Culture also has deep impact on employee relations. In India, the relation between the boss and his/ her employees are more like homely relations, with required restrictions. Relationships are maintained at a more personal level. This helps to create a more friendly and warm working environment with a personal bond. It also helps to motivate employees to put in a little extra effort into his/ her work. It also helps to instil loyalty and honesty to work. Hierarchy is important to Indian managers. Indian society demonstrates a high power-distance culture.
By this is meant that workers prefer authoritative and hierarchical forms of management. They also respond favourably to close supervision. The subordinates restrict themselves from correcting their boss and often manager reinforce their position of authority to their subordinates. Human resource management mainly focuses on combining of interests. Only having a proper insight about the cultural trends and diversification can ensure commonality in interest among the employees. This helps managers to understand the mindset and attitudes of the employees and accordingly adopt strategies.
For instances, in India the system of part- time jobs is not common, in other words nearly nil. They work on the basis of a monthly payment. Employers must keep in mind the framework of the employees approach before taking decisions. Cultural awareness will also help a manager to get the best from a team located in a far-flung location. There is an ethical aspect to every business. But it is difficult to draw a clear line of distinction between what maybe considered ethical and what as unethical. What maybe considered as ethical in one cultural set up maybe treated as unethical in another.
Therefore, understanding the cultural set up is essential to remain within the ethical limits of the cultural set up in which they function. Corporate culture and ethical climate can put pressure on people to channel their actions in certain directions desired by the company. In India, it is the company’s values that give the management credibility with its employees. Decision- making adopting appropriate strategies, motivating employees, enforcing a commonality in the goals to be attained are some of the major managerial concerns with regards to culture.
The current conditions have created a strong need for Human Resource Management in India to seriously emphasis on stopping issues like ‘Brain- Drain’, promoting women to enter the mainstream of the workforce and to change the less productive work culture to one that is more productive. The growth of emerging economies adds to the complexities of the responsibilities of professionals who manage human capital. For this reason, the Society for Human Resource Management is increasing its international activities and intends to establish offices in Mumbai.
These may be considered as some of the future challenges faced by the Indian business. India is viewed as having an advantage in customer-service outsourcing and the software industry. The basis for India’s advantage is its large number of educated yet relatively low-wage workers who are fluent in English. In order for Indian organisations to compete with the foreign competitors and to become a true economic power, serious consideration should be given to the arising HR challenges.
Most HR professionals are likely to find themselves working increasingly on projects with global aspects in the decades ahead. It may not be easy to develop a core set of accepted human resource practices within the framework of cultural differences, but it will be one of the most important goals the HR profession must accomplish in the years to come. The dynamic and competitive business environment presents a number of challenges to Indian Human Resource Management. Thus it can be concluded that employee relations and culture have important implications on the management of human resource in India.
With the rise in globalisation, it is essential that the human resource potential be tapped by understanding the work ethics and values of employees and empowering them to thrive. For this, knowledge about the work culture and attitude of people of a specific geographic location is necessary. The present economy is on where knowledge, innovation and creativity are prized and people are the bottom line. It is crucial that their potential is harnessed rather than just being instructed and controlled.
