UNIT – I Lesson 1 HRM – AN OVERVIEW Lesson Outline Nature of ...

employees may feel it uncomfortable when they have to separate from their affiliates at
work and might have to adapt to a more demanding work schedule. Shifting of
experienced hands and minds may affect productivity in the department from which a
person is transferred. Dual career couples might have objections when only one of them is
transferred. Arbitrary and discriminatory transfers can affect the employees’ morale.
In order to make transfers more pleasant and less troublesome, employees must be
explained the circumstances under which the transfer was initiated and the reason for
choosing this particular employee for the transfer. It is also important on the part of the
organization to provide appropriate support in the form of facilities like orientation
regarding the new place, days of leave, adequate manpower, allowances and material
assistance to the transferee for packaging luggage, transportation, re-registrations and
shifting of families and taking care of avoiding disruptions in the lives and careers of
employees’ spouses. Transfers should be spaced out by years of gap and should have
employee development-orientation.
Transfer opportunities could also be used adeptly to get vital clues into
organizational problems. This could be illustrated with the help of a case described by
Akio Morita of Sony Corporation in Japan introduced a scheme by which employees could
apply for transfers outside their departments, when there is an internal job posting. The
scheme proved to bring in multiple benefits. People who wanted to move out of Sony
could be retained within the company by this scheme. The scheme had yet another benefit
of identifying the departments from which request for transfer appears in large numbers.
Large number of these applicants these were actually sending signals of some underlying
anomaly like an autocratic or nagging boss. The top management could sense this problem
and sort it out with the heads of these departments and avert large-scale turnover of skilled
human power. The organization also got valuable insights into the needs and aspirations of
its employees, thereby began its plan for further human resource planning.
Vacancies arise due to a variety of reasons like growth, diversification, turnover of
employees and organizational restructuring. While training interspersed with transfers and
promotions could occur as intermittent or discontinuous events that serve to provide a
plethora of opportunities to experiment, learn and perform in new ways, they are still not
likely to be adequate to maximize employee development. In this regard, there should also
be ongoing efforts from the organizations to enable an employee to become involved
actively, contribute his mettle and help taking the whole firm or even an entire industry to
new heights. These continuous efforts may take forms called as Empowerment and
Delegation.