Human Resources Issues in Mining

military personnel imagery Strategies 660 Monday, Trimester 1 2011, 18th April Assignment 3 HR Case depth psychology at Workplace Word Count2500 I. Introduction The world(a) financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 touch oned lots of industries including the miners. Employment in excavation is in particular vulner up to(p) to a cycle of rapid expansion and contraction, as changing economic circumstances cause demand and prices for certain commodities to evidence or fall. Eventually the GFC resulted in lots of fatigue cutbacks in the imagery effort (Australian Government, 2009).The key human resources (HR) challenges facing the West Australian mining perseverance for the next few years ar considered to be replacing retirees the remembering of key talent growing the talent pool training and growing and keeping staff motivated (Dickie and Dwyer, 2010). On the other give the WA Chamber of Minerals & amp Energy (CME, 2006) identified a number of HR strategic issues for the WA resou rce sector like skills shortfall, employee attraction and retention, pliant workplace practices, indigenous employment opportunities and community-regional services.The society I work for unflinching to go done furlough in coiffe to reduce the operating(a) costs during GFC. This article aims to delineate some(prenominal) HR issues as a result of global downsizing handle in the disposal. The main focusing entrust be fast redundancies, decrease in want, labour shortage, tumefyness and prophylactic issues and recruitment of new employees. Since several HR issues are coordinated to each other, with the purpose of this article, the main focus will be in the first place on downsizing insurance policy and its short and long term set up in the organisation. II. The Downsizing Policy and Its Effectsorganisational downsizing is a prevalent dodging designed to change organizational performance while selectively fall costs. It refers to an organizational decision to reduc e the work deposit in order to improve organizational performance (Kozlowski et al. , 1993). Therefore stemming from the desire to become to a greater extent efficacious 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 turn over prompted more firms to downsize (Appelbaum et. l, 1999). The GFC gived 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 unyielding to go through global downsizing as a receipt to GFC. Fifty percent of the employees were make spare and number of the projects was tremendously slighten due to the limited budget. The HR department played an active berth i n that period to dish out the downsizing transition.One of the strengths during this process was keeping estimable intercourse between HR and the speeding level managers. The process was accurate with collaborative work between HR and management. The professional assist accepted from consultants involved improvement the employees self awareness levels, increase their motivation and dominance as well as creating effective CVs. However during downsizing process several HR related issues started to rise in the party. The employees who remained in the comp any(prenominal) lost their trust and motivation.Besides due to loss of hot labour the productivity decreased and the incident numbers dramatically change magnitude. The turn-over rates were heights and the police squad up 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 short term influences for this fibre study is summarised in Figure 1 below. Global Downsizing Global Financial Crisis HR Issues Redundancies Survival syndrome in remain employees Increased turn-over records Skills famine 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 talents Assessment Improved Graduate Development Program Maintaining trainings and developments Improvement in Health and rubber eraser 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 graveled more after redundancies. Employee resentment and concern, loss of morale was high among the remaining employees.The labour shortage created several issues for employees like job burnouts, working long hours, change magnit ude 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 about(predicate) their future and guilty about still having a job whilst colleagues take for 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 may attend 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 schema 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 phase angle creates a chaotic workplace strain and increases employee fears and stress levels. These change pointts affect career uncertainty, fear, and stress in employees. Employees have semipermanent memories of their old comfy horticulture and they fight to keep it. Employee bulwark includes a variety of hands-off 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 barrier to maintain the work and life balance. The consequences of imbalance between work and personalised 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 in like manner effectiveness decreased.With shortages of professionals and an active economy the pressures on existing employees looks set to rise and therefore this is an area which needfully to be benchmarked and revisited with a view to adopting liftper practice throughout the sector (Wilkinson, 2008). II. B. Skills Shortage On the other hand downsizing affects employees affective commitment to the organization both directly and confirmingly. 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 force resulted in company to have inadequ ate supply of talent, increasing number of health and guard incidents at workplace and delays in output signal due to limited talented labour force. in particular after the new-fashioned mining break, the company decided to increase the number of production activities in spite of limited arch(prenominal) labour. It is a big challenge instantly to predominate the specialised professionals in the mining industry. Apparently the HR variation and management team chosen to concentrate on short-term needs rather than the organisations long term eeds during GFC. Sheaffer et. al (2009) demand 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 removements. Such a non-strategic approach causes management to be caught unawareness by changes in emp loyee availability and fictitious character of labour, creates a serial publication of short-term dilemmas.Stone also adds that of the objurgate numbers of qualified and good employees are not available, an organisation may not be able to trifle its strategic business objectives (Stone, 2010). The mining companies are now beginning to make out 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 top constituents 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 large number 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 scanty company faces challenges in finding the experienced professionals. The HR department started the recruitment process however the mining mart is still slight of skilled professionals in specific roles.This is one of the biggest challenges for the HR department. II. C. Health and Safety Issues distressing occupational health and safety (OHS) performance equates with poor human resource management (HRM), and poor ethical, legal and affectionate 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 kindred while the number of projects was tremendously increasing. This lead to enhance health and safety related incidents at work place.S pecifically in this case 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 measurable to the development of safety culture in the organisation. On the other hand once the crisis in the course of instruction was more visible due to increased number of incidents and low quality work the HR department started to take active role in collaboration with upper management. The pro-active recruitment strategy implemented in order to attract more skilled employees. Moreover global employee engagement check 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 free radical 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 serial HR computer 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 function of HR to financial victory (e. . , extensive communication, respectful treatment of redundant employees and attention to survivors concerns over job security). Levin (2009) i dentified three broad priorities in Australian businesses (1) Retention strategies. (2) Downsizing or Right sizing employment 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 lead and performance, and hence ensuring that leadership 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 sarcastic 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 factor out o f success for organisations (Wylie,2005 and Wang and Shyu, 2008). Implementing proactive HRM practices and succession planning programs should be one of the targets. B. fling 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 outline and survey in order to assess the staff morale and expectations. This should be followed by upper management actions.C. Optimising Human Capital Mining companies unavoidable to communicate the reasons for staff redundancies and budget cutbacks and engage their staff in decisions acquittance forward in order to generate trust among their remaining men 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. talent Assessment The employee talent assessment in collaboration wit h 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. preparation 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 post well structured graduate and mentoring program also can be pleasing especially for the Gen Y workers. F. Focus on improvements in leadership training 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 reflection instr uction (ARL) methodology as an HR motherfucker 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 superintend 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 spec ialists 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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