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Module 10 Q1 Challengesto HRM
Module 10 Q1 Challengesto HRM
There is no doubt that with the movement into the twenty first century the human
resource management is facing some of the greatest challenges it faced since almost a
century ago. This revived strength arises from various influences, such as the changing
nature of the economy and government involving legal influences, new organizational
structures, competition taking place globally, and the enhanced feeling that
organizations are the means for accomplishing societal goals. Some of the factors have
forced the transformation of human resource management from a thinly defined
specialty into a more strategic function.
With the continuous changes in Human Resources Management (HRM), it’s important
that managers, executives and HR employees, specifically, understand the challenges
that today’s HRM group may encounter. While there are definitely other issues, these
are usual to most of organizations and having policies established to ensure these
challenges are met and make the workplace more settled and calm for everyone.
Several changes, taking place fast due to fluctuations in economies, domestic and global
advancements are affecting human resources in wide ranging issues. The Survey of
Global HR Challenges: yesterday, today and tomorrow, PricewaterhouseCoopers made
for the World Federation of Personnel Management Associations (WFPMA), revealed
several challenges for human resource management. The survey concluded that
"despite national and regional differences, there was remarkable unanimity’. The various
challenges to human resource management may be categorized in three different
categories: (a) Changing nature of work force (b) Social conditions and expectations (c)
The Quality of work life, (e) The influences of the External Environment (e) Regulatory
measures:
Social
The Quality conditions
of Work life and
expectations
Workers at all levels in the work force keep high expectations about these criteria.
These expectations affect how organizations specifically human resources are
managed.
6.1.2 Globalization
The global economy is creating a long term trend with penetrating and far-
reaching implications for HR professionals. International competition in goods
and services is compelling major economies to enter into a global tie ups.
The United States is now one of a small and transforming group of
economically strong countries. It is no longer an isolated national economy
but a part of the world economic community.
As a response to increasing international competition, many international joint
ventures have come into existence as a vehicle for enterprises to have
international presence without establishing a wholly owned subsidiary
abroad. An IJV is accomplished when two or more companies from different
countries form a new organization or partnership for the purpose of
conducting a new business. As such, IJVs have become the most
widespread form of multinational investment. More and more, HR
professional are becoming primarily responsible for helping to make the
efforts at business globalization effective. The need to identify and place
employees, mainly managerial and professional personnel, in foreign
subsidiaries or joint ventures is one of the important challenges.
7. Organizational changes
Various organizational changes like corporate reorganization, change
management, compensation and benefits, slower growth , recruiting skilled
employees, need for training and development, leadership development and
globalized work force have posed challenges for human resource management.
Older workers have experience, but they also pose challenges for organizations, in
terms of higher provisions for healthcare, providing flexible work times. This is further
increased a global workforce that unites differing management and work styles on
the basis of individual cultures. To identify the right job roles, design appropriate
incentives system and retraining opportunities is another challenge. The challenge is
same where gender is considered. Governments and companies are facilitating day-
care centers and flexible work schedules.
Several organizations are using analytics for HR planning. To tackle coming skills
shortages, HR can expand its use of analytics such as gender and other diversities
to further know the structure of recruits and provide matching incentives.
The growth of liberal global trade, the use of communications technology and the
growth of transnational companies are not likely to decline. Attracting global talent
requires staying abreast of new strategies. Infosys decided to hire Chinese
graduates and began to invite and teach a select group of Chinese scholar English
language at its office in Mysore, India, permitting the company to recruit workers
from a neighboring country in a cost-effective manner.
Today, technologies such as social media have acquired importance for recruiting,
but the difficulty is to align these new strategies with business goals. A research
group found that successful organizations are adopting a holistic approach to
recruitment including company branding, screening, evaluation, hiring and on
boarding, with technology helping at each stage.
Companies also face the need to develop the competence to evaluate skills across
different talent sources and then designing training programs to fill skills gaps after
employees are hired. In addition, they should understand to manage and
incorporating multicultural employees into a whole. At the time, US company Upjohn
merged with Swedish Phamarcia AB, no one anticipated the opposition to company-
administered alcohol-testing and smoking policies, which led to cost overruns, a
delay in product launches and the ultimate sale of the company. These are just a few
of the various challenges an HR department must be ready to tackle. Anticipating the
type of situation that might arise is like to help to be better equipped in the event that
it really occurs.
Summary