Human Resources Issues in Mining

human beings alternative Strategies 660 Monday, Trimester 1 2011, eighteenth April Assignment 3 HR brass abstract at Workplace newsworthiness Count2500 I. Introduction The Global pecuniary Crisis (GFC) in 2008 affected haemorrhoid of industries including the miners. habit in archeological site is particularly under attack(predicate) to a cycle of rapid refinement and contr fulfil, as changing economic fortune cause motivation and prices for certain commodities to draw close or f both. Eventually the GFC resulted in lots of turn over cutbacks in the imaging pains (Australian Government, 2009).The key human resources (HR) interpret exceptions facing the wolfram Australian minelaying industry for the adjoining few years ar considered to be replacing retirees the remembering of key endowment fund growing the talent pool teaching and culture and keeping round motivate (Dickie and Dwyer, 2010). On the other(a) hand the WA bedchamber of Minerals & Energy (CME, 2006) identified a public figure of HR strategic issues for the WA resource sector like skills patheticage, employee haul and retention, flexible naturalizeplace practices, indigenous employment opportunities and community-regional services.The club I work for re rund to go through suppression in ordain to reduce the operating cost during GFC. This article aims to delineate several(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) HR issues as a result of ball-shaped curtailment adjoin in the organisation. The principal(prenominal) focus pass on be sharp redundancies, reducing in demand, tire shortage, health and refuge issues and recruitment of new employees. Since several HR issues atomic number 18 interrelated to each other, with the purpose of this article, the main focus go out be mainly on downsize policy and its short and long line set up in the organisation. II. The curtailment insurance and Its EffectsOrganizational downsize is a prevalent dodge designed to improve organisational carrying out piece selectively decreasing costs. It refers to an organizational decision to reduce the custody in order to improve organizational execution of instrument (Kozlowski et al. , 1993). Therefore stemming from the desire to become much than efficient and effective, firms in both the cliquish and the public sectors has adopted downsizing strategies (Cameron, 1987). Further to a greater extent than, the increasingly dynamic and competitive workplace and the vogue toward globalization stupefy prompted many firms to downsize (Appelbaum et. l, 1999). The GFC created big uncertainty, in the digging industry. In appurtenance to the recruitment and retention issues, organisations were faced with move to keep ply motivated at a time when more than than ancestry losses were predicted and budgets became getting tighter (Dickie and Dwyer,2010). My current employer intractable to go through global downsizing as a response to GFC. cardinal pe rcent of the employees were do redundant and follow of the projects was tremendously decreased referable to the curb budget. The HR plane section played an nimble role in that period to eradicate the downsizing process.One of the strengths during this process was keeping obedient confabulation between HR and the fastness level distinguishrs. The process was completed with cooperative work between HR and sharement. The victor uphold received from consultants involved gain the employees self awareness levels, increase their motivation and confidence as thoroughly up as creating effective CVs. provided during downsizing process several HR related issues started to scrape up in the company. The employees who remained in the company confounded their trust and motivation.Besides due to loss of ingenious labour the productivity decreased and the nonessential numbers dramatically change over magnitude. The turn-over rates were gamey and the team dynamics were dam aged. Eventually the sudden decision given by outmatch(prenominal) managerial level due to scotch downturn resulted sobering HR issues in the company. The downsizing process and its long and short condition make fors for this courting study is summarised in Figure 1 below. Global Downsizing Global Financial Crisis HR Issues Redundancies extract syndrome in remain employees Increased turn-over records Skills paucity Increase number of injuries in the company focusing of HR Issues Aggressive recruitment policy (oversea transfers, secondments , graduates) Employee reservation Survey Re-evaluation of salary packages and staff bene enclothes pipeline Analysis and Talent estimation meliorate Graduate Development Program Maintaining raisings and developments progression in wellness and Safety organisation Figure 1. The HR Issues of company. II. A. Survival Syndrome Since company mainly focused on those who confounded their jobs the employees who remained in the company su ffered more subsequentlywards redundancies. Employee resentment and c at one timern, loss of morale was amply among the remaining employees.The labour shortage created several issues for employees like job burnouts, working lasting hours, increased pressure, and role overload and decrease morale. unfortunately the bad influence of downsizing on the psychology of remaining employees was non well managed by HR subdivision of the company. Brockner (1992) rigs the survivor syndrome as impact of downsizing on the remaining employees. There is ample evidence that remaining employees feel shocked, embittered towards management, dire active their future and guilty about silent having a job whilst colleagues live been laid off.Such employees are more belike to have lower morale and increased focussing levels, be less(prenominal) productive, and less loyal with increased quit levels. fit in to study 70 percent of sr. managers who remained in downsized firms reported that mor ale, trust, and productivity declined after downsizing those who lose their jobs may await the nigh 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 nigh(a) scheme to keep the remaining employees motivation eminent during downsizing process.Shook and Roth (2010) explained that failure to fall upon employee issues in the pre-downsizing due diligence word human body creates a chaotic workplace ambiance and increases employee fears and stress levels. These change events affect occupational group uncertainty, fear, and stress in employees. Employees have long-run memories of their old comfortable culture and they fighting to keep it. Employee apology includes a motley of passive as well as aggressive techniques. Culture change may take years to complete and digest 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 never be fully k nowadays without HR support because of the human resistance (Szabla, 2007). Furthermore due to control professionals the remaining staff started to have difficulty to fight back the work and carriage balance. The consequences of imbalance between work and personal or family life were visible at the workplace. The emotional exhaustion, cynicism and burnouts were greenness. Unfortunately The HR department was not fully aware of the situation until the employee turnovers increased and besides effectiveness decreased.With shortages of professionals and an active economy the pressures on existing employees looks set to rise and whence this is an area which needs to be benchmarked and revisited with a view to adopting best practice throughout the sector (Wilkinson, 2008). II. B. Skills Shortage On the other hand downsizing affects employees affective allegiance to the organization bo th directly and confirmatively. 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 inadequate summate of talent, increasing number of health and safeguard incidents at workplace and delays in business due to limited talented labour force. Especially after the recent excavation nose drops, the company decided to increase the number of production activities in spite of limited consummate labour. It is a big challenge nowadays to find the specialized professionals in the mining industry. Apparently the HR division and management team chosen to endure on short-run needs earlier than the organisations long term eeds during GFC. Sheaffer et. al (2009) claim that whereas downsizing affects the short-term carrying into action of larger and established companies positively, it primarily affects long- term effect inversely. A common mistake for HR managers is to concentrate on short-term replacement needs kinda than on the organisations long-range HR requirements. Such a non-strategic approach path causes management to be caught unawareness by changes in employee availability and timbre of labour, creates a series of short-term dilemmas.Stone similarly adds that of the rectify numbers of qualified and experient employees are not available, an organisation may not be able to meet its strategic business objectives (Stone, 2010). The mining companies are now beginning to acknowledge that the current yield shortage is already impacting the productivity, efficiency and positivity of their operations. The shortage of skilled workers in junto with high turn-over rates are among the top calculates impacting industry growth, either by tenia or delaying projects that would otherwise proceed, or by signifi stooltly adding to the cost of new projects (Schultz and Grimm, 2008).Dur ing boom times, mining companies find it difficult to get out staff, even though huge salaries are on offer. This highlights a challenge quite unique to mining namely, rending highly skilled slew 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 redundant company faces challenges in finding the experienced professionals. The HR department started the recruitment process however the mining market is still thin of skilled professionals in specific roles.This is one of the biggest challenges for the HR department. II. C. Health and Safety Issues Poor occupational health and safety (OHS) performance equates with unworthy human resource management (HRM), and hapless ethical, legal and social responsibility (Stone, 2010). Since the mining boom hit the market belatedly the mining organisations increased their production activiti es in order to compete among the resource market. However the number of the staff stayed same while the number of projects was tremendously increasing. This slip away to resurrect health and safety related incidents at work place.Specifically 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, guest 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 ashes of the organisation.Therefore increased emphasis on HR management is particularly important to the development of safety culture in the organisation. On the other hand once the crisis in the division was m ore visible due to increased number of incidents and low quality work the HR department started to take active role in coaction with upper management. The pro-active recruitment strategy apply in order to attract more skilled employees. Moreover global employee network inspect was performed in order to prise the current employees satisfaction and asses the major HR related issues at that time.This accompany 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 consecutive HR preparedness 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 rein force the parcel of HR to financial success (e. . , extensive communication, respectful treatment of redundant employees and prudence to survivors concerns over job security). Levin (2009) identified threesome broad priorities in Australian businesses (1) holding strategies. (2) Downsizing or Right sizing activity will hatch. (3) Organisations need to continue to invest in their hoi polloi. In a downturn economy, HR practitioners need to be emphasising to their organisations that it is necessary to do the right social function for the long-term value and sustainability of the business (Levin,2009).This includes recognising the sleeper between leading and performance, and hence ensuring that lead talent is retained, developed and, most importantly, allowed to lead through the tough times (HRL, 2009). ground on the literature survey several strategies are proposed in this section to manage the previously defined critical HR issues A. Investment in HR dodgings in the organi sation 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 of 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. Gap Analysis Clear perceptiveness 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 buoy make detailed gap abstract and survey in order to measure out the staff morale and expectations. This should be followed by upper management actions.C. Optimising Human keen Mining companies needed to communicate the reasons for staff redundancies and budget cutbacks and engage their staff in decisions going 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 stack connected to the organisation (Dickie and Dwyer, 2010). D. Talent Assessment The employee talent assessment in collaboration with HR and line managers will reference work the current skills gap in the organisation.This will also give good understanding about the skills and expectations of the current staff. E. Training and move Development Developing a collaborative, cross-industry strategy for training/educational programs and employer-provided training to further the availability of a skilled labour force is one of the retention strategies. connection 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 persuasion well organise graduate and mentoring program also can be attractive especially for the Gen Y workers. F. Focus on improvements in lead Training managers to actively ma nage retention in their areas also adds value. Besides the leadershiphip competencies of the management should be improved ino der to solve the current challenge. Pick et. al (2010) proposes action reflection learning (ARL) methodology as an HR tool 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 inadvertence on sites should be maintained to assist the new employees. H. Growing the Talent jackpot Since it is a big challenge to attract the best employees in the market, employee benefit offerings much(prenominal) as full medical, dental , profit communion and wellness programs could be effective.Attractive packages in a work culture with a family-oriented gloriole need to be developed. Recruitment strategies should be improved to persuade the skilled specialists in the market. I. Communication The mostly effective companies have two-way communication between old 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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