HRM Strategic Roles: SingTel Group
The SingTel Group entry in the global arena, requires it human resource management in the global to develop culture awareness and have the ability to respond to the dynamic foreign environments effectively. This demands company human resource department to handle recruiting, hiring, training and development of employees effectively (Holtbrügge & Mohr, 2011). This paper strives to discuss how SingTel human resource professionals can contribute to the success of the company that is anticipating to open more foreign branches in Asia, Australia and Africa. SingTel which stands for Singapore Telecommunication Company is the company incorporated in Singapore. The company has several subsidiaries in Asia, Australia, and Africa and it planning to have more subsidiaries in the same continents. Some of the critical roles to be played by the company resource include employee selection, reward system, training and development, career development, performance management and diversity management.
Employee Selection
The selection of employees at subsidiary level depends on several issues such legislation and skills required for the available tasks (Mahmood, 2015, p. 335). For SingTel Group its selection should include employees both locally and globally. Local selection will enable the company to utilize different skills possessed by the locals. On the other hand, global selection enhances the integration of different portfolio of skills for the betterment of the company. The combined selection will ensure that the company can execute different types of assignment as illustrated below;
Technical Assignments: High technical and complicated assignments should be handled by the technocrats from the home country (Singapore). Therefore, for the technical jobs employees should be selected from Singapore.
Functional Assignments: This types of assignments calls for high intellectualism of understanding skills (Dudovskiy, 2012). This set of employees’ selection for this category of activities will require the integration of the home and host country skills. For the host country, SingTel Company human resource team should select high talented employees who seem to possess a high degree of intellectualism.
Developmental Assignments: Same as functional assignments, developmental tasks will need the interaction of both host country and Singaporeans employees. The locals understand the trends in the industry better than the foreigners. Therefore, selecting a large percentage of the locals for this type of activities will be of high benefit for the company.
Strategic Assignments: For this type of tasks intercultural skills and understanding are important. Therefore, SingTel Company should select both Singaporeans and home country employees.
Reward System
Appreciation: SingTel Company human resource department can help the company to appreciate its employees by advising them to apply appreciation strategies used by the multinational corporations such as Google and Qualcomm. For example, Google appreciates their employees by calling 15-30 employees per day who were spotted doing something right. This is supplemented with 100,000 hours of free text messages. On the other hand, Qualcomm offers their employees with internal tech conferences, provide them wellness centers, low-cost health insurance cover, supporting workplace, cultural diversity, special luncheons and safety bonuses (Bradt, 2016). SingTel Company should focus on adapting the appreciation techniques used by Google and Qualcomm companies. In addition, the company can appreciate its best performing employees by offering them with international conferences as well facilitating their visit to the company headquarters to meet with the Company CEO.
Access to the top management. The human resource professionals of SingTel can request senior leadership to create methods of ensuring that employees can have open access to the top management of the company. For example, John Richels, the CEO of Devon Energy motivates its employees by ensuring that they have access to the senior leadership of the company (Bradt, 2016). The CEO of SingTel Group can enable this strategy arranging random visits of the senior management to subsidiaries. The visit should be aimed at facilitating the interaction between the employees and the senior leadership.
Reward: Apart from performance rewards, the SingTel can reward its employees at the subsidiary level by ensuring that all permanent employees are stockholders. The Starbucks and EOG do this, and all their employees are happy (Bradt, 2016). This type of reward system will ensure that company employees at the subsidiary level are committed to the common cause of the company (Black & Gregersen, 2009).
Training and Development
At subsidiary level human resource of SingTel Group will ensure the training and development of the employees through the following techniques;
Planned Individual Learning: It is the responsibility of the human resource team to advise the SingTel Group to plan for the learning of individual employees at the subsidiary level who seems very talented. This will improve the performance as well the contribution of the employee to the company. Likewise, the management will have to provide learning for the employees from the mother country who will be posted to work at subsidiaries. The learning in this scenario will include, learning new language, culture, and foreign country legislations.
Education: Employees at the subsidiary level from the host country should be undertaken through educational programs to equip them with necessary skills needed to execute the job. This will include delivering on job coaching, establishing in-house instructions, obtaining software vendors to offer in-house training and equipping a particular personnel with industry specific skills.
Career Development: SingTel Company should have an open discussion with employees about their long-term career goals. This will call for the alignment of the company operations with the target goals of the employees. Additionally, the company can facilitate the tuition of some employees and promote them to the senior level once they are through.
Training: SingTel Company should undertake all employees at the subsidiary through training. This will help to equip the employees with the crucial skills that are required to execute company operations and activities effectively and efficiently. Performance Management
It will not be easy for the SingTel Group to manage its employees at the subsidiary level. However, the company human resource professionals should advise the company on the importance of effective employee performance management. This will help in meeting crucial issues such as customer preferences, strategic requirements and organizational needs (Mellahi, et al., 2016, p. 28). Some of the approaches that company adopt to ensure effective employees performance management are as given below;
Communication: The human resource team should advise SingTel on the importance of effective communication between the employees and management. This approach facilitates the communication of performance expectation to employees as well provide an avenue for them to offer feedback to the management (Shih, et al., 2015, p. 160). Alternatively, reliable communication will be an opportunity for the SingTel managers at the subsidiary level to understand the motivation of the employees to perform the job. Through communication, managers will trace the highly motivated employees, employees who understand their roles and the ones contributing to the success of the company (Mejlumyan, 2016, p. 26). The company will then use this approach to retain this type of employees.
Goal Setting: SingTel Group should set job description, project, behavioral and stretch goal at which employees’ performance will be evaluated against. The setting of these goals should be in a manner that they will be achieved within a given time frame. This technique will enable employees to align their efforts with the target goals of SingTel Company. For this approach to be effective SingTel Company should set SMART and participative goals (Society For Human Resource Management, 2015).
Diversity Management
Workplace diversity can hamper the operations of SingTel Group at the subsidiary level. The company human resource with the help of the senior management will ensure the observance of the roles at the subsidiary level to manage workplace diversity effectively.
Emphasizing on Leadership Accountability: All leaders at the subsidiary level will be held accountable for minimizing, preventing and controlling negative issues such as groupthink, inequity, discrimination and stereotyping. On the same, managers of the subsidiary level will be required to empower positive aspects such as inclusive culture, health conflict, and innovative thinking. Additionally, managers will work to attain diversity in team works and arrange tasks strategically to realize the inherent value of diversity. In the event where diversity management fails then a manager at the subsidiary level will be accountable (Scroggins & Benson, 2009, p. 410).
Employment Opportunities: For SingTel Company ensure that diversity among the different stakeholders is managed effectively, the human resource professionals should ensure equity in employment. All employees should not be foreigners. In fact, only senior management should go to the foreigners or home country personnel. Other employment positions should be given to the host country locals.
Training: SingTel Company human resource department should offer training for the foreign managers going to work at the subsidiary level. This will equip them with the diversity skills on how to manage different cultures, skills and ethnic races effectively (Williams, 2014).
Conclusion
Big global companies listed in the Fortune 500 have effective international human resource management techniques. For example, companies such as American Express, Google, and Qualcomm apply these approaches that their employees that make them feel appreciated. The majority of Fortune 500 companies in international arena employ effective methods of employee selection, reward system, employee training and development and diversity management. Likewise, SingTel can apply the approaches adopted by these companies as well as the ones discussed in this paper to reward its employees in its planned subsidiaries in Asia, Australia, and Africa.