Managing Flexible Workforce
Strategic HRM Considerations
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Introduction
Staffing is the process of acquiring, deploying, and retaining a workforce of sufficient quantity and quality to create positive impacts on the organization’s effectiveness and thus is a critical organizational function concerned with the acquisition, deployment, and retention of the organization’s workforce.
The complexity of work and projects being done in organizations nowadays are becoming overly complex both in terms of scope and reach. These span over multiple geographies, time zones, cultures and teams. The work force today has now become diversified with employees coming from countries such as Argentina, China, South Africa and Philippines. Traditional models of communication and knowledge sharing don’t work in all these contexts and hence there is a dire need for alternatives if the organizations today are keen sustaining their growth and profitability. Organizations are increasingly looking at flexible workforces to deliver their services across geographies and cultures to suit their business needs and cost constraints. However most organizations and human resource departments have limited experience in handling flexible workforces. Organizations have traditionally looked at flexible workforce as a contingency and not as a strategic tool.
For most organizations a workforce is also an expensive proposition and cost of doing business. Since service- providing industries now dominate our economy, matters of employee cost and whether the organization is acquiring a high- quality workforce loom large for many organizations. A shift from viewing employees as just a cost of doing business to valuing employees as human capital that creates competitive advantage and having financial implication for the organization is gradually occurring. Organizations that can deliver superior customer service much of which is driven by highly knowledgeable employees...