International Human Resource Management Case Study For Practice

Case studies enable BMS students to understand the situation, locate the problem, analyze the case, find out various available suggestions and finally conclude with appropriate solution. There is no fixed method to follow to solve case studies. Students have to analyze the situation and provide solutions by imagining themselves as the manager and what will be their reaction in the given situation.

Here we present International Human Resource Management Case Study For Practice:

Rajesh Software Limited is a fast growing software company in India. It defines, designs and delivers technology-enabled business solutions to its clients. It has a global presence through strategic alliance with leading technology providers located in different parts of the world. In fact, it conducts its global operations through its 22 overseas offices located in countries like the USA, UK, Australia, China, Poland, South Africa, the Philippines and Argentina. The company has 15,000 employees, of which 3200 are expatriates on an international assignment at any point of time. It has an international HR division as part of the well-developed HR department to prepare, expatriate and repatriate the employees linked to foreign assignments. The HR department of this company is managed by Mr. Pranav Kumar, director (HR). The International Human Resource (IHR) division, headed by AGM (IHR) Mr. Srinivas Patel, is responsible for identifying, training, orienting and compensating the expatriate employees. It is also responsible for evaluating the performance of the expatriate on overseas missions. Since Rajesh Software gets a sizeable portion of its income from overseas operations, it has spent a considerable amount of time and resources to develop a global HR system. Yet, the international division of this company faces a few specific problems like high employee attrition among expatriates and a high cost of maintaining them on international assignments. An employee satisfaction survey conducted among the expatriates revealed employee dissatisfaction over performance evaluation and pay differences. Some of the expatriates complained that the IHR division was ignoring the dissimilarity in the expatriate assignments and foreign situation while evaluating the performance of the expatriate employees in the same positions posted to different countries. As such the international performance management tools have failed to recognize the country-or-region-specific difficulties in job performance. Another major problem associated with the expatriate assignment is the high cost of maintaining expatriates on overseas jobs. Rajesh Software estimated that the cost of using local employees. The management also felt that the expatriates often overemphasized short-term results rather than the necessary long-term results since they were aware that they would be working in the foreign assignment only for a few years. The management sought the view of the HR department about the expatriate problems and instructed it to develop strategies to surmount them. The HR department forwarded the letter to the IHR division for its views and responses. Mr. Patel, in his reply, defended both the performance evaluation system for expatriates and the practice of deputing parent-country employees. Regarding performance evaluation, he maintained that a cross-section of the employees, including expatriates, was consulted while designing the international performance standards and evaluation techniques. Thus, the international performance management system was objective and comprehensive. As regards, the high cost associated with the expatriate employees, he wanted the present system to continue in the future despite managerial vacancies. According to him, the expatriate system enabled the company to have a better and direct control over the foreign branches. When his response was placed before the management, there was a sense of disappointment among the top managers. This was because the response from IHR division was devoid of any concrete solution. Understandably, the management was seriously pondering its next move.

Questions:

1) What is your understanding of the seriousness of the problem faced by Rajesh Software Limited in its overseas operations?

2) What is your opinion about the response of the IHR division to the queries raised by the management?

3) Accordingly to you, what should the management do now to address the problems of high attrition and cost in international operations?