Accommodating Human Diversity in HR Design

Abstract

Organisations have always been striving for higher performance from their employees. The later half of the twentieth century witnessed massive literature endorsing the ‘human element’ to be a source of sustained competitive advantage, leading to a shift in the primary HRM focus from tasks to people. Accordingly, HR managers are increasingly compelled to design practices that have the ability to attract, retain and engage competent employees. However, even the much acclaimed High Performance Work Practices (HPWP), could not provide credible solutions in the wake of organisations going global, multi-cultural, multi-generational and gender-inclusive. Building up on this, the paper is an effort to explore through existing literature the rationale for introducing an element of flexibility while framing HR practices, which shall be able to handle employment dynamics much more responsibly.

Keywords: HRM, High Performance Work Systems, Idiosyncratic Deals, Customisation

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