HR Challenges in Multinational Environment

Question: Write about the HR Challenges in Multinational Environment. Answer: In the modern bussines environment, technological improvement, trade liberalization and others have encouraged organization to expand internationally in terms of products and services offering to the society. This means the companies have established borders operations and therefore HR needs to deal with challenges of operating in culturally diverse and geographically diverse environment (Cappelli Keller, 2014). Unlike in the previous decades, international corporations are faced with myriads of opportunity and challenge when dealing with global workforces with divergence, education, and gender and multicultural. Challenges Faced HR Compliance with International Laws According to Vance and Paik (2015), when organizations expand their operations and enter into the global marketplace, there are laws and regulations on how to hire culturally diverse workforce. According to Cappelli and Keller (2014) there are countries where the management must hire from culturally diverse and geographic backgrounds, comply with new labor laws, and take into considerations tax liabilities. For instance, a company setting business in Europe, Africa and Asia must comply with laws requiring it to pay value added tax. In the U.S., hiring non-naturalized might require them to have work visas, and report economic issues to the federal government. To overcome the challenges, HRs planning need to understand legal nuances in all the regions in operations and ensure workers treatment is in legal. Cultural Diversity Cultural Diversity is a salient issue in the context of international business environment for HR. It is a challenge to have understanding of the environment and ensuring cultural diversity (Barak, 2016). As such, working with workers from different geographical locations from varying culture requires many forms of communication and understanding the underlying social practices that HR is not familiar. For instance, when the management hires workers from Britain they might have different ideas on how to use technology, manage operations, and other activities based on their experiences in their region. Being able to accept different cultural environment and work styles is the hallmark of cultural diversity (Cascio Boudreau, 2016). Benefits and Compensation Employee remunerations and compensation form the backbone HR strategy in the organization. In the context of the international environment, these issues are essential, and HR should focus on balancing of employees. According to Cascio and Boudreau (2016), the reason for this is because it helps provide the workers with work initiatives aimed at improving both professional and personal lives. Barak, (2016) explains that these issues are part of international HR strategy because these multinational organizations need to consider benefits such as flexible working timelines, extended holidays, paternity leave, and on-site childcare. Therefore, HR must conduct the initiatives and programs in the context of policy framework and agreement of the region and country and socially accepted practices. Training and Development Related to the idea of remuneration in global HR includes professional and training development initiatives and programs. The issues of training initiatives by HR entails some activities such as meetings and in-house seminars that are designed to provide employees with job-related knowledge and relevant skills essential in doing the business globally (Sparrow, Brewster Chung 2016). For example, non-English speaking countries would have challenges, the management must initiate English lessons, and classes to help them communicate with others and this require time and resource to achieve it. Professional development also includes extra training provided by HR to its workforces such as taking them for networking conferences, seminars, and skill-based programs. These activities are essential for employees to sharpen the skills in the international marketing and business. Evaluations Mechanism International HR management is faced with challenges of designing means to evaluate the skills across the cultural divergent workforce (Cappelli Keller, 2014). For example, HR faces challenges of implementing a customizable method of evaluation based on competency, cultural diversity, and level of skill. Further, there is a need for HR to understand the styles of managing and integrating the multicultural workplace environment to avoid the instances of hostile cultural and social aspects that might lead to cost overruns and slowdown in the launching of products and offering the services (Sparrow, Brewster Chung 2016). Therefore, HR should have a detailed understanding of the international environments, and the socially accepted business conducts. In such a scenario, the solution is establishing protocols that are customizable for all the regions and communicate them to all the workers. Conclusion In conclusion, HR faces many problems when operating in the international environment. These include educating local level managers, taking advantage of the culturally diverse environment, remuneration, compliance with the law, training, and development. The HR need to employ strategies to mitigate possible friction in the organization. Therefore to contain these challenges, there is need to develop practices with the objective of achieving collaboration in the culturally diverse environment and communicating the policies and values in countries with many ethnic groups to bring success. Bibliography Barak, M.E.M., 2016.Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications. Cappelli, P. and Keller, J.R., 2014. Talent management: Conceptual approaches and practical challenges.Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav.,1(1), pp.305-331. Cascio, W.F. and Boudreau, J.W., 2016. The search for global competence: From international HR to talent management.Journal of World Business,51(1), pp.103-114. Espinoza, C. and Ukleja, M., 2016.Managing the Millennials: Discover the core competencies for managing today's workforce. John Wiley Sons. Sparrow, P., Brewster, C. and Chung, C., 2016.Globalizing human resource management. Routledge. Vance, C.M. and Paik, Y., 2015.Managing a global workforce. Routledge.