Analyzing The International Human Resource Development Of The Singaporean Telecommunications Company SingTel

Organizational Design and Structure

The primary challenge of International Human Resources Management is to convince the existing employees that they social system and the legal principles would be different in the other country. Basically it would be a change to a complete new environment, therefore it would be a challenge for the international HR manager to recognize the changes and adopt them within the organization accordingly (Fee, 2014). The major difference between the domestic and international human resource management is that the in the international scenario, the IHRM manager needs to operate in an unfamiliar environment. Therefore the recruitment and training process and communicating with these expatriate managers while they are in the subsidiary country become more significant than the domestic operations. The IHRM focuses more on selecting, recruiting and retaining the managers for the global operations of the organizations rather than highlighting job of managing the global employees. This essay will trigger the issues with the expatriate managers of SingTel who come to India from Singapore.

Business culture varies from country to country because of the influence of the national culture. The national culture of a country is responsible for shaping several factors that originates from the country and have a huge impact on the current social changes in the business scenario (Weber, Festing & Dowling, 2013). This report will study the comparison of the cultural dimensions of Singapore and India, so that the expatriate managers do not have many problems to deal with the host country. In order to do that the Hofstede’s national cultural dimensions will be used, where it examines the five dimensions for the comparison across cultures, power distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and femininity, and the short term versus long term orientations (Mazanec et al., 2015).

In terms of power distance, India scores quite high, 77 that indicate a higher level of inequality in power and wealth in the society, whereas Singapore ranks 13 in the power distance dimension. This situation is not actually undermined upon the population of the country; rather the population has accepted it as a cultural norm. The expatriate managers should remember that in this kind of atmosphere, the managers need to depend on the obedience of the team members. The employees also expect their managers to direct them in a clear manner in terms of their work functions and job roles. India is actually a strong instance of a culture with higher power dimensions as the caste system of the population has divided it into five different groups where each group has a higher social status than the one underneath it. However, Singapore also has a high power difference as the basic upbringings of them indicate to respect the higher authority.

The next dimension, individualism versus collectivism, recognizes India to be with definite collectivistic traits with the score 48 in this dimension (Mazanec et al., 2015). The score indicates that in this country there are higher preferences to belong to the larger social structure therefore one is expected to act according to the greater benefit of the society. Several families have a trend of prescribing the future of and individual. This can be done by religious institutions, families or government. Therefore it can be seen that the actions of a particular individual is greatly influenced by several ideas such as family opinions, work groups or several other social networks that one has affiliation toward. Therefore the relationship between the employer and employee will be based on few expectations like a profound loyalty for the company from the employee and at the same time the employee expects the company to take care of the health and security of their respective families. Often the decisions regarding promotions are based on the personal relationships as this kind of societies are driven by relationships (Mazanec et al., 2015). However Singapore also has a collectivist culture, as most of the Asian countries have these kinds of culture. Therefore it is expected that the managers will not face much problem regarding this issue.

Power Distance

Next dimension being masculinity and femininity where India is mostly considered to be a masculine one, but Singapore is mostly a feminine country. India scores 56 in this dimension and is quite masculine regarding the visual displaying of power and success even if they score hardly above midrange. The focus is entirely on the achievements and success which is validated by the material gains. Career is the center of the life of an individual and the other symptoms of achievements in the workplace are considered to be significant (Mazanec et al., 2015). However, in Singapore, people do not consider work to be everything in their lives rather they are seen to take long vacations and lead a relaxed life. Therefore the expatriate managers will have to deal with the work culture that values ambition and competitiveness.

 The fourth dimension is the uncertainty avoidance where the host country India scores 40 but Singapore scores a lot low (8). This indicates that India prefers not to avoid uncertainty. In this culture the imperfection is accepted because not everything goes perfect and planned always. Conventionally it is a tolerant country. Therefore in this culture people have a tendency to value the risk taking factors, they even seek changes in place of avoiding it. By possessing these traits India is a favorable destination for establishing business relationships for the outsiders.

The last dimension is the long term versus short term orientations where India has scored 61 making it value the long term orientations (Mazanec et al., 2015). In India the karma or destiny concepts dominates most of the philosophical and religious thoughts. However, Singapore also has a high score in this dimension as it also considers being a culture with long term orientation. Therefore the expatriate managers do not have to deal with a lot different culture; rather they will have some amount of similarities in the business culture in both the home and the host countries.

The detailed comparison between the work culture of Singapore and India is described in Appendix 3.

The international human resource management requires a careful staffing strategy that can be done by forecasting the future of the company in another host country and the demand and supply of necessary human resources. Therefore the staffing strategy of SingTel needs to develop their employees so that they can deliver an effective performance in the international projects as well. The recruitment and selection strategy determines the organizational outcomes as desired. The individual motivations help the continuous growth and the other cross functional actions such as ream development (Sparrow, Brewster & Chung, 2016). Therefore wrong selections would cause a big failure in the overseas projects of the companies. The recruitment process defines finding and obtaining the sufficient numbers of quality candidates so that the company is able to select the suitable people of fill up the job after gathering the information and evaluating them. In this scenario SingTel would mostly choose the managers from their existing experienced employees who can be hired particularly for this program. Before selection of the global managers, the company should entirely understand the expatriate failure phenomenon and the versatile nature of the global assignments. It should be noted that the selection procedure should be a two way procedure as several times possible candidates tend to reject the assignment offer for their personal reasons such as situational factors or family considerations. Therefore it becomes a challenge for the respective HR managers to select staffs for the global assignments. There are several factors that are involved in the staffing strategy however the HR managers need to decide on three selection tools while selecting the expatriate managers, so that the managers have those three qualities in them (Punnett, 2015). The first one would be the technical ability which is essential for performing the necessary tasks. Therefore it would be a vital criterion. SingTel is a telecommunication company therefore it would pay serious dependence on the pertinent technical skills during the selection process of the expatriates. Strengthening the importance on the technical skills of the employees would help the company to review the potential of the candidate and the managerial and technical competence can be determined on the basis of their past performances. Since in this case the expatriate managers would be recruited internally, the company can evaluate the past and present records. Another tool that can be determined as one of the most significant one in the staffing strategy is the cross cultural suitability of the employees. As discussed before, the cultural environment plays as an important factor in the business environment of India, the host country. Therefore the expatriate managers need cross cultural suitability so that they can be able to function in the new environment. The desirable attributes from the individual would be diplomacy, cultural empathy, language ability, adaptability, maturity, emotional stability and a positive attitude towards the work (Wilton, 2016). However, in reality the intercultural competence is difficult to be defined. Therefore the HR department should assess the personality of the individual expatriate, ability to deal with the people from another cultural background etc. Nonetheless another criterion would act as one of the most significant one in selecting the expatriates is the family requirements of the individual. It should be noted that there is a huge amount of contribution of the family in the success of an individual expatriate. Therefore, the company should put importance on the interaction between the spouse or the partner and other family members and the expatriate. However, it is not always possible for the spouse to work in the host country and the well being and the education of the children may have some complexity to adjust in a new environment. Generally majority of the spouses are female, then also they face serious issues and face several issues of adjustments. In fact, in the past several expatriate families request the company to return them to the home country after a certain time. As not only the adjustment problem, the education of children, aged parents are also vital concerns of an individual shifting to a different country. Therefore the company should ensure that the selected candidates do not have such issues and can sort their priorities while moving to a different country.

The training and development of the selected expatriates generally starts long before they arrive in the host country. This process need to be well structured, therefore it would contain five vital stages that would enhance a successful global program for the company. The stages would be

• This stage will include a detailed assessment of the background of the expatriate and the family members. Not only that the HR department would also evaluate the specific concerns, personal traits of the employee, which will later pay an important role to shape a successful expatriated manager (Kramar, 2014).
• In this stage the company would increase the knowledge of the assignee about the culture, value, society of the host country (Tung, 2016). After a successful completion of this training program would reduce the chance of cultural misunderstandings.
• The third stage will focus on the in-person trainings of the assignees so that they can share their views and issues can be solved.
• Before the expatriate managers move their base, the company should ensure that they have a chance to communicate with the host organization and the polycentric managers either via teleconference or telephone (Kramar, 2014). In this project alignment meeting, there will be a critical discussion of the cultural differences which may affect the business culture, the techniques of avoiding miscommunications etc.
• The last stage will involve a systematic capture of the relevant information that will enable the expatriates to avoid repetitive occurrences of common issues and they can have the best practice in the host country (Tung, 2016).

Conclusion 

In conclusion, it can be said that the organization should ensure that the expatriates will get sufficient training before moving their base to the host country, because a successful international program mostly depends on the efficiency of its managers. This report has explored the necessary stages that could be taken care of before sending the expatriates, right from selecting them to giving them a successful training and development program. In that way the company will not have issues with this international program.

References

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