INTRODUCTION

An LTO in Saudi Arabia is experiencing problems with expatriate native-speaker teaching staff, who, unable to cope with both the wider national culture and the organizational culture, often leave a few months into their two-year contracts.

The academic director of an Intensive English Program based at a US university is having trouble keeping staff motivated as they feel marginalized and treated as ‘second class citizens’ within the academic culture of the university.

The recently appointed director of studies of an LTO in Spain is involved in a conflict with a teacher who has worked at the LTO for many years and who feels aggrieved at being passed over for promotion into the DOS position.

These situations all illustrate human resource management (HRM) issues. The subject of HRM includes discussion of what motivates your staff, how you can evaluate their performance, how your staff can develop themselves, and how to get the best out of your staff, as well as more detailed questions such as how to hire (and fire) staff, and dealing with local labour laws regarding staffing.

On a simple level, it has been said that what we call human resource management (or managing people) boils down to answering three fundamental questions:

• 1 Why do people work for you?

• 2 Why do people apply for jobs with you?

• 3 Why do people leave?

In this chapter we will look at all these questions, with the exception of specific details on local labour law, which is not within the scope of this book.

STAFFING

Organizational ‘fit’

In Chapter 2 we saw how an organization can be seen more holistically than as merely a collection of roles, and that we should take into account the people who perform those functions, specifically their needs, values, talents, and personalities. It follows that when selecting staff for a new job, one of the most important questions to ask is whether the candidate will ‘fit’ the culture of the organization, and, conversely, how well the organization will fit that candidate.