The Discrimination Act | Analysis

The Discrimination Act | Analysis Discrimination referred to bad treatment against a certain group of people of a specific category or class. There are two types of discrimination: the direct and the indirect discrimination. Direct discrimination according to the European Commission (2003) defined as ‘when a person is treated less well, in comparison with someone else, because of his or her racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.Indirect discrimination occurs when a person want to get a job and for that job required special qualifications or criteria where challenge against a certain group of people and cannot be excused objective. The phenomenon of discrimination existed for many years ago and unfortunately still exist and sometimes in high degree. There are many examples of discrimination like the race, color or gender discrimination which are more popular and more often. Some examples of racism discrimination are Hitler and the American people who bad treated the b lack expatriates.   Also another popular and very often discrimination is about the gender of workers. In countries such as Afghanistan or Iran women are not manipulated equal as men thus have a sidetrack position in all areas culture. The face of discrimination in the employment is not such an easy problem, so the only factor that can stop those discriminations is the application of law in all areas and especially in the workplace. In this essay we are going to examine if the legislation is an effective mechanism for eliminating gender/ethnic discriminatory practices in employment. According to Crosby and Stockdale (2007) sex discrimination can be defined as ‘when a person is or people are treated unfairly in the work context because of gender. There exist, and always will, the huge gap between men and women as concerns the equality. Particularly, in the workplace, we can notice that women do not treated equally as men and thus we have the sex discrimination in employment. This unfair treatment against women leads to resort in Employment Tribunals and claim their rights. Taking in mind the Article 23, the equality between men and women must exist in all areas, including employment, work and pay. The principle of equality shall not embarrass the preservation or approval of measures providing for specific advantages in favor of the under-represented sex, all the employers have to respect and obey it. Many women claiming to earn the same reward opportunities as men, can get a promotion or decision-making roles, have the same employment benefits as men, to ha ve the chance of training and development opportunities, being protected by the law and having the chance for a convenience working. Some statistics show that the average hourly earnings for full-time working women are 82% of those of men and the part-time rate is 61% of that of men. Also the 20% of women which working full time earn less than  £200 per week compared with the 8% of men. Women have the 37% of managerial positions in businesses and it can be notice that women that working in the private sector earn better wages than those who are working in the public sector. As regards the flexible working 63% of women are likely to work flexibly, 78% of housework is doing by women and the 80% of women are becoming the victims of violent crimes. Occupational segregation is another barrier which prevent women accomplishment their obligation in the workplace. It is the distribution of jobs between men and women which require specific qualifications. For example masculine jobs which are engineers, electrical, pilots, firemen etc and the henpecked jobs which are nurses, teachers and stewardess. Although there are some exceptions like some women are being judges or senior police officers. ‘Glass ceiling represents the various barriers that women may face. ‘Glass ceiling prevent them from having an increased in their income or overall go on with their career unlikely with the efforts, achievements and qualifications that may have and offer. The consequences of the sex discrimination are the unfair dismissal for the following reasons: pregnancy, marital status and child care. It is very frequent for a woman to loss her job because of her pregnancy or because is divorced. According to Lockton (2006), ‘In the Courts view, the dismissal of a pregnant woman who had been appointed for an indefinite period, could not be justified on grounds relating to her inability to fulfill a condition of her employment contract temporarily. As a result we have to try and create new policies which include a much broader range of women e.g. black women, working-class women and single mothers, who suffer from discrimination and disadvantages. Furthermore women will tend to leave the workforce because of the child care, of not being as productive as job requires, or choose to earn less by staying in a friendly position or even to experience bias from her employer or her colleagues. Another form of discrimination is the race or ethnic discrimination which referrers to minority of groups in society which are less favorable treated from other groups such an example black and Asian people compared to white and English people. There is a law called Race Relation Act where established in 1976 where prohibits this type of discrimination on race, color, nationality and ethnic origin grounds. Sir Macpherson suggested that ‘the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, and culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behavior which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people. The black and Asian people face the discrimination by their employers in the workplace. They usual concentrated in particular jobs, have fewer opportunities to recruitment in j ob than white people, they work in lower jobs with very poor pay and the most of them are unemployed. Employers cannot discriminate against the job applicants because of the racial ground in terms of intention who should offer the job, which employment is offered or by denying employment. Also employers cannot discriminate on their current employees about the racial ground in terms of which is the employer, the way that can get opportunities for promotion, training and many other benefits or by unbind because they did not bow to their wishes (racial harassment). According to Bell (2002) ‘In the UK, during 1999/2000, the police recorded 47.814 racist incidents, most involving damage to property or verbal harassment. The International Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination has the Article 4(a) which says that to announce as a fast punishable by lawimpulse to racial discrimination, as well as all acts of violence or impulse to such acts against any race or group of persons of another color or ethnicity. As it mortgaged above, racial discrimination is prohibited by law so many people who had faced any type of discrimination can complaint to the Employment Tribunal. There is three month time limit for presenting in Employment Tribunal and the decision of the tribunal is sometimes further than compensation. The Employment Tribunal may recommend to the employer ways to reduce bad effects of the discrimination such as an apology.   Nowadays discrimination has reduced in very high levels because all the employers try to respect and obey the law. By the incorporation of black and Asian people in the workforce had been able to acquire successful jobs. Also women in the 20th century have more opportunities and are protected by law. They have made improvements on areas of politics, education, employment etc. In conclusion the gender and ethnic discrimination in the workplace is prohibited by law. Unfortunately some employers violate the law and discriminate against of their employees. Women, black and Asian people faced most recently the racism of their employers and many cases transferred to the Employment Tribunal. Nowadays this phenomenon has reduced and employers are training and have the knowledge to avoid any situation of discrimination not only from their side but also form the side of the workers. In recent years women and black people have very important positions all over the world and an example is the minister of USA Barack Obama who had competed with a woman, Hillary Clinton, for the chair of USA. This example shows us that men and women, black or white are equal, have the same opportunities and are protected by the law from any type of discrimination. Japanese Airlines: Strategic Human Resource Management Japanese Airlines: Strategic Human Resource Management This essay is going to discuss about the human resource management issues in Japanese airlines and also provide the way to solve the problem based on the human resource strategy that consist of various practices i.e. communication within an organization, human resource planning, recruitment and selection, learning and development, performance measurement, employee relations, and evaluation. Harvard Referencing Style is adopted for referencing in this essay. In 1992, Japanese airlines, JAL, declared its first loss at $100.2 million (Shrestha, 2008). Numbers of policies and plans were initiated and executed in order to combat with the loss. The key to combat with the loss was to reduce the expenses therefore downsizing the employee and cutting off the employee remuneration were included in its plans. Furthermore, the company turned to start hiring non-Japanese employees instead due to the lower payment on their wages. Consequently, these policies and plans led to another substantial loss for the company which was a lowering in productivity of its employee and had a notably impact on customer services and also customer relations. This substantial loss was engendered by the differences between Japanese and non-Japanese employees of JAL itself and this was considered to be the human resource management issue of the firm. According to the business strategy of Japanese airlines was to strive in the airline business and combat with its loss by the cost reduction and workforce productivity improvement (JAL, 2008). Thus, the human resource strategy had to be aligned to the business strategy in order to achieve the firms goal. HR strategy consists of a set of decisions and actions which involve with the management of all level of employee in the business and related to the implementation of strategy that led to creating and sustaining competitive advantage of the company (Tyson, 2006). The key HR strategy of JAL appeared to be the hiring non-Japanese employees at lower wages through the IASCO, global crew leasing company. This was possibly considered as an effective strategy to JAL as the labor costs of the firm was reduced by 40% in that period of time. However, afterwards, this strategy turned to be a loss of the firm in long run as a rift between Japanese employees who directly contracted with JAL and n on-Japanese employees who contracted with JAL through IASCO was created according to the differences between them. Differences were possibly stimulated in either difference in their personal culture of working and flawed HR policies that could not blend and treat them together equally; as a result, them and us culture was developed and made a loss to the firm. Apparently, the existed HR strategy of the firm did not cover this pitfall and should be reconstructed based on HR practices and fit with the business strategy in order to resolve the problem and sustain the competitive advantage of the company. The key determinant of human resource effectiveness is the fit between the business strategy and human resource strategy (Tyson, 2006). The business strategy and HR strategy are required to be communicated through all level of employees in the company to enhance the employee understanding and motivate them to pursue the firms goal. Communication in organization is the basic function that cannot be overlooked. It is the key for motivation that can improve the employee morale and productivity (Martin, 2005). Without the communication, it is impossible to create the human relations and thus difficult to success in the business (Thomson, 2007). Communication in organization can be categorized into 2 main types which are written communication such as internal newsletters, e-mails and another one is the oral communication that involves presentations, employee meetings. Both types are important in different ways depend on the situation but, generally, oral communications are much more meaningful and effective than written communications (Martin, 2005). As such, the HR strategy of JAL should be conducted through the employee meeting which involves entire level of employees by include how each individual employee can contribute to the firms goal, how employees will be supported and how the firm will be different in the future and make sure that it is a two-way communication to ensure that all employees will receive and understand the delivered messages. However, the Japanese culture tends to be the seniority system under a formal hierarchy that reflects the subordinates to acknowledge the supervisors commands with less comments and suggestions (Deresky, 2008). Therefore, this strict hierarchy should be mitigated in communication and replaced by the openness in order to obtain the feedback and perceive the existed and potential problems including human resource issues in the organization from all employees. It is important to gather the information of existed problems as well as potential problems in the future from the employees as they are the real one who facing the real problem and their opinions are useful to develop the problem solving plan (Robbins, 2008). HR practices such as human resource planning, recruitment and selection, learning and development, performance measurement, employee relations, and evaluation would be more effective by development with the joint of employees feedback. HR planning is the process of determining what job in the firm will need to be filled, how to fill them and what skills, experience and competencies will be required (Dessler, 2008). This process is significance to the firm in term of manpower management and certainly the benefit to the firm in term of financial as well. The goal of HR planning can be defined as to get the right quantify of employee with the right knowledge, skills, experiences and competencies in the right jobs at the right time and also at the appropriate cost in order to achieve the firms goal (Bacal, 2010). The HR planning is able to play an important role regarding the firms cost reduction strategy because it involves with the determining current existed employees and also forecasting the future employee turnover and requirement rate to balance the total headcounts that capable to sustain the achievement on business goal. Shortage of employee issue can make a loss in opportunities in business that leads to financial loss. Similarly, excessiveness of headcount issue can make a financial loss by the excess payment on unnecessary jobs and downsizing the employee which compensation payments are required. The downsizing does not create an impact on only employees who have been sacked but it also creates the negative impact on morale of remaining employees (?sthus, 2010). These issues are possibly mitigated by an effective HR planning (Dessler, 2008). Under a well-developed HR planning, JAL would tend to promote their existed employees to other required positions by training and developing them instead of hiring new employees which may cause financial loss in the future due to an excessive headcount. HR planning could provide both money saving and prevention of morale impact on firms employees. HR planning directly involves with the recruitment and selection process. Recruitment and selection process is the process of screening and choosing the right people into the right positions at the right time (Martin, 2005). This process can be done by the firm itself so called in-house recruitment or through the employment agencies i.e. headhunters, niche recruiters (Dessler, 2008). JAL decided to recruit their non-Japanese pilots and flight engineers through the IASCO, crew leasing company which is considered as employment agencies, due to the reason of lower wages. However, the cultural differences between Japanese and non-Japanese employees created a negative impact to the firm. To combat with this issue, JAL could work out with IASCO to screen and select non-Japanese employee by take following factors into account beyond the skills, experiences and competencies that are generally required in the position. These factors are culture adaptability and ability to learn other language of the candidates through the ability test of aptitude, test of personali ty and group situational test in the structured interview and selection process. Adaptability is a personality to handling uncertainty situation, and dealing with the working outside traditional culture and also geographical borders (OConnell, 2008). With the high adaptability of non-Japanese employees, they could tend to conform to JAL culture. Consequently, the cultural differences issues could be reduced. In the same way, this recruitment practice that takes the adaptability of candidates into account could provide more effective in problem solving related to the cultural differences by applying it to the recruitment of Japanese employee by JAL itself as well. As such, both Japanese and non-Japanese with high adaptability could easily blend together and provide better work performances. Alternatively, the JAL could save more money and, in the same time, avoid the cultural differences issues by in-house recruitment on both Japanese and non-Japanese employees with the focus on adaptability of candidates. Hiring people through the employment agencies normally cost more than in-house recruitment since the agencies get the fees (Dessler, 2008). Also, recruiting non-Japanese employees directly by JAL itself and make them to be permanent employees for the firm could prevent the negative impact on their morale and lead to maintain their productivities. Morale and employee relation problems can be created when the permanent and non-permanent employees working on the same work but not obtain the same benefits regarding their differences in permanent and non-permanent employment status (Schaefer, 2005). The productivity of employee is tended to worsen if the employees morale is lower (Mohanty, 2009). Recruiting and selecting the high potential employees does not assure that they will perform their work effectively. To guarantee that employees will work effectively, they are required to know what to do and how to do their jobs through the learning, training and development programs (Dessler, 2008). Firstly, the employees need to learn the basic background information of the firm such as company rules and policies in order to get them perform their jobs satisfactorily. Employees may perform their work performance lower than expectation of the company without knowing the basic information on things like rules and policies (Tyson, 2006). Secondly, in order to improve the work performance of employees, they are required to learn and acquire new skills and knowledge. As such, training and development process is essential. Training and development is a learning process to provide the skills and knowledge, required for employees to perform their jobs, to both new and current employees with an aim to bettering their work performances (Dessler, 2008). The process can be done both on and off the job. Group meetings, Projects and assignments are the samples of on the job training. On the other hand, samples of off the job training are seminars and workshops. To train and develop employees effectively, firm needs to identify who needs training and what do they want to learn. After that, establishing plan and implementation of the training to serve employee needs. Finally, the evaluation to check the effectiveness of the training is required (Martin, 2005). Regarding the JAL human resource issues, other than general training and development programs to improve the skills and knowledge of employees, the team building training should be adopted to glue the rift between Japanese and non-Japanese employees. Team building promotes the bonding between employees within the organization (Hikichi, 2010). It can be done in a various forms even activities like games and parties (Leland, 2010). By implementing the team building program, Japanese and non-Japanese employees could tend to learn, connect and blend to other cultures from their colleagues. Team building helps break the ice between employees and better understanding on each other (Leland, 2010). As such, the conflict issues of JAL due to the culture differences could be mitigated therefore JAL could improve productivity from its employees. The productivity and workflow in a team could be intensely damaged by the conflict or confusion (Grainger, 2010). Once the employees have been employed, trained and worked on their job for a period of time, the performance appraisal is required to measure their performances. Performance appraisal is one process of the performance management. Performance management is the way that company measures and determines how well its business and employee performs through all of the organizational processes by linked with the organizations goals and objectives (Martin, 2005). Its aim is to evaluate and develop the employees (Tyson, 2006). Under performance management, JAL is required to state the clearly defined business objectives, department objectives and individual employee objectives. Thus, those objectives have to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time bound, exciting and reviewable to motivate its employee. By the clearly defined objectives, employees would know what to do and see how their individual, teamwork performance affect and contribute to the overall objectives of the firms ( Moore, 2010). Clearly defined objectives provide the directions and challenges to employees and lead to improve their motivation (Bauer, 2009). The performance appraisal is important to the JAL in order to determine, evaluate and develop the employees based on their past performances. The performance appraisal also provides a benefit to the firm by improve the motivation of its employees. Once the employees are appraised, the feedback of their strengths and weaknesses are returned to employees. Letting they know what areas they need to improve and develop based on their strengths and weaknesses could improving the motivation of employees and also increasing the organizational performance (Martin, 2005). The appraisal can be done both internally such as the self-evaluation, evaluation by their supervisors, peers and externally by customer feedbacks, evaluations. JAL should standardize the performance appraisal process among subsidiaries and also equally to both Japanese employees and non-Japanese employees from IASCO crews in order to prevent the unfair situation and negative impact due to the different treatment between them. Work performances of the employees tend to be poorer if they are experienced injustice in workplace (ScienceDaily, 2009). By standardization of appraisal on both Japanese and non-Japanese employees, the non-Japanese employees could be stimulated to improve their work performances and also distrust attitude of Japanese employees could be reduced as both of them are required to work hard and perform the well-performance to improve their bottom line profits. The employees who performed above and beyond the expected level of output regarding their job description and accomplished firm, department and individual objectives should be rewarded. Recognizing and respecting for employees contribution at work is the biggest motivator (Harrison, 2010). Plenty benefits would be returned to JAL by an adoption of appropriate reward system regarding employees performance such as improvement on employee productivity, increasing in retention of quality employee and lowering absenteeism. Awarding the desired work performance of employee increases the repetition of desired work performance therefore more productivity is created (Harrison, 2010). Employee relations is the another process that JAL could adopt in order to improve its employees motivation and productivity. Employee relations is the process that concerned with sustaining the relationship between the employer and employee that contribute to satisfactory morale, motivation and productivity (Dessler, 2008). Improving the relationships at work leads to an improvement on overall productivity and thus increasing the profit to the firm (Polman, 2010). To improve the relationship among employer and employee, the conflicts between them have to be prevented. JAL could have to state clearly, effectively and reasonably policies and rules such as disciplinary rules and procedures to prevent the conflicts within an organization. Rules and policies in workplace are mainly set to specify expectations for behavior, secure safety and health of employees, promote and protect employee rights, and promote harmony and reduce the conflicts in workplace (Cuma, 2010). JAL could also help non-Japanese employees, IASCO crews, to get the membership of labor union in order to enhance the employee relations. One of the ways to improve the employer-employee relationship is to dealing well of labor union (Van der Waldt, 2007). As such, non-Japanese employees could gain more benefit, consequently be motivated and perform more productivity of their works. Union members receive more payment, holidays, insurance plan benefit, and various other benefits than nonunion employees (Dessler, 2008). Moreover, the union member also can ask for a help from the union to guarantee that workers rights are put in place (James, 2009). In addition, this action could also provide the bargaining power back to the Japanese employees who have been being members of the union. Furthermore, the job security of non-Japanese employees has to be guaranteed in order to prevent the lowering in productivity according to employees morale. Lack of job security makes the employees feel stressful (MacLeod, 2010). If employees are at unhealthy stress level, there are high possibilities that employees work performances will be poorer and that will cause negative impact to the firm (Pearson, 2009). Last step to solve the JAL human resource issues effectively is to continually evaluate the effectiveness of all previously presented HR activities. The continual evaluation process is important in order to determine how successful HR activities are and how can firm develop and improve them to be more effective. Evaluation process is used to ensure that the plans and implementations are having an effect per expectation (Douglas, 2010). If there are any loopholes in the plans and activities, the evaluation process will show early signals therefore the plans and activities can be timely adjusted to improve the effectiveness (Douglas, 2010). This essay is attempted to solve the human resource issues in Japanese airlines through the HR areas. Hopefully, the problems can be solved by the presented strategic HR plans and activities with an aim to improve the productivity and motivation of the workforce, at the same time, enhance cost saving in various ways through the HR processes which are communication within an organization, human resource planning, recruitment and selection, learning and development, performance measurement, employee relations, and evaluation.