HRM textbook

582 PART 5 EMPLOYEE RELATIONS
doing business in China argue that the new law will reduce employment flexibility, raise
labor costs, and make it difficult to lay off employees by instituting new large severance
package requirements. 24
All employers in China deal with issues including problems retaining good
employees and an increasingly active union movement. However, how they deal with
these issues depends on the ownership of the firm. State-owned enterprises use
fewer modern human resource management tools than do giant Chinese multinationals
like Lenova, for instance. There are therefore wide variations in human
resource management practices among companies in China, and between Chinese
and Western firms. 25
RECRUITING Because of governmental constraints on migration and other legal
constraints, it is relatively difficult to recruit, hire, and retain good employees. At least
until recently, sporadic labor shortages were widespread and will likely return. China s
Employment Contract Law requires, among many other things, that employers report
the names, sexes, identification numbers, and contract terms for all employees they
hire within 30 days of hiring to local labor bureaus. 26
In China, recruiting effectiveness depends largely on non-recruitment human
resource management issues. Employees are highly career oriented and gravitate toward
employers that provide the best career advancement training and opportunities. 27
Firms like Siemens China, with impressive training and development programs, have
the least difficulty attracting good candidates. Poaching employees is a serious matter in
China. The employer must verify that the applicant is free to sign a new employment
agreement.
SELECTION The dominant employee selection method involves analyzing the
applicant s résumé and then interviewing him or her. The ideal way to do this, as we
saw in Chapter 6 (Interviewing), is to institute a structured interview process, as many
of the foreign firms in China have done.
APPRAISING Employee appraisal is particularly sensitive to the cultural realities in
China. The appraisal therefore needs to follow the formalities of saving face and avoiding
confrontational, tension-producing situations. In general, it s best to talk in terms
of objective work data (as opposed to personal comments like you re too slow ).
COMPENSATION Although many managers endorse performance-based pay
in China, many employers, to preserve group harmony, make incentive pay a small
part of the pay package. And, as in other parts of Asia, team incentives are advisable. 28
3 List and briefly describe the
main methods for staffing
global organizations.
STAFFING THE GLOBAL ORGANIZATION
Employers focus today is increasingly on managing human resource activities locally.
In other words, their main concern is on selecting, training, appraising, and managing
the in-country employees where they do business.
However, deciding whether to fill local positions with local versus expatriate
( imported ) employees has been and continues to be a major concern. The process
involves identifying and selecting the people who will fill the positions, and then placing
them in those positions.
International Staffing: Home or Local?
Companies doing business internationally employ several types of international
employees. Locals are citizens of the countries where they are working. Expatriates
( expats ) are noncitizens of the countries in which they are working (an American
working in France is an expat). 29 Home-country nationals are citizens of the country
in which the multinational company has its headquarters (so an American working
for GM s subsidiary in China is a home-country national, as well as an expat).