(1)
When Club Med goes through the hiring process, they are apparently looking at potential employees who are motivated and genuinely interested in the positions they offer. For example, the “employee testimonies” have yielded a significant emphasis on employee loyalty both to the field they work in and to Club Med as a whole. They often look for people that show this motivation to join the field and potentially go up the ladder (long-term employees). They state that their ideals are “Multicultural, pioneer, kindness, freedom, responsibility” which implies that the majority of those that go past the interview process are ethical and driven to lead and manage (regardless of their field). Likewise, there is heavy emphasis on taking responsibility for all of one’s actions.
When hiring internationally, there is a huge diversity of problems that arise. Often, hiring people from separate countries already creates a boundary based on culture and ethics. For example, it would be very difficult to have an Islamic woman working as a hostess at a bar. This is because the ethical and cultural values of such a place do not permit near-lewdness. Indian men and women would not be able to work with beef based products, while some middle easterners won’t be able to work with pork products. This means that when hiring internationally, there can’t be standard for cooks or they would claim that they are being discriminated against. It is a very difficult thing to overcome.
When hiring internationally, there is also the barrier of language. The language barrier makes it nearly impossible to centralize management and forces the company to rely on decentralized, individual units. This makes the company more democratic, but it makes running efficiently with the diverse workforce close to impossible.
Lastly, it is good to remember that screening of employees beyond a country’s borders falls outside lawful jurisdiction of that nation. For example, if a manager was hired in Egypt for a Mediterranean cruise and he ended up stealing a few millions and disappearing, there would be no way of getting reparations. This of course makes loyalty very difficult to control and paranoia can cause the company to divide and fail.
The difficulties, as outline in the United States department of labor [dol.gov] Include obtaining a working visa (if the employee needs to physically be here) and filing a contract that falls under both countries’ respective labor laws. This can all be done by consulting the International Center of Labor which has branch managers in every allied nation’s foreign embassy. Here, one can apply for work visas and consult local lawyers , or people familiar with the target country’s law (for a fee of course).
(2)
When utilizing human resources, it is probably common sense that the front line workers of retail are, for the majority, still human. Shockingly, after just a few minutes of looking at the website for the international federation of robotics [http://www.ifr.org] , it was sort of shocking to see the complete lack of manpower in the corporate fields. For example, about 40% of all the tasks once done by management in the United States is now done by automated machines with limited input from humans. The best example of this is payroll. Payroll, once a function of HR and middle management, is now fully automated. Especially in environments where people still utilize and “hourly” approach with a punch clock etc , we would think that humans would be responsible for such delicate work. However, in today’s world, everything from “improper punches” to overtime are calculated by software and cheques are dispersed automatically (some are even sorted in envelopes by robots and sent in batches to be shipped by mail). In other circumstances, like direct deposit, this functionality is obsolete and no humans are required whatsoever. This, however irrelevant it may seem, means that human resource management is practically obsolete in the manufacturing/ corporate field.
Then we can go further by looking at manufacturing. The manufacturing process is now nearly fully done by machines. This comes as no surprise to anyone that has worked in a factory, especially an automobile factory. Such delicately done work (using lasers for precision) simply cannot be done by human hands (that’s how we get defects). So, in fact, in the manufacturing business, all one needs is an engineer to input the proper codes or dimensions, and a car can pop up from the end of a factory with little to no defects. There is very limited human input, even when putting the actual vehicle together. It is the same process for almost anything that is mass-produced.
When we look at the actual retail statistics, according to ibtimes.com, the percent of robots that are currently employed by retailers is a puny 4% in this country (which is second to Japan’s 7%). These robots are usually things like vending machines (and they are becoming more popular). Self-checkout at places like stop and shop are also robotic, however for the time being, these are still in the “testing” stage of their existence and are not mass-implemented elsewhere. In the future retail might be all automated (check out kiva systems and think if all you had to do was use a touchscreen and the groceries would come to you). For the time being however, the management of people working the front lines, especially in smaller businesses, human resource management is still heavily emphasized.
Human resource management is still accomplished through written statements, incentives and bonuses for good work and above all, ethical company culture. It is a great thing when people work willingly and happily for a company. Disorder and unethical behavior is less likely to occur, absenteeism is harder to come about and, generally, profits go up while attrition goes down.
(3)
If I were to today begin a restaurant utilizing college students as servers, to serve a college, human resource management would be at the pinnacle of my priorities or my restaurant would fail.
To begin with, I am going to assume that people are all the same and they would feel uncomfortable being seen as a “wage slave” by their peers. This would have to be obliterated entirely because I have seen people working in food services when they see “people that they know”. As a direct, crippling blow against this perceived concept that would lead to slacking, a sloppy job, or clumsiness, I would have all my servers wear executioner masks. This would be a neat, unheard of and innovational way to not only create company culture through belongingness (uniform) , but , my servers will be more comfortable serving the population (and hopefully less likely to chit chat). I also feel that when people don’t show their faces, this would breed courage to act friendlier (regardless of what the customers think).
Another concern that would have to be covered would be the largest concern of all : shrinkage. Regardless of how much we would want to trust these college workers, it is unfortunately “cool” to steal from the hand that feeds you these days. So, in light of that unfortunate reality, there will be incentives (bonsuses) for people working ethically. At the end of each shift, if the registers come out exactly as they should, all earned tips will be doubled. If, however, there is shortage, disciplinary action up to and including termination will be implemented. This link [http://www.statisticbrain.com/employee-theft-statistics/] states that about 50 billion dollars are stolen by people each year in this country. Most of the people I will be hiring will be undergraduates, so this technical “profit sharing” bonus will hopefully keep these rats from taking all my money.
The last thing that needs to be addressed is company culture which will make people less likely to do acts of evil (deface property, harass customers, eat customer food etc). This will be done by forcing anybody caught doing such acts to scrub toilets every shift for the remainder of their working shift. I know it seems a bit aversive, but it will make these young people think twice before committing such atrocities.
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