Margaret Patrickson

The new covenant of employability

Purpose – Changing career patterns and the erosion of job security have led to a growing emphasis on employability as a basis for career and employment success. The written and psychological contracts between employer and employer have become more transactional and less relational, and loyalty is no longer a guarantee of ongoing employment. Individuals are thus expected to take primary responsibility for their own employability rather than relying on the organisation to direct and maintain their careers. The purpose of this paper is to identify and examine the assumptions underpinning the concept of employability and evaluate the extent to which employability has been adopted as a new covenant in the employment relationship.Design/methodology/approach – Through a review of relevant literature the paper discusses current research on careers and employability and examines the available evidence regarding its adoption as a basis for contemporary employment relationships.Findings – The paper finds that the tr...

Interpersonal communication skills that enhance organisational commitment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to investigate the interpersonal communication skills that human resource (HR) managers expect managers in supervisory positions possess. Second, to identify which of these skills HR managers expect managers use to engender subordinate commitment to the organisation. Third, the paper aims to investigate what interpersonal communication skills that enhance employee commitment to the organisation are most lacking in managers in supervisory positions.Design/methodology/approach – The approach of the study is a series of in‐depth interviews with 32 senior HR managers in organisations with over 100 staff.Findings – The paper finds that senior HR managers expected managers to be effective in interpersonal communication focusing mainly on the clarity and frequency of the messages, their ability to actively listen and the ability to lead in a collaborative way. The way messages were sent, especially their clarity, and a leadership style that engendered trus...

Bounded choices in work and retirement in Australia

Australia, together with most other developed and developing countries, faces a difficult demographic pattern in the first half of the twenty‐first century, due to a low and declining birth rate and an ageing population. This has led to an ageing workforce, with a relative shortage of younger entrants. One issue for government is what further steps they could initiate to persuade more people to remain in the labour force beyond the currently median retiring age of around 55 years. Employers will need to consider the degree to which they are prepared to reverse present negative attitudes towards employment of older staff, and workers need to resolve whether they need or desire to keep working and under what conditions. Boundaries constructed by government policy and employer actions, and their resolution by older individuals, form the content of this paper. The paper concludes that employers now face the management of up to four generational groups and resolving their intergenerational differences will present as a major future challenge. Revisiting practices for managing older workers will be essential and the paper offers suggestions for employers towards more effective utilisation of their older staff and more effective integration of workers of all age groups.

Teleworking: potential employment opportunities for older workers?

Advances in technology have significantly expanded the capacity of individuals to undertake their work role outside the confines of their employers’ premises, and changes in industrial relations policies and practices in Australia have facilitated organisational willingness to explore such possibilities. A significant portion of all off‐site working is undertaken by employees at home, and this group increasingly consists of teleworkers who undertake data processing activities in a home office communicating the results to their employer via modem or phone. This paper considers whether such changes, especially the recent growth in teleworking, can generate potential work opportunities for those who have traditionally been marginalised in the workforce. In particular the paper explores whether teleworking might open employment opportunities to older workers. It concludes that though older workers might offer as potentially viable candidates for this type of work activity they are unlikely to be successful in gaining employment given present employer attitudes and practices.

Human resource management in Australia ‐ Prospects for the twenty‐first century

In Australia, globalization, together with economic and political developments internal to the country, has resulted in deregulation of the former institution‐based system of industrial relations. The labor force is now more qualified, casualised and diverse than at any previous point in history. Human resource (HR) practitioners have responded by placing greater emphasis on aligning HR strategy with corporate strategy, devoting greater effort to performance management and exploring new forms of flexible work arrangements, increasing their reliance on legal expertise, and increasing their adoption of computerized HR management systems.

Externalizing the workforce: Australian trends and issues for HRM

Changes in internal and external labor markets through externalization of the workforce or the development of contingent and core distinctions have been intensified in Australia by globalization, competitive pressures and political changes. An extensive literature describes and analyzes these changes and empirically assessed variables influencing the extent of externalization and the strategies associated with it. Very little attention has been given to the implications of these changes for human resource management. This article reviews some reasons for the high rate of externalization in Australia and identifies some issues which face human resource management as externalization continues to rise.

Assessment of communication skills in manager selection: some evidence from Australia

– The purpose of this paper is to ascertain to what extent organisations specifically use communication skills as a key criterion in their selection and subsequent development of managerial staff., – The paper presents empirical findings from semi‐structured qualitative interviews conducted with senior HR managers in large to medium sized organisations in Southern Australia., – This study suggests that HR practitioners regard communication skills as subsumed under a generic idea of leadership. There were no specific programs reported that explicitly targeted communication skills., – The findings contribute to knowledge concerning the nature of communication skills for managerial staff such as, interpersonal, verbal, written and listening skills. Further, time needs to be allocated to the audit of training in the development of communication skills so that HR professionals are clear on the action that needs to be taken., – The paper will be of value to researchers, HR practitioners and consultants in the management development field. The papers main finding is that despite repeated claims that communication skills are important for successful managerial performance, HR managers only assess these informally during managerial selection and rarely target these skills in training staff for managerial positions. It is recommended that HR staff need to review these practices towards a more targeted communication skills appraisal that would measure the extent to which these skills are already apparent at selection and develop further following additional training.

Women in Education and Early Retirement

Reports on the attitudes of a small sample of older women in education to the future options of either continuing to participate in their chosen profession or retiring early. Little interest was shown in early retirement, partly because it was not an attractive financial option for many of the sample and partly because the majority of the women expressed strong commitment to continued workforce participation. The study highlights how former discriminatory practices in access to superannuation membership have disadvantaged women by not providing them with comparable financial benefits when their organizations begin to downsize and offer voluntary separation packages. Concludes with the thought that organizations should re‐examine their stereotypes of older workers and implement policies which will use their talents more.

Implementation of evidence‐based healthcare in Papua New Guinea

AIM The aim of this research was to understand how health workers in developing countries reach diagnostic and treatment decisions. In developing countries, health workers are often forced to make diagnostic and treatment decisions based on limited knowledge, unhelpful information, infrequent and low technology back-up services and without the support of more senior staff. Yet patients continue to be treated. This paper investigates how primary healthcare workers in such contexts reach these diagnostic and treatment decisions. METHOD Using a qualitative methodology, 58 primary healthcare workers from the three primary healthcare facilities in Papua New Guinea--aid posts, sub-health centres and health centres--participated in an in-depth interview, in order to investigate how diagnostic and treatment decisions were made. RESULTS Although participants were originally trained in the biomedical model, they lived and worked in a context where other belief systems operated to diagnose and treat illness. This led to the coexistence of at least three models of treatment: the biomedical model, traditional indigenous health practices and Christian beliefs. Thus, a homogenous biomedical understanding of health and well-being was not possible in this setting, and treatment options did not always follow the biomedical recommendations. CONCLUSIONS In developing countries where competing medical frame works exist, evidence-based practices may be more difficult to implement. Although the skill and knowledge of the provider and availability of treatment resources are still important, belief in the accuracy of the diagnosis and the potency of the treatment by the patient and the patients community as well as the health provider may be just as significant.

Older Women: Retailing Utilizes a Neglected Workforce Resource

This investigation reports on the attitudes that a small group of older women working in retailing has toward continuing to participate in the workforce. Women aged over 50 generally have fewer formal educational achievements than their younger counterparts, and many of our sample (80%) have experi enced periods out of the workforce to raise families. As a group their access to superannuation has been low prior to the 1989 legislation and consequently the majority would anticipate little financial payout in the event of ceasing to work. Retailing has offered them both full-time and part-time employment opportunities, which, despite low wages, leads to reported high levels of job satisfaction, little consideration of the possibilities of retirement, and a sizable group (11%) willing to work beyond 65 if the opportunity were available. Other industries might also benefit from providing working opportunities to older women whose potential to contribute to the workforce appears to have been largely underrated.