Human Capital Management: Norwegian Occupation Of Human Resources

Human recourse management or human capital management as some might chose to call it is a field of managing people as a recourse or capital to make value. This field is complex and has a lot of nuances and in this paper I am getting into the forces that changes the way HR managers work, and how this occupation might be changing because of these forces. Norway is a small country in northern Europe, mainly dependent on exporting oil, fish and other commodities. There are a lot of forces that changes the way HR managers can work in this community and I am going to take a look at three of them; the youth unemployment rate due to recession, how immigrants affect the occupation of HRM and how the values of the Norwegian people have a great impact …show more content…
Also in Norway this is a big part of the identity of people, even though in Norway it is more a mentality of work to live rather than live to work. Norwegians feel it is important to have a good balance between their work and their free time. It is not uncommon that employees leave work early on Fridays to leave for their cabins in the mountains or by the sea. Children are also highly valued in Norway and it is ok to leave work early to pick up your children from kindergarten. As a HR manager it is important to keep your employees happy and by having these flexi hours and letting your employees leave early on Fridays you make Norwegians feel like they are having a good balance between work and free time. Since children are highly valued in Norway and the mother of a child has to, by law, take 9 weeks paid leave after birth and the father have to take 14 week paid leave within the child is 3 years old. This makes the HR job a little difficult, if you hire someone in the right age to have kids you might have to give them paid leave, and in this period find someone to take over the job for them while they are away. Even though it is not legal to not hire someone because they are pregnant or planning on having a baby this is not always something you can anticipate, and as a HR manager this is a force you can have little or none power over. As long as the Norwegian lifestyle focuses that much on family values, sports and outdoors and work is just something you do to have money enough to be able to have the lifestyle you want the HRM challenges will be to have rules that is not to strict so that employees can live the lives they want on the side and when people are happy they do a better job. This is challenging in the occupation of HR in Norway because you have to adjust and design the jobs and working hours so that employees can find that balance between work and life, and also so that your