Introduction

Thanks to the expansion of globalization, several businesses have developed overseas to gain
competitive advantages and increase profit. Human resource is an important factor in creating
several benefits for businesses such as potential market, more customers, and high-quality
employee while also raising several issues such as recruitment and selection, performance
management, and reward. To have a better understanding of human resource management, a case
study of SEAREFICO is applied. SEAREFICO is currently the second biggest M&E firm in
Vietnam, which cooperated with Taisei Oncho as a joint venture, a Japanese company based
M&E industry on increasing its market size and expanding overseas in the future. As I am
currently a consultant of SEAREFICO, the company has faced two main issues (1) shortage of
employees from ethnic minority groups and (2) increase employee motivation without increase
payment. Based on a theoretical analysis of the recruitment and motivational problems, some
solutions are generated to solve (1) and (2).

Regarding (1), which could be a costly investment, it contributes great success to an

organization's performance as SEAREFICO cannot recruit enough candidates from ethnic
minorities, which results in a lack of talent pool for the company to increase the organization's
overall performance. Hence, the solution should be to improve the recruitment and selection of
SEAREFICO to attract more potential candidates, especially for ethnic minorities.

For (2), it is essential as a reward can have a large impact on the employees' motivation. As
SEAREFICO does not want to increase the payment but still increase their employee's
motivation, it may result in low employee satisfaction. Hence, the solution is changing the
reward policy in terms of the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to increase employees' higher
motivation.

Finding and discussion

The practice of human resource management at SEAREFICO
SEAREFICO is responsible for designing equipment installation and maintenance while also
consulting in air-conditioning and electrical systems in the M&E industry (Searefico, 2021). The
company applied human resource theory to have clear human resource policies to recruit the
right candidates, training workshops, and remuneration strategy. According to Armstrong (2014),
human capital includes the knowledge, skills, and abilities of humans used in the company. The
term human resource management was developed by Michigan (Fombrun et al., 1984), which
shows how to manage organization structure and human resource system to match organizational
strategies. In practice, many companies have seen employees as valuable resources and put them
at the center of organizations. Armstrong (2014) also stated that many aspects are connected with
human resources within an organization, such as recruitment and selection, performance and
reward management, employee wellbeing, and talent management. In the case of SEAREFICO,
the company applied a "soft approach" to human resource management. According to Paauwe
and Boselie (2005), the soft approach is focused on employee wellbeing for their good
performance. In other words, this approach is trying to maximize employee development and
treat them fairly. For example, the leadership style of SEAREFICO managers is consultative as
they often help and support the employees to develop their own skills and achieve the tasks more
effectively at the workplace.

Current issues of SEAREFICO in practice HRM

Issue (1): a shortage of employees from ethnic minority groups

Dowling et al. (2013) defined the recruiting process as looking for the right candidates with high
quality and quantity in performing a task that the company required. Whenever the process is
finished, the organization will approach selecting the best candidate for the position. The
interviewer will put all information about the candidates to compare and evaluate each
candidate's strengths and weaknesses to improve the selection process (Dowling, P. et al., 2013).
Furthermore, many multinational corporations invest a huge budget in the recruitment and
selection process due to intense competition in the global market; hence, talent attraction
increases their competitive advantage and sustainable growth (CIPD, 2018). Meanwhile,
Robbins & Judge (2018) assumed many differences in recruiting and selecting at the workplace.
For instance, in several important positions in an international company, the CEO decides to
recruit internally by seeking local employees or ex-pats.
Regarding SEAREFICO, the company has not recruited enough employees from ethnic
minorities group. According to Hutnik (1991), an ethnic minority is a group of people who differ
in race, color, nation, religion, and cultural background from the dominant group of the country
where they live. In the case of SEAREFICO, the ethnic minority group is Japanese. As the
company is a joint venture with a Japanese company, some Japanese ex-pats were sent from the
home country to Vietnam to build trust with other Japanese businesses and get more projects in
the future. At the same time, it also helps training the local engineering staff. Since it was a
transfer of employees, SEAREFICO did not recruit Japanese employees properly. Additionally,
it is challenging to recruit Japanese employees who can speak English or Vietnamese fluently.
As Gymboree (2008) stated, there are only 5.5% among the Japanese population who can speak
English, and the country ranked itself at 138 out of 148 countries compared to other Asian
countries. Hence, there is a shortage of ethnic minority groups at the SAEREFICO workplace.
This resulted in a shortage of high skilled and special knowledge needed for the organization to
improve the performance as the M&E industry required specialist knowledge and experience.

Solution: set up a structured interview in the recruitment and selection process

Schmidt & Hunter (1998) proposed recruitment is attracting the suitable standard of applicants
who apply for the vacancies. There are internal recruitment (job posting, career ladders,
supervisor referrals) and external recruitment (job posting advertisement, online talent attraction,
educational institutions). In contrast, the selection is a process of finding the most suitable
candidate from the talent pool by evaluating the main characteristics and qualities required for
the job. For the case study of SEAREFICO, the company should recruit externally due to the
larger skilled candidates pool and more potential candidates. Meanwhile, the company also needs
to set up a structured interview as a suitable method. The company wants all the interviewers to
work from the same basic list of questions for a particular job recruitment and selection process.
In the interview, there is room for customized follow-up questions, which depend on candidates'
answers. SEAREFICO will also apply the situation-based questions to reduce the bias and
inconsistency in the structured interview. Thus, this could help the company determine the best
candidates with cognitive ability and critical thinking while also making the interview more
reliable. On the other hand, the structured interview could take much time to answer all the
questions. To conduct a structured interview, SEAREFICO has to set up the top senior managers
to participate in the interview to evaluate the best candidates, which required a long time and a
large investment in the recruitment and selection process. Thus, some interviews could be more
stereotyping and much relied on the interview's perception.

Issue (2): Increase employee’s motivation without increase pay

According to Robbins & Judge (2018), motivation is defined as employees' enthusiasm and
passion for a particular job. Extrinsic motivation involves engaging in an activity to earn a
reward and get satisfaction (Robbins & Judge, 2018). This often comes from outside, such as
obtain awards or recognition. In contrast, intrinsic motivation comes from the inside of a
person, such as interest, enjoyment (Robbins & Judge, 2018). It involves engagement in an
activity due to psychological rewards or its own sake. Many organizations used the money to
motivate employee's performance; for example, payment will rely on the objective result of the
work like piece rate, sales commission, merit pay, and bonus (Grant, 2008). On the other hand,
Hertzberg's research stated that payment would not connect to job satisfaction; for instance,
his studies showed that employees who receive high bonuses tend to perform worse than
others due to stress and distraction (Grant, 2008). In this case, SEAREFICO does not want to
increase pay for the employees but still keep their motivation increase as the company believes
increase pay could result in higher distraction, conflicts, and poor performance.

Solution: Using Job Design to motivate employees

Job design is understood as the jobs are created to be more meaningful, purposeful, and valuable
to improve the employees' higher experience and knowledge during working (Hackman &
Oldham, 1976). In other words, the task's characteristics should be designed to make the
employees interesting and attracted to work. Although it needs a long time and a resource to
create a job design, it is crucial to contribute to the employees' job satisfaction (Armstrong,
2014). Hence, to increase employees' motivation, SEAREFICO should design jobs to be more
flexible and rotate. For example, the employees can have the autonomy to come to the office or
work from home. Thus, the employees can also shift from one task to another to increase multi-
tasking and more experience at the workplace. The benefit of job design creates a more
enjoyable, interesting, and meaningful (Hackman & Oldham, 1976). Hence, this can have a
strong impact on the psychology of the employees. As a result, this leads to higher satisfaction,
better performance, and low absenteeism. Meanwhile, with the job design being more
autonomous and flexible, an employee of SEAREFICO can be more engaged and commit to
working results. This could be seen as an extrinsic reward to promote interest in a task or skills
that employees do not have any interest in before.

CONCLUSION 
Human resource has become very important in the organization today. The company should
consider carefully conducting this term in practice as it impacts job satisfaction and employee
motivation. Moreover, SEAREFICO has not hired enough ethnic minority groups due to a lack
of effective recruitment and selection process while also increasing the employee's motivation
without increasing pay. The solutions above could help the company to solve these issues more
effectively and quickly. In contrast, the top senior managers of SEAREFICO must apply
professionally and appropriately to reduce the high level of turnover since most of the employees
leave the managers, not the company.

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