Labour Markets and HRM

1. Labour Markets and HRM http://sol.brunel.ac.uk/bola/personnel link to labour markets Ch.7 Sheila Rothwell in J Storey

2. Loss of an asset • "I've just met Frank. He has handed in his notice. He's got a new job with a better salary. This really leaves us in a mess with the new Saudi contract. Contact Personnel immediately! Revise the job description and draft advertising copy for the Technicians Journal. The deadline for copy is only three days away. We won't find a replacement with Frank's level of experience in a hurry. He has built our systems and it will require specialist ability for a newcomer to understand them?"

3. The stable door is open, the horse has bolted. • Reactive, panic response - no prior preparations. • ’Theorists would say “lack of organisational preparedness” • Incremental adaptation vs. major restructuring vs. shocks • Issues & approaches? • Employer choices in the "staff resource" environment? • Jobs are sought & filled within a free labour market system - True or False?. • Job finding, recruitment & labour market mechanisms - internal & external - are significant structures & processes for workers & management.

4. Staff planning: crude techniques - predictive weakness • less coherent and rational than assumed • Information Services dept. • Understaffed, unable to complete work on time • More retirements • Staff on holiday • Maternity leave • High sickness absence • Academic staff • Top-heavy • Mature • Career PhD & postdoctoral researchers - 3 years & move • Part-timers, short contract staff

5. Staff Planning Relationships external internal organisation commercial sources gov’t action education migration flow analysis headcount progression competencies rewards methods flexibility loyalty & culture sales/profits production/service quality/advantage investigate forecast demand supply imbalances? plans and data for recruitment, training, promotion, redundancy, down-sizing, rewards, costs, productivity, launches, accommodation, careers, mergers, takeovers , growth, contraction, project assignments planning feedback ataff assignments & utilisations

6. Rich Picture and CATWOE Exercise • Draw a rich picture to depict the inputs, structures, processes and outcomes of the social arena of a selected "labour market” • CATWOE (Peter Checkland - Soft systems methodology) • Clients/customers • Actors • Transformations • Weltanschauung or World-view • Owners • Environment

7. Conversations • What is a "labour market"? • How is competition manifested in "free" labour markets • How can employers respond to demographics ? • How are labour markets segmented? • How are working arrangements becoming more flexible? • What collective power and bargaining perspectives still apply? • What government interventions work? • Trans national & global issues? • New HRM and Trade Unions? • Gender, age, 48 hour Directive? • Factoring to low wage cost locations • The Bosnan ruling

8. What is a labour market? An environment or sphere of activity in which • individuals, looking for work or wanting to change jobs or occupations, employers (who need to fill jobs) and other actors, communicate, meet, make decisions and determine contracts of employment. • Movement from the external labour market into internal labour market where membership, reward systems, training & progression opportunities and constraints come into play. • institutions regulate the Er/Ee exchange or prospective relationship • relationships also shaped by economic pressures, societal practices, norms & expectations." • Who does it? Big bureaucratic employers?

9. Labour market segmentation? • Differentiate • Internal (within the firm) • External labour markets • Occupational: classes of workers by skill/competence. • Local, regional, national, trans national, virtual (Internet recruitment & teleworking) • Markets for long-term, temporary, casual or other sign • People enter - leave, active - inactive Laissez faire or government intervention?

10. Exercise • Research the "job market stalls" in the labour market for hotel staff in the Heathrow area, • Who runs them (employers directly or their recruitment specialist agents) and how? • What advertising is done, where are jobs displayed, what on-line sales occur? • What "employment branding" is demonstrated? • What "test driving and driving tests" will you find? • Other paraphernalia of modern "markets"?

11. Internet and WWW • job seekers peruse job ads & descriptions on-line • submit curriculum vitae • take tests? • register with agencies (link candidates with employers). • on-line communication: email & possible video. • IT specialists can display their wares …. who else? • Impact on recruitment industry? • Impact on internal recruitment? • Social exclusions?

12. Competition in a labour market • ”Market" metaphor assumes free competition for available jobs or employees under situations of variable scarcity. Is this so? Questions • How do individuals & groups compete (women, cheap labour, ethic groups) ? • How may a labour market differ for, say, IT staff & nurses? Do different conditions prevail for e.g. ”white”, male transport workers compared to those from other groups? • How is the scope of competition regulated and limited?

13. Manifestations • How is external competition manifested between: • Employers? • Job seekers? • Between regions & countries? • Internal labour market competition? • How does your "labour market” appear to you? • How do employers, employees and candidates experience it? • What strategies/tactics are employed in entering and moving around? • How do people price their labour and their reward for staying? • What sources of information are used to find jobs?

14. Demographic issues & employer responses • What can employers - large and small - do about demographics? • What can governments do? Labour shortage • fewer babies born in UK each year but labour force still grows. How? • Golden oldies fill employment gaps – Gap vs B&Q • Age, sex & skills – towards an organisational "Youff culture". • From male macho to soft service • Spotting the shortage industries • National curriculum & university, educational funding • Government initiatives & low skill work

15. No. of leavers in the year X 100 = % Average No. of employees No. of staff > one year's service X 100 = % No. of employees one year ago Monitoring and Calculation • Head count: age, sex, ethnicity, grade/pay, competence, productivity • £ Sales/profit per employee • Stock of skills, of "promotability", of experience • Who is working where – when are they "free"? • Who keeps the data? Who can access it? Who uses it? How? PIMs • Counting & classifying "jobs" - vacancies, deficiencies, accesses • From quality & competencies to risk assessment & equal opps • Wastage analysis • Staff turnover • Stability index

16. Induction crisis Settlement crisis 20% Transition Settled connection?? No. of leavers 2 years??? 6 months? Length of service Induction and membership

17. Employer responses • What can an employer really do in a national skill shortage? • What on earth is a HRM strategy in such circumstances? • Can we change our ways & adopt more proactive responses? (Large or small employers?). • What formal "Personnel/HRM policy & practice" change? • What changes in attitudes, expectations & actual behaviour in recruitment & employee development?

18. An employer faced with a skill shortage might • moan and be passive • let recruitment standards fall (Zombie Theory) • reduce production or levels of service • resort to overtime • improve recruitment methods • increase wages/salaries • change recruitment sources • recruit older people • Recruit from overseas • be more flexible about part-time employees • improve its "image" to attract new, more and better recruits

19. An employer faced with a skill shortage might What is strategic and tactical? What is not controllable? Big effort, poor result? • use overtime (48 hour Directive) • use temps & short term contracts • train staff for new work requirements • re deploy – jobs and staff • move location • stem out flows - boost morale, improve benefits è nicer, warmer, more trusting, organisation culture. ;-) • be "in tune with" market change where this affects staffing • down-size using early retirements. But - good packages attract core, experienced staff.

20. Flexibility • Numerical • Open-hours contracts, key time staff? Annualised hours contracts • Financial? • Pay the "national rate"? Broad banding. PRP, profit-related pay (less flexibility?) • Functional • De-layering, multiskilling, core competencies, project assignments, lateral progression. • Location • Hot-desking, teleworking, Intranet

21. Cosmopolitans and Locals (Gouldner 1957) • Evidence + HRM implications? • relevance? • UK, France, USA, Japan. • Dual employers? • becoming more "sell-able" • public sector - safe shelters? • membership & job orientation • Cosmopolitans • freer agents often professionals • role and rewards based on expertise • Loyalty vs. prof. competence & ethics • Locals • have or desire long service • progress hierarchically by increments • “family”, commitment & loyalty . • know: the business & products, history, procedures, values, networks • "expertise" & status are tied-in, safe & comfortable • young, agile, adaptables • short-term contracts, experts with "track record” • why retrain a "local"

22. Primary & secondary labour market segments Edwards et al (1983) - four rough segments • degree of skill flexibility - specific to organisation • job discretion & stability of earnings. Primary (Core) 1. external (high discretion + stable long term earnings & specialised but general skills) 2. internal (high discretion/stable long term service & flexible/specific skills) Secondary (Peripheral) 3. external (low discretion/variable earnings, specialist but general) 4. internal (low discretion/variable service & flexible/specific skills)

23. Different HRM policies for each staffing segment? Core staff (primary, internal) • vital, product & service specific, scarce abilities. • retention essential • encourage contribution by rewards, support and HRM methods. Peripheral (secondary internal market) • (part-timer, casual, seasonals, temps). • If available & working well then allocate little developmental attention. Do we train? • come "ready trained”. Bring your general skills with you & adapt to routinised, low discretion jobs

24. Teleworking and home working • Huws (1997) on teleworking/home working trends • alternating: working on-site, at home or at a "telecentre". • low-skill, home worker slavery for one employer. • blurring of home - work separation • working freelance for various clients. • on-the-road staff: mobile phone, Fax, lap top & Internet technologies • moving back-office functions to specialist centres (data entry, call-centres & help-desk)

25. A decade and a half of re-structuring for flexibility ….. changes in work organisation and membership including • multi-skilling, job enlargement & work pressure • performance monitoring & assessment systems • personnel information systems for cost control and evaluation • an emphasis on teams & self-management • forms of tele working and some increase in home working Compare this movement with the productivity bargaining for job change in the 1960s and 70s? What is different?

26. New business regulations, administrative & financial costs Source: British Chambers of Commerce, "Burdens Barometer"

27. Exercise New work / organisational structuring - reliance on advanced IT. • What HRM issues arise from so-called "virtual organisations"? • What changes to recruitment methods might be needed for people involved in various forms of tele working or working at a distance? • Do staff need different personal qualities/competencies? • How will work performance be monitored and appraised? • What reward system adaptations and contract changes might be in evidence? • How might staff development methods change?

28. The ‘labour market’ • Internal labour market – within organisation • External labour market • within the community • nationally • globally

29. Perennial questions • What are the choices that different socio-economic groups have? • How ‘rational’ are labour market dynamics? • What are the obvious and hidden ‘structures’ of labour markets that may limit choice?

30. Labour market theory I • Most of the labour market theories developed within sociological tradition are a direct challenge to the ‘free market’ rational theories developed within free market economics (e.g.., assumptions of ‘free choice’ in say, economics of researchers such as Milton Friedman)

31. Labour Market theory II • Fincham and Rhodes, 1999 – classification: • Dual labour market – Primary labour markets (big firms, hi tech, and profitable, good working conditions) and secondary labour markets (low tech, small firms, high job competition, poor conditions) – and have differentiation within these • Internal labour markets – developed in ‘primary sector’ as helps to stabilise hard to get high skill employees and ensure consistency of output and quality; wider labour market relied on in secondary labour markets • Market segregation – different groups are allocated to different work, e.g.., on basis of gender BUT disadvantage generally will drive workers into secondary labour market and job choice will be limited

32. White collar work • Similarities associated with white collar work can be contrasted with differentiation of white collar work • Includes range of jobs in management, administration, scientific and secretarial activities, supervision, sales etc. • Differences in status associated with these kinds of work, and in turn, these differences appear to be associated with class structure (Lockwood, 1958; Hyman, 1983) and in particular, the degree of formal and accredited professionalism in the work will influence its status: ‘professionalism’ thought of as a occupational strategy in its own right for leveraging high status and salaries, (Wright Mills, 1951; MacDonald, 1999)

33. New service work • Changes in organisational structure (flatter and leaner, with tighter quality controls) • Conti and Warner, 1994 – technology has created new opportunities for work • Telework or telecommuting (high status, white collar) • Call centre (low status, white collar) – broadband occupations (Greenbaum, 1995) that replace specialist administrative jobs in ‘bricks and mortar’ set up • Knowledge and knowledge workers – influence innovation and competition at highest level and associated in particular with ‘new’ technologies – often work in self-sustaining networks and less easy to influence than traditional workers (Clarke and Staunton, 1989; Newell, Swan and Robertson, 1996)

34. Future of work • Persistent suggestions of major structural changes in the nature of work, in particular, the concept of post-industrialism and post-modern organisations (to be contrasted with the certainties of the rational modernist tradition) • Some of the characteristics might include: • Compression of space and time (through technology) – Harvey, 1989 • Saturated self – greater exposure to wider range of roles, social relationships and cultures (Gergen, 1991) – with ‘self’ becoming less certain and more contested and fragmented • Thoughts and action informed by multiple and ‘information overload’ (e.g., 24/7 communications) – can lead to ‘overload’

35. Features of Post-Modernism in Organisations • Rapid shifting of financial and productive resources across borders • Just in Time resource utilisation • Flexibility and range of working arrangements • Virtual organisation – placeless, timeless and boundaryless • Projects rather than careers • Demise of the personal office • Practice of managing (rather than eliminating) uncertainty • Saturated organisations that continually negotiate the meaning of its business with stakeholders • Individual roles and identities – less solid and more transient • Multitude of competing perspectives, experiences, roles and identities • Jaffee, 2001 building on the work of: Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1989; Berquist, 1993; Hirschhorn, 1997; Clegg, 199)

36. However • What about ‘McJobs’? – (expansion of Service Sector) • Degree of change in primary and secondary labour markets, and in what way? • Pace of change in specific industries? • How valid outside of Western organisations? • Late modernist versus post-modernist?