Introduction
The VLCC company is an industry leader in wellness and beauty services and products, founded in 1989 by Vandana Luthra (VLCC Health). It serves clients in 310 locations across 143 cities in 12 countries in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Gulf Cooperation Council Region, and East Africa. The VLCC brand, which has been in business for more than 30 years, has evolved into a popular name in India for wellness and beauty (VLCC Health). It also has one of the largest operational footprints in the Indian and international markets. The business has built a reputation in the market for applying a scientific and therapeutic approach to all its products and services, including wellness services, personal care items, and more. They now have Wellness, Personal Care Products, Vanity Cube, and Institute as their four main business divisions (VLCC Health). VLCC is a category leader with the largest market share and most company-owned shops in the Indian market for beauty and wellness services. The company employs over 4,000 experts, including doctors, nutritionists, physiotherapists, and cosmetologists.
Through its subsidiaries, VLCC Personal Care Limited in India and GVig in Singapore, which it bought in September 2013, the company runs its product business (VLCC Health). Its GMP-certified production facilities are currently located in Singapore and Haridwar, India. In addition to retail locations abroad, it also produces and sells 169 hair, skin, and body care products, as well as functional and fortified foods that are ingested internally (during procedures and therapies at VLCC Wellness Centres).
With regards to the company’s human resource management, it has many employees that work across India and the world. All facets of managing and employing people in firms are addressed by the practice of human resource management (HRM) that works effectively in the VLCC company. HRM includes tasks such as resourcing (human resource planning, recruiting and selection, and talent management), strategic HRM, human capital management, corporate social responsibility, knowledge management, and organization growth. Ensuring that the organization can succeed via people is the overarching goal of human resource management and VLCC strives to provide healthy work environment for its employees. HRM of VLCC seeks to boost an organization’s effectiveness and capability, or its capacity to accomplish its objectives by making the best use of the resources at its disposal. This paper addresses HRM of VLCC company, conducting an analysis of its practices and providing suggestions for the future of HRM.
Critical Review of HRM Practices of VLCC
Employees are the cornerstone of every prosperous company. For the growth of the business, human resource (HR) management is essential. The HR department handles a wide range of tasks and is in charge of ensuring that workers feel secure, appreciated, and well-supported. Outstanding human resource management makes sure that the HR division functions properly and keeps changing over time. VLCC has an effective HR division as it supports employees across India and the world.
An essential component of human resource management is a strategic orientation. It provides the internal framework for organizing the development and implementation of HRM ideals, designs, and practices. The goal of strategic human resource management is to confirm that the organization’s history, operating system, and organizational structure, the value, firm commitment, and employee motivation, all significantly contribute to the achievement of business objectives. Employees of VLCC are aware of the objective of the organization as the mission is embedded in the culture of the entity. There are training sessions for new workers and interns regarding the organization and additional workshops for the current employees about the values of VLCC. Such HR activities are essential in preserving the motivation and culture of the organization. Since HR managers make substantial contributions to training and development initiatives, they also play a crucial role in fostering relationships between employers and employees. This helps people advance within the organization, which raises productivity and employee happiness.
HR managers strive to cut expenses wherever possible, including in hiring and retaining staff. Employee benefits that are likely to draw quality applicants and keep the existing workforce are familiar to HR experts, who are also taught to negotiate effectively with both potential and current employees. VLCC requires professionals that are experts in their field and the company’s HR knows how to select the right candidates due to its specifically designed recruitment strategy.
In addition, human resource managers are expected to support and encourage employee diversity, acclimate new team members to their workplaces, and foster positive relationships between workers and organizational management. With effective HR management, workplace regulations maintain the application of necessary safety precautions and offer solutions to problems between team members, reducing risk for the business and its employees (Ererdi et al., 2020). The bottom line is that although HR managers are responsible for a variety of tasks, employee welfare should constantly be given top priority.
As HRM increases the productivity of employees, the overall performance of the VLCC company can be also improved. The organization is planning to further expand and enter new markets, as such, it is crucial for VLCC to ensure that its current employees are satisfied. Moreover, the role of HRM is critical as it manages the communication between workers and leadership. Once the company starts recruiting people not only from India but other parts of the world, it will be extremely important to imply HRM practices that will allow the smooth integration of new employees.
With a focus on individual contracts rather than collective agreements, HRM is distinguished by a unitarist rather than a pluralist view of employee interactions. A unitarist viewpoint emphasizes the conviction that everyone in an organization strives toward the same objectives and functions as a cohesive unit (Cooke et al., 2019). Here, people are seen as capital or assets that drive the company. VLCC implies hard HRM, which is a concept built on a management- and business-focused mentality. It is concerned with the organization’s overall interests, with member interests acknowledged but regarded as secondary to those of the business (Cooke et al., 2019). As a result, top management’s vision and leadership place a high value on strategic integration and strong cultures, which call for individuals who will be dedicated to the plan, flexible in the face of change, and able to fit the culture.
HR is an important component of any business, from risk management to enhancing employee well-being. This complicated area of work would lack structure and struggle to develop over time without effective management. One of the best ways for a business to guarantee employee satisfaction, productivity, and future growth is to have a robust HR department supported by competent leadership (Ererdi et al., 2020). A successful business is built on a happy workforce, and HR management is the glue that ties it all together.
Two Theories of Leadership
Schools of thought that explain how and why particular people become leaders are known as leadership theories. The theories place a focus on the characteristics and behaviors that people might adopt to improve their own leadership skills. Early research on the psychology of leadership suggested that people are born with innate leadership talents. Although the topic of leadership has been of interest since the beginning of time, formal leadership theories have only recently begun to surface. In this section, trait and contingency leadership theories will be addressed in the context of VLCC.
According to trait theories, people are born with particular abilities and characteristics that make them more suitable for leadership roles. Leaders frequently share certain personality or behavioral traits, according to trait theories. For instance, characteristics like extroversion, self-assurance, and courage are all characteristics that may be associated with outstanding leaders. Essentially, the leader and the attributes of the leader are what make an organization successful, according to trait theory (Northouse, 2018). Finding individuals with the correct attributes, it is assumed, would improve organizational performance. By taking part in several tests, candidates can benchmark their performance and determine how strong or poor their leadership qualities are, which is one of the uses of the trait method. Tools and instruments that help people assess their ability to perform better have been developed based on this principle.
The information in the trait theory can be used by managers to determine where they stand within the company and how to strengthen that position. They can gain a thorough awareness of who they are and how their actions will affect other people inside the business. This theory helps the management become aware of their strengths and limitations so they can learn how to improve their leadership skills.
Contingency theories of leadership concentrate on specific environmental factors that could influence which specific style of leadership is most appropriate for the circumstance. This idea holds that there is no leadership style that works best in every circumstance. According to leadership specialists, White and Hodgson, genuinely effective leadership involves striking the correct balance between behaviors, needs, and context, not just the traits of the leader (Northouse, 2018). A good leader can evaluate the requirements of their followers, evaluate the situation, and then modify their conduct as necessary.
Different leaders will react differently to a variety of workplace variables, each with their unique leadership style. Project scope, team size, resources, and deadlines are a few examples of the variables that might influence a leader’s effectiveness. According to contingency theory, leaders constantly face unique challenges and must be able to admit that their circumstances play a role in some of their successes.
There are several things that can influence a leader’s performance at work. These include specifics like team size, project scope, and the deadline for results delivery. Different leaders, each with their own leadership philosophies, will react to these factors in various ways. No matter how effective a leader is, there will always be a situation that will test them, according to contingency theorists (Northouse, 2018). Leaders must therefore be prepared to admit that, in addition to their own abilities, factors outside of their control also play a role in their success. As such, it seems that contingency theory is suitable for VLCC in the context of entering foreign markets. The VLCC company plans to recruit people worldwide, and there will be people with different backgrounds. Such diversity may cause challenges to business in terms of communication, thus creating situations in which employees can demonstrate their leadership abilities. Managers and supervisors may need to either modify their leadership approach to the current circumstance or assign some of their leadership tasks to a subordinate in order to effectively manage their team.
The contingency theory has many benefits, one of which is that leaders can function effectively in any situation. Critics of this idea point out that there isn’t enough information provided in the context of any given circumstance. The importance of a scenario is the main focus of contingency theory, but the psychology of the workforce or the business itself may not receive enough attention. Additionally, it might not give enough attention to how evolving leadership styles can be.
Behavioral Dimensions
Planning, recruitment and selection, training, and remuneration are some of the key aspects of HRM practices that are designed for a new foreign market. For HR, determining the talent that exists within the company is a major task. They must identify the best candidates who can be trained for important and high-profile business-related tasks. Since it has a direct bearing on whether an employee chooses to remain with the company over the long term, it is crucial to include it in the entire employee lifecycle.
Employees must be evaluated before being advanced to the subsequent level. In a company, people at various levels do a variety of jobs. Therefore, there is not a single way to evaluate them all. However, a business cannot use various approaches for different customers. This is because they can develop universal techniques that can be used by all employees with minor modifications in parameters, HRM is crucial (Ererdi et al., 2020). This makes it easier for businesses to establish a standardized system that also works for everyone, as such VLCC needs to be aware of its own system.
Operating in international markets presents difficulties despite the potential they have brought. The company must take into account a variety of factors in order to move on the intended path. Although the duties of the human resources department do not alter as a company expands internationally, they do tend to grow. HRM must improve its flexibility, knowledge sharing, local responsiveness, and transfer of competence in order to succeed in the global market. Additionally, there is a need to create good communication, cultivate a global attitude, and place more emphasis on informal control systems. There are various areas where international HRM and domestic HRM diverge. IHRM includes more activities than domestic HRM. Furthermore, there are increasingly heterogeneous functions, and views are continually shifting. Moreover, there is a need for greater involvement in the private lives of employees, and outside influences are becoming more powerful.
An important concern for international HRM has always been recognizing and preserving cultural diversity. Any business that wants to collaborate with people from various locations and backgrounds must make a variety of changes. These adjustments should take the form of novel concepts and methods of operation, strange social customs, and innovative means of communication. People frequently have varying viewpoints because of the environments in which they were raised. The organization engaged may benefit from this because of the variety of ideas that will be generated. However, because of the disagreements that are bound to arise, it can also be difficult. Regarding this matter, HRM has a significant duty to make sure that everything proceeds smoothly and without any problems.
The workplace’s cultural variety presents difficulties for global HRM. There is a propensity for a global firm operating in a foreign market to employ people from various cultural backgrounds. The necessity for a balance between personnel from the local market and those from the employee’s country of origin is one of the causes. Employees from the parent nation should be included because they have experience with the business operations and know exactly what has to be done. Local staff members are crucial since they are knowledgeable about the target market’s home market.
Corporate homogeneity tends to be broken down when employees from various cultural backgrounds work together. Working in a partnership in such a setting becomes challenging. There may also be occasional conflicts, thus it is important for the human resource management to keep a tight check on the workers. In addition, cultural variety frequently makes it difficult to have effective communication. International HRM is aware that it is advantageous to implement suitable nonverbal business etiquette and culturally acceptable business communication (Seeck & Diehl, 2017). When a business uses foreign teams, this is quite significant. The benefits and necessity of being courteous may seem clear, but they actually depend more on knowing what an interlocutor considers to be nice. This makes certain communication-related tasks difficult for HR managers since they must make sure that the right and desired prospects are utilized in accordance with the cultural norms of the relevant market. Using assumptions as a guide can only lead to failure and unwelcome setbacks.
Strategies to Attract Local Talents
One of the key goals of HRM is to ensure the flow of employee and their commitment. This goal is predicated on the idea that committed employees will be happier, more productive, and more adaptive. For a company, commitment translates into greater loyalty, improved performance, as well as effects on a person’s sense of worth, dignity, psychological involvement, and identity. To attract local talents, there is a need to show the brand of VLCC as caring about its employees’ well-being.
An HR manager needs the best candidates to become aware of the opportunities that are advertised as soon as possible in order to connect with top talent. However, this cannot happen until the ideal candidate for VLCC is identified. This is accomplished through creating a candidate persona using research, data, and facts. An ideal applicant for the organization in connection to a specific role is represented by a candidate persona in the recruitment process. This can comprise the ideal candidate’s training, credentials, abilities, personality traits (including workplace flexibility), job history, experience, and interests, among many other things.
Employee recommendations rank among the top sources of qualified hires, along with social media and online job boards. Employee referral programs are systematic initiatives where you ask your staff to suggest qualified individuals for open positions. Employer branding must be the focal point of your talent acquisition strategy in order to be effective. This is illustrated by a 2017 LinkedIn strategy that discovered that 80% of talent acquisition managers think company branding significantly affects their ability to find exceptional people (Seeck & Diehl, 2017). The way a firm presents its “employee value proposition”—the benefits an employee receives from the employer in exchange for the benefits they provide—to many prospective employees is through its branding. Talented applicants will carefully evaluate firms before accepting any new positions. These individuals will invariably select organizations that provide the finest work-life balance, corporate culture, and career prospects. Candidates are looking for the greatest working environment. The VLCC company will have a much greater chance of luring top personnel and experiencing long-term success if it can develop a desirable employer brand. The company’s “About Us” page and employee review websites like Glassdoor are also great places to highlight the business’s distinctive qualities. This can make a highly qualified prospect choose your organization over one of the rivals.
Although attracting talents through social media and referral programs is a good strategy, there is a need to respond to cultural challenges that may occur once VLCC expand to a foreign market. The complex whole that comprises knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws, customs, and other skills and habits that a person develops as a part of a society is referred to as culture. First and foremost, culture determines the kind of people who join an organization. People are typically shaped in a certain way by culture, which tends to imprint their personalities. Additionally, not everyone in a given culture has to be the same. Within a culture, there are subcultures. Due to genes, culture, subculture, family, and specific personal experiences, each individual is unique and has their own idiosyncrasies.
Second, a worker’s attitude toward their job is influenced by their cultural background. For instance, it is well known that Indian laborers are deeply apathetic regarding their jobs. This is because it is believed that outcomes are predetermined, and work is separated from outcomes. Tasks are completed without enthusiasm, commitment, or pride. Even worse are the lack of discipline, the persistent mistrust of coworkers, the fundamental mistrust of those in power, and the bad man-management connections. Thirdly, culture plays a role in time dimension, which has an impact on HRM. People’s orientation toward the past, present, or future is referred to as time orientation. People in some communities tend to look past, while others have a tendency to be more at the moment. Workers in HRM care more about the personnel on their roles in societies that prioritize the present. The above-mentioned cultural challenges can be tackled by effective communication of an HR manager with employees. There also can be a punishment system that will control the behavior of workers and make them follow the general rules of the VLCC company at work.
Conclusion and Recommendations
In conclusion, a global organization like VLCC needs to address a wide range of potential issues. This is typically done with by the IHRM department, which employs a number of tactics, including ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric, and more. Utilizing polycentric policy, the host branch of the organization can hire local labor. This introduces the host branch to the local customs and traditions. This fosters local awareness within the organization while assisting the organization in adapting to the local environment. Cross-cultural training is one alternative because it is seen as the major means of resolving cultural issues. Additionally, the organization could choose to utilize a more international coherence policy approach when dealing with employees. While this resolves the majority of potential cultural clashes, it can also lead to additional issues, such as making the organization appear haughty to the host nations.
IHRM may also concentrate on how various organizations manage their personnel internationally. The fact that maintaining visas and work permits often entails substantial operating costs is another reason why Geocentric could assist cut costs. However, some businesses like VLCC may decide to relocate a small portion of their workforce across international borders in order to share the insider information they have acquired from their host offices.
Human resource management internationally is more complex than domestically. In various national contexts, it investigates how multinational organizations manage their human resources. A thorough awareness of the cultural, legal, political, ethical, and economic variations among the world’s nations and their citizens is necessary for effective international human resource management. The human resource managers must convince individuals from various nations to accept overseas assignments while also ensuring that they follow all rules and regulations set forth by the government of the host nation.
The goal of cross-cultural management is to manage potential cultural conflicts inside an organization. A company must have a balanced awareness of many cultures in order to conduct business globally. For instance, management techniques that are effective in one nation may not be effective in another. Consequently, acquiring pertinent knowledge about geographic location and cultural diversity is one of the important methods that an IHRM department will need to execute.
To further demonstrate this concept, consider the fact that every country has its own unique set of underlying beliefs and philosophies, which will be mirrored in the way that nation’s society and economy function. It is crucial to keep in mind that different cultures will have different values, and these values may have an impact on how HR departments organize, carry out, and assign tasks to their staff. It is essential for an IHRM to be aware of these challenges. Normal HR actions, as previously noted in this study, will therefore need to take into account the customs and consensus of the hosting nation. The problem that results from this is how to allocate time and money to learning about cultural diversity and cross-cultural management techniques.
IHRM not only offers a company the perfect platform to expand into a worldwide market, but it also offers useful research for conventional HR departments to internationalize themselves by giving them knowledge of MNC operations. As an illustration, reports from the IHRM can offer a range of information on the demographics they are working with, the financial challenges they encounter, the views of their workforce, the stage of the company’s life cycle, and how they approach informing people. Through the addition of significant research and solutions, this will allow national HR departments to create new management strategies that will aid them in their approach to employee relations and staffing inside the national HR department.
Reference List
Cooke, F. L. et al. (2019) ‘How far has international HRM travelled? A systematic review of literature on multinational corporations (2000–2014),’ Human Resource Management Review, 29(1), pp. 59-75.
Ererdi, C. et al. (2020) ‘International HRM in the context of uncertainty and crisis: A systematic review of literature (2000–2018),’ The International Journal of Human Resource Management, pp. 1-39.
Northouse, P.G. (2018) Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice. Los Angeles: SAGE
Seeck, H. and Diehl, M. R. (2017) ‘A literature review on HRM and innovation–taking stock and future directions,’ The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 28(6), pp. 913-944.
VLCC Health. (n.d.). VLCC. Web.