The Competitive Nature of the Global Environment

The competitive nature of the global environment has created many challenges for all organisations. Organisations must be able to adapt to dynamic change and have flexible business models for this. Human resource management (HRM) is the management of an organisations employees (ref) and is an integral part to today’s dynamic business environment. It aids organisations in achieving its goals and targets. Singapore International Airlines (SIA) was started in 1947 and it now one of the world’s most popular airlines. It boasts over 106 aircrafts and achieves sales revenue of $US 9.38 billion in 2005 (ref). SIA flies to over 65 destinations making it a true international airline based from Changi, Singapore. SIA prides itself on its renown customer service and its Singaporean Girls image (ref). SIA’s mission statement prides itself on “dedicating to provide air transportation services of the highest quality” (ref). In order to achieve this, SIA effectively utilises it’s HRM strategy to instil it as a competitive advantage. SIA places a lot of emphasis and views staff and training as a long term investment.

The HRM process used successfully by SIA involved the search for potential employees and to effectively manage staff in their organisation. In order to acquire the most suitable employee, SIA undertake human resources planning, recruitment and selection.

Human resource planning is undertaken to assist an organisation to achieve its goals through identifying current and future human resource needs (ref). Good planning allows organisations to plan up to three years in advance and prepare an estimate forecast planning situations involving minor restructuring and expanding and reducing the employees (Liu, a. 2010; Wirtz J, Heracleous L. and Pangarkar N. 2008).In order to find the best candidates for SIA, they thoroughly plan their course of action. SIA human resource will assess applicants against various criteria. For example SIA will screen cabin crew candidates based on physical attributes, academic qualifications, and personality. Those who successfully pass move onto the next stage will undergo three different interviews, uniform checks, a water confidence test, psychometric test and attend a tea party (ref). SIA will then select approximately 500 of the candidates to join the existing air hostess’s at SIA. SIA will monitor new employees for the first six months where by supervisors will evaluate each new hostess and determine whether further employment is warranted. Only twenty percent of the recruitment drive will have a new contract offered for five years. SIA is a great example of human resource planning as they plan for the future and to ensure they have sufficient staff to adhere to the standards set my SIA’s hospitality. Due to the dynamic nature of SIA’s business environment many factors internally and externally will affect the demand for human resources and organisational changes. For example,