Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources

Assessing and developing people both in their present job and indeed for future jobs is a complex and often unreliable business. Yet for many organizations where manpower numbers have been cut and competition has become stronger, placing the right person in the right job can be a critical determinant to future profitability.

While Human Resource Officers may have little preparation for dealing with personal questions, when they enter an organisation they already have mental maps which guide and predict their behaviour. The Repertory Grid enabled the personal construct systems of fourteen H.R.O.'s. to be studied. The elements consisted of Critical Career Incidents and between three and eighteen constructs were elicited. Though the grids were focused statistically, the verbal labels of the constructs also showed that experiences in the organisations were largely seen in terms of threats to power, autonomy, self-esteem, skills and sense of belonging. Nine of the H.R.O.'s left within eighteen months. Feelings of learned helplessness accompanied these decisions.

This paper looks at resource transfers effected by superannuation tax favours — and finds them substantial and directed towards high earners.

• It looks at five common defences of this tax favouring — and finds them inadequate.

• It sees the tax favours as one prong of national superannuation — and the Age Pension as the other.

• It looks at the Age Pension system — and finds it a poor device for making transfers in accordance with needs.

• It recommends that we discard the "needs" aim — and restructure national superannuation by removal of needs tests, tax favours, and tax on superannuation benefits.

• It sees significant benefits arising from such changes — and national superannuation better fitted to our employment future.

Many employers provide for the payment of tuition at an institution of higher education as a part of their overall employee benefit package. This article asks the very simple question: Why don't more employees take advantage of this particular benefit?

The available evidence suggests that Repetition Strain Injuries are increasing rapidly in Australia. Traditional techniques for eliminating the causes and providing cures seem to be lagging behind the rate of increase. At the Sydney factory of Sheridan Textiles an osteopath has been introduced to treat sufferers and potential sufferers of RSI on company time and at company expense. Osteopaths look not only to traditional sources for the causes of RSI but also emphasise the importance of physical stress created by anxiety states and lifestyle in general. Thus in the treatment of RSI emphasis is placed on stress reduction as a first priority and prevention programmes are devised that do not stop at the factory gates. The scheme has the full support of, and is jointly administered by, the Australian Textile Workers' Union and may well point the way to future directions in workplace control of RSI.

Work motivators of early and mid-career personnel are central to human resource administration. Among others, multinational organisations need to know, "How unique is the structure of Australian work- reward preferences?" A tentative answer derives from a comparison of Australian and American thirtyish executives who are pursuing a part-time Master of Business Administration (MBA) program.

Decentralized computer-based information systems have the potential to support a wider range of organi zational forms than centralized systems. For organizations contemplating the introduction of new infor mation technology into their offices, distributed systems appear to be the most effective choice on the basis of flexibility, expandability, cost, organizational and quality of working life criteria. With appropriate user participation and training programmes, networking can improve communications within and between functions and facilitate user access to an integrated data-base in text, graphics, image, data and voice (eventually) mode. But, there is a sting in the tail of decentralized computing systems ... surveillance over users.

This paper reports the findings of a survey of the job satisfaction of 295 part-time workers who were also full-time secondary school students. The results indicate that the students were quite happy with their part- time jobs. The students' attitudes towards their jobs were highly positivelv correlated with the amount of money earned, suggesting that pay, for these employees, is a dominant aspect of work. Additionally these student part-time workers indicated that they were well satisfied with the quality of supervision encountered as well as the physical working conditions and related benefits. Reaction to the actual work tasks allocated to them was more varied, with more than half the students judging their work to be tiring and repetitious but, nevertheless, challenging.

In the early 1980s considerable interest developed amongst practitioners and academics working in the areas of industrial relations and organizational development in an approach to training and work organization which was being tried at the Woodlawn mine in New South Wales (Coles, 1983). This approach, termed "multi-skilling", has since been hailed in some quarters as providing a breakthrough in attempts to 'humanise' the workplace (e.g. AMWSU, 1983) and as a major step towards improving industrial relations (McGeough, 1983). However, when one attempts to examine the concept of multi-skilling and its operationalization more closely, two things become immediately apparent. First, there seems to be no published literature dealing with the exact meaning of the term multi-skilling and placing it within contemporary perspectives on work, training and organization design. Second, something of a conspiracy of silence seems to have emerged in relation to the introduction of this practice within Australian enterprises. Though the author is aware of a number of instances, other than Woodlawn, where an approach which might be termed multi-skilling has or is being tried, little is being said about such efforts publicly, even when such attempts have been formally constituted into an industrial award.

This article reviews some recent surveys conducted overseas on sexual harassment of women and draws some conclusions for the Human Resource Manager in A ustralia. The findings are that sexual harassment is common overseas and is most likely the same in Australia. To overcome the problem which the Hill case in the New South Wales Water Commission has highlighted, it is suggested that, (1) a company should have a policy on sexual harassment, (2) the Human Resource Manager be responsible for receiving complaints, (3) sexual harassment be grounds for disciplinary action, and (4) supervisor must act on any complaints of harassment.