Contemporary issues in human resource management Assignment

Contemporary issues in human resource management - Assignment Example The study aims at highlighting the contemporary issues involved in human resource management, such as discriminations, job stress, safety issues, emotional labour, diversity, and employee burnout. In this report specifically the issue of Virgin Australia Airline has been chosen and their new policy of not allowing male passengers to sit beside children, as they are considered unsafe. This policy was regarded as a discrimination approach of Virgin Airlines, by its male customer. In such cases the role of human resource management and the department needs to be evaluated. Human resource management (HRM) plays a very important role in the development of modern economies. The difference between developed and developing countries lies in difference in their human resources, otherwise most of the resources are same. It has been seen that though exploiting the financial, physical, natural resources are very important in modern times, but none of them are as important as committed and efficient work force. It is often said that most of the development come from the human minds (Robbins, and Coulter, 2008, p. 366-367). The traditional importance of HRM was due to the recruitment and selection process which they handled, but now a strategic approach of HRM in administration, personnel management and other accomplishments have made the role of HRM momentous in organizations. There are numerous additional roles that the human resource department of the company has to supervise along with staffing and selection of the employees. These roles includes training the employees, monitoring performance of the employee for appraisal, job analysis, ascertaining the remuneration for a particular job position.., allotting incentives for good performance, taking care of the employee benefit policies of the company, acting as a communication channel between the employees and the top level management, developing employee welfare, safety and health care plans, taking care of promotions, transfers, maintaining industrial relationships, handling the issues of the Trade Union, solving disputes within the employees or departments, assessing the ethical issues in the department or organization, etc (Aswathappa, 2008, p. 5-6). The human resource department also has the responsibility to ensure that gender discrimination does not prevail in the organisation on the basis of gend er, according to the Civil Rights Act 1964 (Kurtz, and Boone, 2008, p. 54). Problem Areas This section involves the contemporary issues of human resource with respect to Virgin Australia Airline. The company has recently reviewed its policies in which they have restricted men to sit beside children on the flights. The policy