018). In this case, the workplace health
model should be followed by the Australian organization (Refer to Appendix, Figure 1). This
model highlight important elements for maintaining effective health and safety procedure for the
employee that are assessment of the individual, organizational procedures and community
benefits (Cdc.gov 2018). Moreover, planning and management, implementation and evaluation
are the next steps that is required for the maintaining a healthy working environment. Thus the
Human Resource Department of the organization needs to develop workplace health program
like Health education classes, company policies that promotes healthy behaviors, provision of
accessing local fitness facilities and offering employee health insurance coverage (Goetzel et al.
2014).
Moreover, organizational sector like retail industry and telecommunication industry the
rate of employee attrition is high as people have to work in target basis and the workplace
environment is also not suitable for lower end employees. Telstra on the other hand decides for
job cuts so that they can attain more profit (The Sydney Morning Herald 2018). The major issue
in this case obtain in this case is that the employee feel insecure and it is the liability of the HR to
inform the employee prior regarding the management decisions. According to the ERC’s
(Employee Retention Connection) Retention Model, employees are assigned with variety of
different assignments, offer sufficient resources and support for accomplishing the work,
opportunity to learn, offering positive and constructive feedback and autonomy to make
decisions (Choudhary 2016).

4HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Image 1: The Employee Retention Connection Approach (ERC) model
(Source: Choudhary 2016)
Thus, the HR is liable to fulfill all these needs so that employee can be retained in the
organization. (Torp et al. 2012) on the other hand suggested that HR should assess the strength
and weakness of each employee and then identify whether or not they need any assistance for
accomplishing their desired job roles and responsibilities. HR should also conduct training and
coaching sessions for the employees so that their competency can be enhanced. These strategies
are suggested based on the factors affecting employee’s retention highlighted by (Kehoe and
Wright 2013) that are skill recognition, learning and working climate, job flexibility, training,
financial and non-financial benefits, career development and superior-subordinate relationship.
The possible implementation strategies for overcoming the problem of the workplace
discrimination are focusing on the strength of the employees working in the organization. The
HR can also take sessions on benefits of adopting the workplace diversity and how to utilize their
knowledge base not only to enhance their competency but also to develop a strong interpersonal
relationship with them. Another implementation strategy is giving provision to the employee to
raise complaint if they face any kind of discrimination in the workplace. The management should
also take immediate action once such complaint has been raised so that all the employees can
learn that their organization is strictly following their code of conduct.

5HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
The possible implementation strategies for overcoming the work health and safety
complaints is to provide the effective training session to the employee in their initial time after
getting recruited. The overview of the training can be given in the induction session and then the
employee should have to provide on-job training. The HR is liable for making the employee
understand about the health and safety policies and the steps that can be taken by the employee
in occurrence of some risks in the workplace. The policies of the employee compensation need to
be transparent and HR should make the employee learn about any changes made in the policies
the time it has been planned to be implemented. The HR of the Australian organization should
also develop a strategy to take regular survey from employees regarding the issue that they are
facing in the organization. This anonymous way of asking for the feedback concerning the
company’s strategies can help HR to identify the improvement areas.
The last problem that is identified in this essay is incorporating effective strategies to
retain the employees. This problem can be overcome by hiring right people for the organization.
This approach can be obtained through tightening the recruitment procedure and incorporating
situational assessments. This assessment helps the HR to identify the areas of strength and
weakness of the candidate which will help them to identify whether or not the candidate is
suitable for the available job roles in the company. HR should also suggest the management to
de-centralize the organizational culture where the employee can freely share their concern to the
management people. The leaders on appreciating the effort of the employees results in greater
motivation among the employees. In addition to that, the Human Resource department of the
organization is also responsible for conducting the employee appraisal sessions. These appraisals
should be based on the target the employee has archived compared to the destined roles for
which they have been recruited. Moreover, the employee should also be asked about their short-

6HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
term and long-term goals along with the suggestion that the employee want to give for the
betterment of the employees. This will help the employee to gain the sense that the company care
for the enhancement for the employee which furthermore leads to the development of trust for
the organization.
Conclusion
The three HR issues that are identified in this assessment is unlawful discrimination,
adhering to work health and safety complaints and incorporating effective strategies to retain the
employees. It has been also found from the report that the main areas for overcoming the
unlawful discrimination occurs are promotions, transfers, training opportunities and redundancy
or dismissal. In such case the HR should educate all the employee of the organization regarding
the policies and punishments that can be implemented once anyone breaches the policies. It is
also found that the organizational sector like retail industry and telecommunication industry
suffers from high rate of employee attrition. In this case, ERC’s Retention Model has been
proposed to be used that helped in identify the recommended strategies of employees are
assigned with variety of different assignments, offer them with sufficient resources and support
for accomplishing the work, opportunity to learn, offering positive and constructive feedback and
autonomy to make decisions.

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Reference List
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Effects of positive events and positive reflection on work stress and health. Academy of
Management Journal, 56(6), pp.1601-1627.
Canberra Times., 2018. Nearly half of young people injured at work: Unions ACT report.
[online] Available at: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/nearly-half-of-young-
people-injured-at-work-unions-act-report-20180422-p4zb0y.html [Accessed 18 May 2018].
Cdc.gov., 2018. Workplace Health Model | Workplace Health Promotion | CDC. [online]
Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/model/index.html [Accessed 18
May 2018].
Choudhary, S., 2016. A study on retention management: how to keep your top
talent. International Journal of Advanced Research in Management and Social Sciences, 5(3),
pp.17-31.
Dipboye, R.L. and Colella, A. eds., 2013. Discrimination at work: The psychological and
organizational bases. Psychology Press. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Inc. Publishers.
Mahwah, New Jersey.
Flamholtz, E.G., 2012. Human resource accounting: Advances in concepts, methods and
applications. Springer Science & Business Media.
Goetzel, R.Z., Henke, R.M., Tabrizi, M., Pelletier, K.R., Loeppke, R., Ballard, D.W.,
Grossmeier, J., Anderson, D.R., Yach, D., Kelly, R.K. and Serxner, S., 2014. Do workplace
health promotion (wellness) programs work? (Goetzel, R. (2015). Comment on “Do Workplace
Health Promotion (Wellness) Programs Work?” (Volume 56, Issue 9). Journal of Occupational
and Environmental Medicine, pp.927-934.

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Humanrights.gov.au., 2018. Other areas of workplace discrimination | Australian Human Rights
Commission. [online] Available at: https://www.humanrights.gov.au/employers/good-practice-
good-business-factsheets/other-areas-workplace-discrimination [Accessed 18 May 2018].
Kehoe, R.R. and Wright, P.M., 2013. The impact of high-performance human resource practices
on employees’ attitudes and behaviors. (Volume 39, Issue 2). Journal of management, pp.366-
391.
Reilly, P. and Williams, T., 2016. Global HR: Challenges facing the function. Routledge.
The Guardian., 2018. Most Australians oppose religious schools' right to fire staff based on
sexuality. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/14/most-
australians-oppose-religious-schools-right-to-fire-staff-based-on-sexuality [Accessed 18 May
2018].
The Sydney Morning Herald., 2018. Telstra flags job losses as profit, dividend falls. [online]
Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/telstra-flags-job-losses-as-profit-
dividend-falls-20180215-p4z0dt.html [Accessed 18 May 2018].
The Sydney Morning Herald., 2018. The best paid jobs for men and women, but mind the gap.
[online] Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/the-best-paid-jobs-for-
men-and-women-but-mind-the-gap-20180427-p4zc23.html [Accessed 18 May 2018].
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practical measure for workplace health promotion? (Volume 28, Issue 3).. Health Promotion
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Vickers, L., 2016. Religious freedom, religious discrimination and the workplace. Bloomsbury
Publishing.

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Appendix
Figure 1: Workplace Health Model
(Source: Cdc.gov 2018)