Human resource management innovation in regional Australia

This case study investigates the challenges of attracting and retaining staff in regional labour markets. It outlines how a regional company thrived, expanding in a competitive market, and confidently deciding to compete not on cost but on a different value proposition for its employees and its clients. Our case study referred to anonymously as ‘RegionalOrg’ has its head office in North Queensland. The study included multiple sources of data, including company policy and strategy documents, as well as interviews and focus groups with key personnel involved in the development and application of RegionalOrg’s human resource (HR) policies and processes. Despite regional skills shortages, RegionalOrg has been successful in attracting and retaining quality staff. The chapter sheds light on RegionalOrg’s HR recruitment and retention strategies and challenges. It outlines RegionalOrg’s clear business strategy, and how that business strategy and value proposition is the basis of its attraction and retention of employees

Environmentally friendly social changes: Profiling individuals for household food waste reductions

This article focuses on the ongoing challenge of management interventions seeking social change in pursuit of greater environmental sustainability. We seek to improve the segmentation of individuals to inform the design of customised interventions in the challenging and globally important area of reducing food waste. Given the limited explanatory power associated with socio-demographic characteristics in the segmentation process, we included a behavioural component based on the Stages of change model. Data was collected through an online survey completed by a representative sample of Australian adults (N = 944) who buy food for their household. Results show a large proportion of individuals (around 70%) are already actively involved in reducing food waste. We identified four meaningful clusters of individuals namely, Self-centred, Uninvolved, Concerned, and Passionate. Those in Concerned and Passionate clusters, which comprised 29% and 26% of the participants respectively, will benefit from interventions highlighting environmental impact. We contribute to literature by highlighting the benefits of incorporating stages of change with socio-demographics to create meaningful groups where enhanced impact can be achieved from customised interventions. © 2019, © 2019 Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand Inc

Profiling intrapreneurs to develop management interventions: Evidence from Sri Lanka

Intrapreneurship, defined as the entrepreneurial behaviour of employees in established firms, has received growing research and practitioner attention. Despite increased efforts to develop and promote intrapreneurial behaviour, little is known about characteristics differentiating high intrapreneurs from low intrapreneurs. This research attempts to understand if and how intrapreneurs differ based on their demographic characteristics. Using intrapreneurship data collected from 329 middle level employees from Sri Lanka, we first carried out K- mean cluster analysis. The results suggest that the respondents belong to two significantly different (p = 0.000) clusters. Around 65% of our respondents belong to high intrapreneurship cluster while the remainder belong to low intrapreneurship cluster. We then carried cross tabulation analysis to derive demographic profiles for each cluster based on age, years of experience, industry, educational qualifications, and gender. The standardized residuals revealed that females are significantly higher (than expected frequency) in low intrapreneurship cluster and significantly lower in high intrapreneurship cluster. Overall, gender reveals to be a significant differentiator between intrapreneurship clusters. Our findings contribute to theory by providing novel insights on demographic profiles related to intrapreneurship. From practitioners’ perspective, it suggests that management interventions promoting intrapreneurial behaviour in organisations should specifically target females

Attraction and retention of employees in an Australian regional SME: The importance of place and scale in human resource management

Purpose This study examines employee attraction and retention issues and uses a case study of an Australian regional medium-sized enterprise to highlight the importance of organisational context factors such as place and scale in designing human resource (HR) solutions Design/methodology/approach The research presents a qualitative case study, with data drawn from strategic documents, interviews and focus groups, analysed thematically. Findings A carefully constructed set of HR strategies – including purposeful use of employer branding, synchronising of human resource management (HRM) formality and informality and capitalising on the regional context – are key to employee attraction and retention and in turn the growth and competitiveness of the case study organisation. Originality/value The HRM literature acknowledges the tendency to study larger corporations in metropolitan areas, at the expense of more nuanced research related to context. This research contributes to knowledge of attraction and retention through employer branding, with particular attention to scale and place, through study of a medium sized firm in a regional location. It highlights the importance of informality-formality dynamism

The role of corporate social performance (CSP) on the talent attraction: A conceptual framework

Talent Management is found to significantly impact the organizational competitive performance and thus, has received increased research and practitioners’ attention over the past two decades. The shortage of talent has pushed the corporates to a war for talent which focuses on attracting, engaging and retaining the right talent over competitors. The strategies of attracting the right talent therefore have become the vital first step in Talent Management. The existing literature suggests Corporate Social Performance (CSP) to facilitate attracting the right talent. However, the literature emphasizes the need for context specific research to identify factors influencing talent attraction. Meantime, if and how CSP assists talent attraction in Sri Lankan context has received very limited attention. </p

Individual performance: Do we measure it accurately?

Despite increasing efforts to accurately measure individual work performance (IWP), performance measures have payed limited attention to the relative importance (RI) of each performance dimension on respective employees’ performance. In our attempt to test if including RI better captures IWP, we adopted a quantitative study. We collected performance data of 329 Sri Lankan middle level employees from respective supervisors. Using structural equation modelling, we found that both performance items alone and performance dimensions with RI methods are valid and reliable, yet the latter has significantly higher levels of model fit compared to the former. Thus, including RI of each performance dimension better captures IWP than performance dimensions alone. Our paper contributes to theory and provides useful insights to practice

Competitive advantage through HR innovation

Despite great recognition for human resources (HR) as a source of value addition within firms, HR innovation remains poorly understood. Providing practical examples and evidence from our work in Australian manufacturing and service firms, this paper attempts to explore how firms can gain competitive advantage through HR innovation

Learning capabilities, human resource management innovation and competitive advantage

The growing literature on innovation pays limited attention to the role of human resource management (HRM) innovation in creating competitive advantage. This paper adopts a knowledge-based approach to examine how firms design and implement HRM innovations (HRMIs) and how such innovations support competitive advantage. Drawing from multiple streams of literature and qualitative evidence from Australian manufacturing and service firms, our findings reveal that human resource (HR) functional-level learning capabilities, through which HR professionals build and nurture new knowledge configurations, facilitate the design and implementation of HRMIs. The findings also reveal that HRMIs, when coupled with top management support, can play a vital role in firm competitive advantage. Addressing the limitations of the term radical innovations to fully capture HRMIs and based on our findings and extant literature we propose a new classification that will capture the unique nature of HRMIs. In addition to contributing to theory, our paper provides valuable insights to practitioners for building and nurturing learning capabilities for HRMI-related competitive advantage. © 2016, © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

The hardest part of my job is to say ‘No’ to volunteers: An exemplary model of volunteer management within a food rescue organisation

The involvement and effective management of volunteers in Not-for-profit sector have become critical with the retracted government funding and increasing service demand. Whilst most Not-for-profit organisations are struggling to attract, train, utilise and retain their volunteering workforce, some organisations have the opposite problem—a surplus of volunteering labour that they have to say ‘No’ to. This paper deploys an exploratory case study approach in investigating the volunteer management processes of an exemplary Australian food rescue organisation and discovers that its success is largely attributable to its social entrepreneurial model of volunteer management. It then identifies the unique challenges this model brings. This study advances volunteer management literature by extending theoretical model and identifying its major HRM challenges

The role of volunteers in social innovation: A research overview

Despite the consensus that volunteers play an increasingly important role in social development, the topic on volunteers in social innovation has received limited research attention. Drawing from the human resource management (HRM), volunteering, and social innovation literature, this conceptual paper aims to (a) establish the current state of the knowledge in this area, and (b) highlight the underexplored areas in the current knowledge. To this end, we make three key contributions. First, we highlight research gaps in the current volunteer management literature from a HRM perspective. Second, we highlight research gaps in the role of volunteers in design, development, and implementation of social innovation. Third, we propose food rescue as a context to further research in this area