Professor Pauline Stanton, head of management and information systems at Melbourne’s Victoria University, says her work shows Australian businesses have much bigger focus on developmental programmes for their key groups – people that really add value to company – than overseas companies.
“Australian companies really want to hold onto their key groups,” she says.
Professor Stanton believes this is due to Australian companies feeling at risk of having key staff poached by bigger overseas-based rivals in the competitive global workforce.
Australian companies may also have to work harder to attract key staff in the first place, she says, because they cannot tap into the overseas talent pool like their competitors with offshore parent companies.
The study shows these foreign companies were more likely to draw on their resources from abroad.
The study also shows Australian-born multinationals are using more shared HR services. More than 70 percent of Australian multinationals used HR shared services centres but only 37 percent of foreign-owned businesses do. Among foreign-owned companies, shared services centres were more common in companies from the UK.
