The document discusses human resource management practices in the UK. It describes several key characteristics of British national culture, including individualism, pragmatism, and class consciousness. It notes that British employees value autonomy and see their relationship with managers as strictly contractual. Trade unions are also pragmatic and focus on negotiations rather than ideological battles. There are differences in treatment and control of manual workers versus managers. This dual system has created tensions between workers and management.

1. HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN
UK
YAMINI
NIKITHA

2. The UK, as its full name implies, is a united kingdom comprising four nations:
Scotland,England, Wales and Northern Ireland, each with certain
distinctive cultural characteristics.
However, they also share many common values and institutions which bind
them together.
The British are highly individualistic and greatly value their individual liberty;
at the sametime they care for their community and engage in collective
action when for instance they disagree with certain government policies.
This collectivism is manifested also in the UK’s strong trade union traditions
whose roots can be traced to the 18th and 19th centuries.

3. Union membership is craft based and cuts across firms and organisations. As a
result there are likely to be several unions represented in the same factory
or office, bargaining not just with employers but against each other.
British unions, unlike their counterparts in some other European countries such
as France and (pre-1989) Poland, are more pragmatic in their approach.
They fight for better pay settlements and better working conditions within the
present economic and social system rather than engage in class struggle and
ideological battles for the overthrow of the system
They see their role as one of representing the workforce, pushing for
objectives that are consciously desired by the workers themselves. Since
the1980s, a combination of decline in membership and anti-union
legislation has greatlythe powers of the trade unions.

4. Individualism appears also to influence the relationship between employees
and their bosses and their work organisations. This relationship is strictly
contractual.
British employees, unlike for instance their Japanese counterparts, do not
expect their superiors to look after them and to help them with their
personal difficulties. This would be an invasion of their privacy.
To thema manager who is concerned with the employees’ well being is one
who, for instance, provides them with up-to-date equipment so that they
can perform their tasks better.
In other words,managers and workers have an impersonal and task-oriented
relationship with one another

5. British employees, similar to the Americans, are career-oriented and join
another company if better prospects beckon. However, unlike in
America, managers tend to spend much lesson employee training.
As a result, the British workforce has far lower productivity rates than
the Americans, and indeed workers in many other leading economies.
In Hofstede’s (1980) study Britain scored low on power distance relative to
many other nations, but people do not really care as much about equality as
they do about liberty.
Both inside and outside the workplace the Britons are deferential to their
seniors; opposition to authority is usually indirect and sometimes wrapped
up in humour rather than direct challenge. Yet at the same time, they do not
like to be ordered about and hate to be dictated to. In effect, they respect
authority only when it is used well.

6. The acceptance of power inequality is also noticeable in the British class
consciousness.Almost everybody one speaks with can place themselves in
one class or other.
Family background,education, and even accent betray people’s social class. In
organisations, the class system is mirrored in the different treatments
accorded to manual workers and low-level office workers, on the one hand,
and to managers and other high-ranking office staff on the other.
Managers and other white-collar employees have normally greater advantages
over manual workers in many respects, such as power, status, pay, physical
working conditions,eating places, rules for lunch and tea breaks, and
holidays. Shopfloor workers and low-rank office clerks are subject to a
tighter control at work

7. They have to clock in and out at specific times, work in some cases, e.g. on an
assembly line conveyor belt, at a predetermined speed,and produce a
specified number of units per hour and so forth.
The managers, by contrast, can come in and go out of the company premises
whenever they like and can do their job as they see fit, provided that they
achieve their performance targets.
Their holiday entitlements, pension schemes, bonuses, share-options and the
like are disproportionately far greater than those of the shop floor
employees
This dual-treatment tradition has created a hostile ‘them and us’ attitude
among the workforce which has for a long time bedevilled the
British industrial relations.

8. Major British natural
characteristics and
management practices
National Culture
● individualism: autonomy, liberty, love of privacy, yet caring for
community small power distance, yet deference and acceptance of
inequality, class conscious aggressive, yet caring and friendly reserve:
shy, self-control, self-discipline high ideals of conduct both for
themselves and for others
● conservatism: dislike of change and uncertainty, aversion to risk, lack of
ambition
● tenacity: resilience, resourcefulness
● pragmatism: social-political realism, compromise, flexible, unwritten
constitution, common law, prepared to bend the law
when it does not suit them

9. ● chauvinism: dislike of foreigners, xenophobia
● honesty, trustworthy, and trusting
● past-orientation: love of age-old traditions, the present is a culmination of
past developments, ambivalence towards new
technology
● dislike of open conflict
HRM and other employee related values and practices
● preference to have freedom to choose their own approach, using individual
skills and abilities
● job satisfaction derived from personal sense of achievement and superior’s
recognition of individual contributions
● leadership style: persuasive
● expectation from subordinate: commitment, initiative, ownership,
responsibility, honesty

10. ● deference to authority
● comfortable with minimal amount of rules and procedures
● flexibility yet a preference to work according to the rules
● well educated, skilled and, in certain circumstances, adaptable workforces
● compliance with legislation
● short-term perspective: low expenditure on training and low employee
productivity rates compared to many leading
economies
some evidence of discrimination among employees and job applicants on the
ground of age, gender or ethnicity, ‘glass
ceiling’
● formal in communication and interpersonal relationships at work

11. ● ethnocentric attitudes towards foreign counterparts
● conservative approach towards new technology
● contractual, non-emotional relationship with the workplace
● strong trade union tradition
pragmatic trade unions: fight for better pay and working conditions not
ideologically-based class struggle against managers,
absence of serious trade union challenge to management’s prerogatives and
right to manage
● class distinction’s reflection within the workplace in the form of hostile
them-and-us attitude
● expectation of governmental involvement in employment relationships

12. THANK YOU.....