Human Resources Issues in Mining

gentle Resource Strategies 660 Monday, Trimester 1 2011, 18th April Assignment 3 HR contingency Analysis at Workplace Word Count2500 I. Introduction The spherical Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 tincted lots of industries including the miners. Employment in excavation is particularly vulner adequate to a cycle of rapid expansion and contraction, as changing economic circumstances cause demand and prices for certain commodities to stand out or fall. Eventually the GFC resulted in lots of task cutbacks in the preference industry (Australian Government, 2009).The key human elections (HR) challenges facing the West Australian mine industry for the next few years argon considered to be transposition retirees the remembering of key talent growing the talent pool cultivation and development and keeping staff motivated (Dickie and Dwyer, 2010). On the other march on the WA Chamber of Minerals & Energy (CME, 2006) identified a number of HR strategic issues for the WA resource se ctor like skills dearth, employee attraction and retention, conciliative workplace practices, indigenous employment opportunities and community-regional services.The follow I work for indomitable to go by means of curtailment in position to reduce the in operation(p) costs during GFC. This article aims to delineate several(prenominal) HR issues as a result of global downsizing go in the ecesis. The main tension go away be sudden redundancies, decrease in indigence, labour famine, tumefyness and condom issues and enlisting of new employees. Since several HR issues are relate to each other, with the purpose of this article, the main focus will be in the main on downsizing constitution and its short and long term set up in the organisation. II. The Downsizing Policy and Its Effectsorganisational downsizing is a prevalent schema designed to remedy organizational performance while selectively transport magnitude costs. It refers to an organizational decision to redu ce the manpower in order to improve organizational performance (Kozlowski et al. , 1993). Therefore stemming from the desire to become much in effect(p) and effective, firms in both the private and the public sectors has adopted downsizing strategies (Cameron, 1987). Furthermore, the increasely dynamic and competitive workplace and the trend toward globalization wee prompted umteen firms to downsize (Appelbaum et. l, 1999). The GFC make believed considerable uncertainty, in the mining industry. In addition to the recruitment and retention issues, organisations were faced with trying to keep staff motivated at a time when more job losses were predicted and budgets became getting tighter (Dickie and Dwyer,2010). My current employer obdurate to go through global downsizing as a repartee to GFC. Fifty percent of the employees were make superfluous and number of the projects was tremendously fall due to the limited budget. The HR department played an active graphic symbol in th at period to take away the downsizing influence.One of the strengths during this process was keeping inviolable communicating mingled with HR and the speed level managers. The process was spot little with collaborative work between HR and management. The professional assist get from consultants involved improvement the employees self awareness levels, increase their motivation and government agency as well as creating effective CVs. However during downsizing process several HR related issues started to build up in the guild. The employees who remained in the comp any lost their trust and motivation.Besides due to loss of practised labour the productivity decreased and the incident numbers dramatically change magnitude. The turn-over rates were amply and the ag assemblage dynamics were damaged. Eventually the sudden decision given by upper managerial level due to economical downturn resulted serious HR issues in the company. The downsizing process and its long and shor t term influences for this causal agent study is summarised in Figure 1 below. international Downsizing Global Financial Crisis HR Issues Redundancies Survival syndrome in stay employees Increased turn-over records Skills dearth Increase number of injuries in the companyManagement of HR Issues Aggressive recruitment policy (overseas transfers, secondments , graduates) Employee Engagement Survey Re-evaluation of salary packages and staff benefits Job Analysis and giving Assessment Improved Graduate Development Program Maintaining trainings and developments Improvement in Health and safe System Figure 1. The HR Issues of company. II. A. Survival Syndrome Since company mainly focused on those who lost their jobs the employees who remained in the company engendered more after redundancies. Employee resentment and concern, loss of group spirit was high among the remaining employees.The labour shortage created several issues for employees like job burnouts, working longish hours, increase pressure, and role overload and decrease morale. Unfortunately the bad influence of downsizing on the psychology of remaining employees was not well managed by HR department of the company. Brockner (1992) defines the survivor syndrome as impact of downsizing on the remaining employees. There is considerable evidence that remaining employees feel shocked, embittered towards management, fearful round their future and guilty about still having a job whilst colleagues meet been laid off.Such employees are more likely to have lower morale and increased stress levels, be less productive, and less loyal with increased quit levels. According to study 70 percent of senior managers who remained in downsized firms reported that morale, trust, and productivity declined after downsizing those who lose their jobs whitethorn calculate the most affected by downsizing, it is more likely that the employees who remain suffer the more negative effects (Appelbaum et. al, 1999). Eventually the HR was not able to create good strategy to keep the remaining employees motivation high during downsizing process.Shook and Roth (2010) explained that failure to identify employee issues in the pre-downsizing due diligence build creates a chaotic workplace asynchronous transfer mode and increases employee fears and stress levels. These change levelts affect career uncertainty, fear, and stress in employees. Employees have semipermanent memories of their old homely conclusion and they fight to keep it. Employee apology includes a variety of unresisting as well as aggressive techniques. Culture change may take years to complete and can be difficult to manage, even when HR is fully engaged and supported.These transitions are more difficult to manage when HR is not involved. In fact, culture change may neer be fully realized without HR support because of the human resistance (Szabla, 2007). Furthermore due to limited professionals the remaining staff started to have bother to maintain the work and life balance. The consequences of imbalance between work and person-to-person or family life were visible at the workplace. The emotional exhaustion, cynicism and burnouts were common. Unfortunately The HR department was not fully aware of the situation until the employee turnovers increased and likewise strong suit decreased.With shortages of professionals and an active economy the pressures on live employees looks set to rise and therefore this is an area which of necessity to be benchmarked and revisited with a view to adopting shell practice throughout the sector (Wilkinson, 2008). II. B. Skills Shortage On the other script downsizing affects employees emotional commitment to the organization both directly and indirectly. However, its indirect impact is much stronger (Lee and Corbett, 2005). Apart form the short term sudden effects the long term effects of the downsizing started in the organisation.Working with less embrace resulted in company t o have inadequate supply of talent, increasing number of health and guard duty incidents at workplace and delays in occupation due to limited talented labour force. specially after the fresh mining sweep through, the company decided to increase the number of production activities in spite of limited practiced labour. It is a big challenge directly to dislodge the specialised professionals in the mining industry. Apparently the HR constituent and management team chosen to concentrate on short-term needs rather than the organisations long term eeds during GFC. Sheaffer et. al (2009) call for that whereas downsizing affects the short-term performance of larger and established companies positively, it generally affects long-term performance inversely. A common mistake for HR managers is to concentrate on short-term replacement needs rather than on the organisations long-range HR bringments. Such a non-strategic approach causes management to be caught unawareness by changes in employee availability and gauge of labour, creates a series of short-term dilemmas.Stone also adds that of the obligation numbers of qualified and skilled employees are not available, an organisation may not be able to examine its strategic business objectives (Stone, 2010). The mining companies are now beginning to allow in that the current supply shortage is already impacting the productivity, efficiency and profitability of their operations. The shortage of skilled workers in combination with high turn-over rates are among the leave elements impacting industry growth, either by stopping or delaying projects that would otherwise proceed, or by significantly adding to the cost of new projects (Schultz and Grimm, 2008).During boom times, mining companies find it difficult to attract staff, even though huge salaries are on offer. This highlights a challenge quite unique to mining namely, attracting highly skilled bulk to the remote location of most mine sites (Ednie, 2004). Eventually the skills shortage is still one of the biggest issues in the organisation. Since most of the experienced (high-cost) employees were made bare(a) company faces challenges in finding the experienced professionals. The HR department started the recruitment process however the mining commercialize is still flimsy of skilled professionals in specific roles.This is one of the biggest challenges for the HR department. II. C. Health and Safety Issues ugly occupational health and safety (OHS) performance equates with poor human resource management (HRM), and poor ethical, legal and societal responsibility (Stone, 2010). Since the mining boom hit the market recently the mining organisations increased their production activities in order to compete among the resource market. However the number of the staff stayed aforesaid(prenominal) while the number of projects was tremendously increasing. This lead to enhance health and safety related incidents at work place.Specifically in this subject during the downsizing process most experienced staff with extensive safety culture made redundant. This created a big gap in management of health and safety issues in the company. When employees leave, they take valuable process knowledge, customer and supplier relationships and a host of organizational know-how with them (Schultz and Grimm, 2008). The inexperienced new employees (i. e graduates, overseas staff) have difficulty in implementing the high quality safety standards due to their sparse knowledge about the safety system of the organisation.Therefore increased emphasis on HR management is particularly chief(prenominal) to the development of safety culture in the organisation. On the other hand once the crisis in the stratum was more visible due to increased number of incidents and low quality work the HR department started to take active role in quislingism with upper management. The pro-active recruitment strategy implemented in order to attract more sk illed employees. Moreover global employee engagement field of study was performed in order to evaluate the current employees satisfaction and asses the study HR related issues at that time.This survey added tremendous value to the group to define the major problems in the organisation. The HR department in collaboration with upper managers performed well by initiating extensive survey and also by following up the survey results. III. Improvement in HR Strategies accompanying HR programmening is essential in order to solve any HR issues at the workplace. During the downsizing process HR department has an important role. Chadwick et al. (2004) indicates that downsizing is more likely to be effective in the longer term when accompanied by accompanied by practices that reinforce the component part of HR to financial winner (e. . , extensive communication, respectful treatment of redundant employees and attention to survivors concerns over job security). Levin (2009) identified thre e broad priorities in Australian businesses (1) Retention strategies. (2) Downsizing or Right sizing application will continue. (3) Organisations need to continue to invest in their people. In a downturn economy, HR practitioners need to be emphasising to their organisations that it is necessary to do the right thing for the long-term value and sustainability of the business (Levin,2009).This includes recognising the link between leading and performance, and hence ensuring that leaders talent is retained, developed and, most importantly, allowed to lead through the tough times (HRL, 2009). Based on the literature survey several strategies are proposed in this section to manage the previously defined life-sustaining HR issues A. Investment in HR systems in the organisation Especially during the global decisions the HR should be in collaboration with all levels of management.Alignment between the business and human resource management (HRM) strategy is the key compute of success f or organisations (Wylie,2005 and Wang and Shyu, 2008). Implementing proactive HRM practices and succession planning programs should be one of the targets. B. orifice Analysis Clear understanding of the problems is severe in HR practice. In order to manage the survivor syndrome HR should focus on motivation of remaining employees. The department can make detailed gap synopsis and survey in order to assess the staff morale and expectations. This should be followed by upper management actions.C. Optimising Human Capital digging companies call for to communicate the reasons for staff redundancies and budget cutbacks and engage their staff in decisions spillage forward in order to generate trust among their remaining workforce so that they could remain competitive once the economy improved. HR should create serious strategies in order to make people connected to the organisation (Dickie and Dwyer, 2010). D. endowment fund Assessment The employee talent assessment in collaboration wi th HR and line managers will address the current skills gap in the organisation.This will also give good understanding about the skills and expectations of the current staff. E. facts of life and Career Development Developing a collaborative, cross-industry strategy for training/educational programs and employer-provided training to facilitate the availability of a skilled labour force is one of the retention strategies. Company should actively support and enhance the people skills and relational abilities of all employees through training and development programs (Dickie and Dwyer, 2010).With this perspective well structured graduate and mentoring program also can be mesmerizing especially for the Gen Y workers. F. Focus on improvements in leadership fostering managers to actively manage retention in their areas also adds value. Besides the leadership competencies of the management should be improved ino der to solve the current challenge. Pick et. al (2010) proposes action refl ection skill (ARL) methodology as an HR beam to improve the skills of leaders in the organisation. G. Improvement in Health and Safety The current safety culture should be measured by HR.Sexton et al (2006) describes Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ) as an HR tool which helps to measure the team work climate, job satisfaction, perceptions of management, safety climate, working conditions and stress recognition. Also learning from incidents as well as improved safety system should be managed by HR. On the other hand visible leadership and supervising on sites should be maintained to assist the new employees. H. Growing the Talent Pool Since it is a big challenge to attract the best employees in the market, employee benefit offerings such as full medical, dental, profit sharing and health programs could be effective.Attractive packages in a work culture with a family-oriented atmosphere need to be developed. Recruitment strategies should be improved to persuade the skilled speci alists in the market. I. Communication The mostly effective companies have two-way communication between senior leaders and employees. A good communication plan on how to deliver HR initiatives would be beneficial (Dickie and Dwyer,2010). IV. Conclusion Since mining operations operate with a finite resource, often remote locations, require specialised skills, with high capital intensity and are subject to political, social and environmental global issues.Downsizing policies will be choice of the organisations in the market with plunging commodity prices and falling demand (Dickie and Dwyer,2010). 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