Human Resources in Europe: An overview

Thèmes abordés

Human resources, Strategic Human resources, Human resources in Europe

Résumé du document

Today, the management of human resources represents an important constituent for the long term success of companies. In an environment of globalization, companies have to continuously adapt their products, and human capital. Human resources help the company in their choice of direction, identify the actual resources and help plan the future. HR actively participates in the company's success and have increasing responsibilities in the present context.

European companies understand the fundamental role of an effective management of human resources. As multinational companies are present in several countries, they have to adapt their global strategy and consider the different cultures in each country. Effective HR strategies like organizational alignments are important factors of success. How can one effectively manage the human capital? HR have to work on the succession planning, work engagement, capability and employee capacity in order to transform the human capital to an competitive advantage.

During this presentation regarding human resources in Europe, I will try to illustrate my different arguments by giving some examples about the company EADS. In my point of view, EADS is a good example of a successful European implantation although it has had to manage some difficulties in the past.

Extraits

[...] HR have to support international workers in order to reduce these kind of problems. International HR management in EADS EADS is a good example for management in an international environment. Currently employees are sent in other countries in order work on international projects. On this way, poles of competence can be use effectively for each country. In this company, international work rimes with career development and promotion. They train employees for languages, cultures and also support them by finding them houses of flats in the new country. [...]

[...] Succession Planning in Europe The aim of succession planning is to keep the knowledge into the company. People who worked for a company for long time have two kinds of knowledge. Formal knowledge is easy to provide and can be easily transmitted. The problem concerns the informal knowledge which is based on the employee's experience and now written knows how. In this case, the role of SHR consists to find solution to provide this informal knowledge because it represents an important value for the company. [...]

[...] As multinational companies are present in several countries, they have to adapt their global strategy and consider the different cultures in each country. Strategy an HR planning like organizational alignments are important factors of success. How to manage effectively the human capital? HR have to work on the succession planning, work engagement, capability and capacity in order to transform the human capital to an competitive advantage. During this presentation about Human resources in Europe, I will try to illustrate my different arguments by giving some examples about the company EADS. [...]

[...] To give an example, EADS is composed by some divisions operating in different industries. AIRBUS, ASTRIUM or EUROCOPTER are few of them. By creating an organizational alignment in terms of global direction and managing processes, the company creates a competitive advantage in front of its competitors of each industry. Even if industries are different, a lot of processes are nearly the same. Instead of working separately on it in each division, the company only works on one, and than provide the instructions to the other divisions. [...]

[...] What characterize the European culture? By using the work of Geert Hofsted, we can observe that the most pronounced aspect of the European culture concerns the Uncertainty Avoidance. That means that European people generally more emotional and feel uncomfortable in unstructured situations and try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures. The second important pont concerns the Power Distance. We can observe a relatively low acceptance of inequality imposed by the company's hierarchy. [...]