Difference Between India Versus U.S. Human Resource Management Homework Answer

Answer :

Indian HRM vs U.S. HRM

Introduction

Human resource management (HRM) is considered as a process of managing various resources of an organisation. These might include the organisation's employees, the objectives, the key decisions, inventory, and supply chain. Considering the core functions of an organisation's HRM division, these include talent acquisition, on-boarding of the folks, training management and development, performance indications and management, workforce management, payroll structuration, and management of compliance (Hassan, 2016). The primary concern of HRM is related to the management of people of an organisation and thus, ensuring the smoothness of working aspects to meet the business objectives. Employee and people management requires a certain set of imposed practices and implemented by an organisation's HRM division to achieve productivity and efficiency in working approaches (Snape and Redman, 2010). This report aims to compare and contrast the key HRM differences between Indian and the United States as respective countries. For this purpose, this report will include segments echoing the overview of HRM practices and discussing the Indian HRM systems and the United States HRM systems. Concerning the key similarities and differences between Indian HRM and US HRM, this report will broadly focus on the pay practices and compensation, cross-cultural differences, and legal implications of both countries. 

HRM Practices – An Overview

The HRM section of an association is considered as one of the most important divisions of the organisation. Human resource management acknowledges the effective working of an organisation while focusing on various business segments such as employee relations, recruitment, policy-making, introduction and imposition of rules and regulations, and controlling the organisation's culture overall. Precisely, HR is handling three kinds of different roles and responsibilities (Lamba and Choudhary, 2013). These include advisory, functionary, and service-oriented roles. The advisory roles of HRM are oriented towards helping the leaders and management with the solutions that enable the businesses to grow and achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace. These include suggestions and recommendations for areas components such as human resources, policies, strategies, and processes of the organisation. On the other hand, the personal aspect of the same includes reflection on areas such as the structure of the association, CSR related responsibilities, T&C of employment, compensations, career opportunities, training and development, and industrial relations as well (Blom et al., 2020). Lastly, HRM’s functional roles include guiding the leaders of the association and implementing efficient strategies to increase the efficiency and productivity of the organisation. Last but not least; HRM’s serviceable roles include the payroll, monitoring, and policing making for the employee management of an association. 

Indian HRM

The personal function of HRM practices in India was implemented after the Trade Union Act of 1926. Concerning this act, the Indian judiciary implemented the IR role as an important part of the Indian constitution. After the independence in the early 1950s, two professional bodies were set up about the HRM division for domestic organisations. These included the IIPM (Indian Institute of Personnel Management) and NILM (National Institute of Labour Management) (Jose, 2012). These two bodies' roles and responsibilities were to establish and regulate norms of initial HR policies for the local and national organisations. In recent times, the HRD division has seemed to attain growth through various efforts by leaders such as TV Rao, Udai Pareek, and Ishwar Dayal. During these periods, the HR norms and professions were developed by several leaps and bounds that included both the good and bad aspects of HRM as a particular division for the organisations. HRM is found to be performing various tasks that help the modern association gain significant working styles in the workplaces. These include procurement-oriented tasks, development-oriented tasks, compensation-oriented tasks, integration-oriented tasks, maintenance-oriented tasks, and separations (Cooke, Saini and Wang, 2014). HRM is also found to be participating in the decision making of the organisations due to which the roles and responsibilities of HRs significantly increases. These are found to be including planning, training, recruiting, orienting and, and placement of the manpower in the right places of the associations. 

US HRM 

In the US, the recruitment system regarding the HRM division is neither career-oriented nor position oriented. The HR recruitment process in this aspect includes extensive interviews and mostly prefers experience over education and degrees. Similarly, in regards to the training and development, the US has been observed, giving importance to employees' needs and specific requirements of the posts. Further, compensation is also found to be counted as a functionary area of HRM that broadly focuses on the determination and fixing up the wages or salaries of the employees and human resources of an organisation (Boon et al., 2011). Further, it has also been found that various issues are taking place because HRM roles and responsibilities and functions are contradictory in nature, especially in the country region of the US. Employee management is permitted and granted more significant and focused while working as an HR manager in an organisation (Iqbal, Anwar & Haider, 2015). This is the major difference between the HRM practices of the US and India. Some more precise differences would be discussed in-depth in the coming few segments of this report. 

Pay Practices and Compensation Difference in India and US

India is considered one of the fastest developing nations worldwide, while the US is counted amount the most developed country globally. Many of the US's Western cultures are significantly found to be implemented in the local and national organisations of India. Considering the pay practices and compensation of both the countries, the US has been found offering digits as per the merit while India is slightly focused on offering digits as per the single-digit practices by the HR division. Precisely, India gives more value and attention to an individual's academic background while the US majorly focuses on the experience and number of hours that the individual has worked in a similar area (Agarwala et al., 2010). In contrast, general HR compliance, which includes leaves, tax liabilities, days of working, is governed by the local government and law. In this regard, the US, for example, offers a leave system of 14 days while Indian organisations and HR practices are found to be a bit strict and allow taking two leaves a month, apart from the national holidays and weekends (Litman, Robinson and Rosenzweig, 2015). Thus, both the compensation and leaves are completely different, and India has always been observed contradicting the US HRM in this context. 

Cross-Cultural Difference in Indian and American HRM 

Concerning Hofstede and other similar researchers' findings, the cultural dimensions are observed to be different between America and an Asian country, likewise India. Within the corporate environments, the culture might vary as per the hierarchical level of an organisation. Although the Indian organisational structures are mainly influenced and adopted from western styles, the Indian HRM practices are strongly affected and influenced by India's tradition and the culture of Hinduism (Thite, Wilkinson and Shah, 2012). Below is the table that shows the comparison between India and the US regarding the cross-cultural dimensions of HRM practices. 

Figure: Hofstede Model

(Source: Vaiman & Brewster, 2015)

As globalisation increases, cultural diversity will last longer due to which various positive trends are going to reflect on the HRM practices for workforce management. For example, in the US, to achieve sustainability and productivity in the HRM divisions, the managers seek to learn to recognise the value and respect various demographic regions (Farndale et al., 2017). In contrast, the Indian HRM styles and practices are a bit strict towards acknowledging the other cultural practices when it comes to employability and development of an organisation. 

HRM Legal Implications of US and India

Terminologies likewise, termination has a different perception between the US and Indian HRM practices. While the US human resource division refers to all types of separations as terminations, Indian often refers to termination as a disciplinary action taken against an organisation's employees. Some Indian governmental policies and regulations found that influence the HRM practices and norms in an organisation. These include the areas such as contract management, code of conducts, wages of the employees, gratuity and other co-related policies, provident fund; leave related policy, sexual harassment policies, and maternity and paternity leave policies (Presbitero, ROxas and Chadee, 2016). On the other hand, the US government includes policies such as anti-harassment policy, non-discrimination policies, policies for sexual harassment, employment classification policies, policies for leave and time-off benefit, meal and break policy, policies for timekeeping and pay, safety and health regarded policy, and policies for employee conduct and punctuality (Cappelli, 2015).  It has been found, concerning the HRM legal implications that India focuses less on the discriminatory factors while the US adores it more comprehensively. Discriminatory factors include discrimination based on age, gender, religion, ethnicity, and other similar factors associated with an organisation's employees (Gomes et al., 2015). Similarly, the Indian HR practices and US HRM policies are different in many other areas, for example, the laws and policies associated with safety and health. Even in America's most unsophisticated workplaces, health and safety norms receive more importance than others, but even the most sophisticated Indian firms often ignore this aspect while implementing and modifying the HR norms and practices (Subramony, Guthrie & Dooney, 2020). 

Conclusion

Human resource management that is commonly referred to as HRM is considered a division that focuses on managing various resources of an organisation. These resources include the organisation's employees, the objectives, the key decisions, inventory, and supply chain management. This report aimed to significantly differentiate between the HR practices of India and the United States of America. For this purpose, this report has included divisions such as an overview of HRM practices along with discussing the Indian human resource management systems and the United States human resource management systems. The key areas where Indian HR practices and US HR practices are found to be contradicting each other included factors such as the leave and compensation benefits, safety and health policies, and anti-discriminatory norms of organisations. Hence, while Indian organisations are acknowledging most of the western cultures in their organisations, the US HRM policies and norms are a bit robust regarding their cultural dimensions. Both the cultures of US employment activities and Indian employment activities are found to be completing contradicting each other while the technological era is rapidly booming. Concerning this segment, all the countries are suggested to echo the relevancy of acknowledging employment and HRM styles of other nations as well. Regarding this statement, while India almost follows all the smooth transformations of US HRM styles, the US organisations are observed to be slightly un-encouraged regarding Indian HRM policies and styles.