The Human Resource Function - Essay Example

They include staffing, training and development, managing employee relations, employee compensation, and managing employee relations. In modern organizations, the HR department is considered to be of strategic importance. The concept of SHRM (strategic human resource management) is now widely acknowledged and applied. SHRM links human resource management with the strategic management of a company (Uysal, 2013). Despite these developments, human resource management has continued to experience growing challenges. This has been mainly because of the changes affecting it. For example, globalization has affected human resource management in various ways. Today, organizations have to deal with employees from different countries and cultures. Moreover, organizations have to deal with different age groups of employees including the old generations and the young generations. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the management of gender and generational issues in the workplace. The paper is based on an interview with a former colleague who is called Cherry. She is the training manager in the HR department at Sheraton Dongguan Hotel in China.

Challenges of Managing Different Genders

            Cherry is a female. She works with other people in the hotel. In terms of gender ratio, the hotel has more female employees than men. Out of the eight employees, seven are female and one is male. This means that there is gender imbalance because only one male employee works with seven female employees. As the training manager in the HR department, Cherry often deals with these employees. Her role involves identifying the training needs for the employees and organizing training programs for them. Therefore, she meets with them often.

Working with Male and Female Employees

            Although Cherry is female, she prefers working with male employees. She considers male and female employees to be quite different. According to her, male employees are more rational in their thinking and generous. However, Cherry feels that women are more emotional, which often affects their rational thinking and decisions. From this assertion, it is clear that one of the main challenges Cherry is dealing with is the irrational thinking of the female employees who form the majority in the workplace. She has to deal with the emotional nature of the female employees. She also admits that she sometimes becomes irrational because of her emotional disposition. It is quite a challenge when she has to deal with the other women in the workplace because each side may become too emotional. This may have a major negative impact on their relationships at work.

            Additionally, the emotional predisposition of female employees in the workplace may affect decision-making. According to Altman (2012), failure to manage emotions could adversely affect decision-making.