Blog Post 8

HRM Blog Post 8
Last week in HRM we learned about the global aspects of human resources. We had a guest speaker from Tahitian Noni come and speak to the class to talk about it. His name was Gary Williams and he is the global HR director for the company. He talked a lot about what companies should be paying their employees. He said most companies want to be right at the market. For this reason on a global scale, companies need to research and investigate what the market pay rates are in other companies. The local markets vary greatly and the differences are multiplied on even greater scale when dealing with other countries. Also, things other than pay need to be considered. For example, severance packages, certain benefits, and even certain customs and traditions need to be considered. He said that in some other countries, certain holidays and traditions can really affect how much people work and get paid. Also things like work weeks need to be considered. For example in France, people work a lot less hours during the work week. This needs to be considered when deciding how many people to hire, what to pay them, and what you expect them to accomplish. He stressed the need of paying people the correct market value and providing the usual benefits or else many of the employees will leave the company. Also, you need to mix salary changes and other benefits to meet the market demands of the local places.
One of my friends often travels to Eastern Europe for work. He has told me about some of the cultural differences that affect the business. For example, having a business dinner at a restaurant. Here in the US we typically eat dinner and then leave the restaurant. Over there it becomes pretty much an all night event. When they have a business dinner, people stay at the restaurant for three or four hours and spend a few hundred dollars. This is something that would need to be considered when hiring a manager over there and determining how much money will be spent on the dinner and other things.
We had some good discussions about working conditions in other countries. We talked about American companies that operate plants or have offices in other countries. We discussed if those companies should have working conditions similar to the US plants or offices, or should they follow the sometimes lower standards found in other countries. We decided that ethically companies should follow the stricter standards to set an example and also to improve the image of the company. Consumers today are becoming more and more conscious of how the people who produce their products are treated. If the consumers found out that the workers in other countries were being treated better than other workers in the countries, consumers might be more inclined to purchase the products produced by those companies.