Strategic Human Resources

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCES
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November 7, 2016
INTRODUCTION
Prestige is a company that is based in Nigeria, and it has the intention of establishing a new subsidiary in Ireland. It is a food chain that specializes in the production of unique African foods. The company sells different types of foods that are nutritious, tasty and of high quality. The company wants to expand to this region to ensure that it makes its products available for this market. Being in a single country which is Nigeria, the company has seen that Ireland is a country that has a high potential and therefore prestige wants to set a new company to ensure that it serves customers in this region. The aim of this essay is to assist the CEO of this company regarding some areas discussed below.
Part A: Recruiting and Selecting our new employees
Recruiting and selecting new employees is an important part of ensuring that prestige company will succeed when it establishes a new subsidiary in Ireland. The company intends to employ the local people so as to give opportunities to the local people. This groups of people will help the company to enjoy working since they are conversant with the local culture and language that is used in this country. The company offers its food products, and it will be vital employing people who understand the beliefs, values, and culture of people living in this country so as to ensure that the company makes the food that will be accepted in this region.

The company will need new employees since the company must employ locals since they will be important as they speak the local language and this will assist in attracting customers to this business. The recruitment of new employees will depend on the vacancies of this new subsidiary. The larger the company, the more employees it will need. The company needs to identify job vacancies and also to identify a need. The next step would involve advertising the positions so as to attract potential employees to apply for these vacancies. The selection process involves choosing the right candidates for the positions. This process requires conducting job interviews with the job applicants to ensure that the company meets these employees to discuss regarding new positions so as to select the best among these employees. The selection of employees will be based on their qualification. The company will determine the most qualified individual for a position. The individual will, therefore, assist the company to carry out its mission, and they will also have the right qualifications (Arthur, 2012, 18).
The recruitment and selection processes need to adhere to all labor laws to ensure that employees are not discriminate against during this processes. The failure to observe these laws can cause the company to be sued in case there is discrimination when recruiting and selecting employees. The company needs to ensure that it selects people who have the passion for the food industry, and also they need to have the right qualifications to ensure that food handling and other services provide will be done in a professional manner (Hendry, 2012, 14).
The recruitment and selection should be left to the HR management of the new company. It is vital to consider various factors such as language, culture as well as regulations that need to be observed. The selection process needs to show the true nature of culture, work, and life to which the new employees are assigned. The process will begin by writing down the job descriptions which will give the job responsibilities for the roles expected to be performed. There will also be negotiations which will involve public officials who will assist in interpreting local work codes as well as the ethical personal and moral issues in the country of Ireland (Schiemann, 2014, 284).
Part B: Achieving high performance from the new employees
It is very important for the company to achieve high performance from the new employees. High performance would translate to high production, and the quality of the food would be outstanding. This situation would allow the company to increase sales High performance will be achieved when employees perform to their potential. For a company to become a high-performance organization, there is a need to recruit and retain the right employees. Employees need to have a constant curiosity such that they want to discover more things and therefore they want to be held responsible, and therefore they intend to perform better every time. High-performance employees tend to perform better compared to average employees, and therefore they are more effective in what they do (Benko, 2013, 25).
The best thing for prestige company to do is to ensure that employees are always inspired so that they can continue to perform well and achieve extraordinary results. The new employees need to be given challenging responsibilities, interesting work, and challenging work so as to ensure that they will be proud of the achievements that they get.
There is a need to set high-performance standards as well as stretch goals to help these employees achieve high performance. The new employees need to feel that they belong to the big picture of the whole organization for them to perform better. Achieving high performance requires that there be a proper dialogue between the employer and the employees. This situation would help in disclosing the issues that these employees would want that they are addressed. Employees would want an employer who listens to them so that their issues are solved when they are raised. This feature can help in motivating employees, and they can end performing highly as compared to other employees in other organizations.
There is a need to reward employees who perform better than others to help in motivate them even further. Rewarding employees through promotions and other benefits can help in making sure that these employees always perform well for their efforts to be recognized so that they can be appreciated (Oke, 2016, 380).
Targets are very critical in ensuring that employees can gauge themselves and therefore see their performance levels. These targets are aimed at reminding employees what the company expects of them so that they can put more effort in accomplishing the given roles and responsibilities. The CEO of this new subsidiary should try and show employees that he/she cannot achieve alone but with the contribution of each member of the team the company will succeed (Posthuma, 2013, 72).
If the company manages to get high performing employees, then the company needs to ensure that these employees are retained to ensure that the company continues to enjoy the services of these employees. The company needs to realize that high performing employees are difficult to come by and therefore they should be offered a competitive pay and benefits that will be enough for them to continue working for this organization.
PART C: Achieving effective commitment from the new employees
Achieving an effective commitment of the employees especially the new ones is very important since it is one of the ways that boost the productivity of a firm. Developing an effective commitment in the employees is one of the ways that human resources is committed to achieving through the new employees who will be recruited to serve in the new outlet in Ireland. There are two critical approaches that are applied to foster affective commitment. The approaches used are the commitment approach and the control approach. These approaches are applied towards making sure that the level of commitment has been increased (Bader, 2015, 2016).
Commitment strategy that is to be applied to the human resources focuses on shaping the attitudes and the behavior of the employees. The goal is achieved through forging a good psychological link between the goals of the employees and the organizational goals. The committed employees perform their roles according to the goals that have been set by the company. This strategy is based on the reduction of the direct labor cost so as to improve efficiency through the enforcement of compliance rules of the employee. The rewarding of the employees will be based on output criteria that are measurable (Bloemer, 2013, 364).
Clearly defining the responsibilities of the employees is one of the approaches of increasing effective commitment of the employees. The positions that are given to the employees are supposed to have properly defined job description. The job description will give the employee the opportunity to understand the decisions that they are supposed to make as well as the individuals to whom they report.
The other strategy that will be used to increase the effective commitment of the employees is providing competitive and fair salaries. Staying informed on the wages paid to employees in similar positions in other companies and revising them accordingly will ensure that the employees do not start looking for opportunities on other firms. The compensation should be above or at the prevailing market wages (Bratton, 2012, 45).
Properly training the supervisors, managers, and administrators will be another approach that will boost effective commitment of the employees. Proper training of these major leaders in the firm will ensure that there is a good relationship between the leaders and the employees. Employees tend to leave their jobs sometimes because of the poor relationship they have with the leaders. The managers, supervisors and the administrators will have to go through an intensive training to increase their knowledge on how to relate with employees a factor that will boost commitment (Weng, 2012, 256).
Making sure that the employees feel that they are valued is one of the major ways that Prestige Company can use on employees to increase their affective commitment. The firm should always be prepared to utilize its resources and time to recognize the employees publicly for the achievements that they have made. Recognition and the sense of being valued increase retention of the employees as well as making them feel that they do mean a lot to the firm.
Part D: To highlight any potential issues on cross-cultural management issues across both organizations
Issues to do with cross-cultural management will be inevitable in the firm. The culture in Nigeria is different from the one that is applied in Nigeria. One of the areas that then the firm will need to focus on is cross-cultural communication. The management will need to understand the manner in which people from different culture speak, perceive the world around them, and communicate. Ireland, being a west Europe nation possess low-context culture. On the other hand, Nigeria is from Africa and its considered a high-context culture. The leadership will have to get acquainted with the approach that is used in the region. Low-context cultures are known to make decisions based on facts. On the other hand, high-context cultures make decisions based on interpersonal relationships and so there is a high likelihood that conflicts may arise. Therefore, there should be clear-cut guidelines to be applied in decision-making so as to avoid conflicts (Thomas, 2014, 34).
Creation of a cross-cultural team will be a major strategy that will be applied to address the conflicting issues. A cross-cultural team will promote inclusivity and also make it easy for the management to motivate the employees. The management must ensure that they have come up with a framework that will be suitable for the operations in Ireland. Embracing diversity will also ensure that the cross-cultural risk has been eradicated. The success of that global venture will also depend on the degree through which the cross-cultural aspects have been addressed (Berman, 2015, 62).
Individualism in the Ireland culture may be one of the issues that will pose a challenge to the success of new subsidiary. Individualistic culture may be a challenging issue because the persons involved with their welfare and not minding the others. This act many leads to reduced morale in employees thus affecting the functionality of the subsidiary (Moran, 2014, 18).
Part E: Other Challenges
There are many challenges that are accompanied with the opening of a subsidiary in Ireland. For instance, the minimum wage in Ireland is higher than in Nigeria. Therefore, the firm will need to adjust the amount to the prevailing wages. This undertaking may be costly to the parent firm thus posing as a challenge that needs to be addressed.
The other issue that will pose a challenge to the operations of the company in the region is the cultural differences especially in matters relating to food. Prestige will mostly be concentrating on the production and the sale of African foods that are unique (Brewster, 2016, 36). Therefore, since not all the customers will be interested in the Africans meals, the firm will need to make some changes. This challenge will need to be addressed through various ways such as integrating the Irish foods to the African foods. Additionally, the subsidiary may choose to blend the foods and come up with unique products that all the consumers will like (Moran, 2014, 34).
The other issue that may pose a challenge to operate in the region is understanding the unique characteristics of the employees from the region. The HR may find it hard to understand the employees from Ireland since most probably they are used to the ones from Nigeria. The management of the subsidiary will be required to come up with a framework to address this particular challenge with means such as understanding the motivating factors for these employees. The human resource will be required to frequently encourage teamwork and be interacting with them to learn their unique characteristics. This challenge may affect the growth and productivity of the firm if not addressed on time and correct measure is undertaken by the management (Srivastava, 2012, 47).
Conclusion
In conclusion, Prestige company wants to start a new subsidiary company in Ireland. This company has seen a great potential in this region. There are key areas that the CEO of this company needs to address so that the project can be successful. The company needs to recruit employees from the local region since they know the people’s culture, beliefs and the tastes of food that they would desire. The selection process needs to indicate that these factors were considered. The company needs to ensure that the employees achieve high performance by motivating them and setting high standards for them to achieve. This situation will help in achieving effective commitment from employees. There are also challenges that need to be addressed especially the cross-cultural ones to ensure that the organization moves on smoothly.
References
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