HR-specific challenges in Spain
As the trend to internationalize continues, companies in many countries, despite their various cultures, had been forced to adopt the generally-accepted and highly efficient global practices to gain their relative competitive strength in the world market. However, national cultures are still one of the greatest obstacles to successful international human resource management (HRM) practices. Culture exerts its influence upon moulding what are thought of as good and effective management, what are expected from a well-functioning company and how career success is defined in a subtle way (Laurent, 1986).
Without doubts, Spaniards sometimes think and do in their unique way due to its historical root and hence there should be some differences in human resource management which in turn bring out certain nationally specific HR challenges.
First and foremost, Spanish people tend to be quite resistant to geographic mobility (Pin et al., 2008). As a result, they generally have a strong preference for stable workplace and internal promotion had become the main method to climb up the career ladder. Moreover, the workers, in general, do not have much opportunity for training like their superiors, especially in smaller local companies (Baruel, 1996). This is partially the result of insufficient expenditure on training in Spain, although Spanish companies do emphasize the importance of training and in the meantime government and other social agents support the cause via policy design to boost training initiative (Florez-Saborido et al., 1992; Holden & Livian, 1992;Cabrera, E. F., & Carretero, J. M., 2005). This creates some very HR specific challenges for a multinational to conduct business in Spain. For example, it would be relatively hard to hire a qualified employee just from the rigid local labour market or find the right person to train and promote internally. This is not to mention that most of the young employees did not even have a permanent position in companies and low unemployment rate still played quite a crucial role in talent selection.
Secondly, trade union could be a troubling matter. Due to Spanish inclination of collectivism, trade union had consolidated its influence over the years and it worsened the rigidity of the labour market. Moreover, it creates an opposite standpoint for employees within the union against the management team restricting the possibility of mutual benefit (Ferner et al., 2001). In addition, work unions seem to enjoy such influential status and power and unified strikes are not uncommon in Spain (Filella, 1992).
Last but not least, many Spanish workers might lack motivation to display a hardworking attitude to work. This might have several causes. Spanish culture is analyzed to be more ‘feminine’ hence there might be lacking upward mobility within organization. Moreover, its attribute of collectivism makes it harder for an individual worker to put great effort into promotion when other blue collar coworkers want more equality. The compensation system truly makes it worse by setting a relatively high fixed wage and low variable wage. This would discourage employees from working harder.
