Trends And Challenges In Human

Resource Management
2915 words - 12 pages

Trends & Challenges in Human Resource PAGE 1

Human resources have been a beneficial aspect to several organizations globally and recently,

has been considered one of the most important job functions for many successful

corporations. Hiring and retaining qualified employees have previously been a challenging

task and with the help of human resource professionals, seeking and maintaining conceptual

employees has now become a priority for top earning corporations.

Compensation and employee benefits are often the driving mechanism for several

corporations and until recently, other beneficial factors are also key components for retaining

key employees.

In this essay, our group of human resource professionals will discuss the overall

fundamentals of the human resource function which includes how a complete performance

management system differs from the use of annual performance appraisals, evaluate the

effectiveness of various performance appraisal methods and possible problems impacting

performance appraisals, discuss the advantages of managing turnover in organizations,

examine contemporary safety and health management issues in the workplace and discuss the

future trends and challenges in human resource management.

The role of the human resource manager is evolving with the change in competitive markets,

along with an ailing economy. Human resource managers must play a strategic role in the

success of an organization and the future holds various trends and challenges for human

resource management.
An example of a future trend in human resource management is the continuous growth in

competition on a national and global level. To become more competitive, organizations must

become more resilient, adaptive, and customer focused to succeed. Human resource managers

must be able to evolve and become employee sponsors and change mentors. Human resource

professionals must also become business driven and have an understanding of the

organizations overall picture, as well as be able to influence key policies and decisions.

Human resource professionals are now more educated and human resource managers are now

seeking professionals that have extensive human resource experience and have a wide range

of business training. Human resource will become a greater function of the business instead

of simply being an administrative task. Examples of the background that human resource

professionals must posses are finance, economics, operations, statistics, and strategy. Future

human resource professionals will also study in a changing academic environment where

business and financial skills are emphasized in human resource programs.

Human resource managers will be held more accountable for the decisions they make

regarding hiring top notch talent. Talent management will become the focus of human

resources and human resource...

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The increasing prevalence of globalization is driven by a number of factors, including shortage of talent in
developed countries, availability of low cost labor and growing consumers in developing countries, and
technological progress. Despite the current economic downturn and unemployment, most developed countries,
including United States, Germany and Japan will face long term talent shortages mainly due to ageing and
retirement of baby boomers. There are more workers retiring than entering the labor force in these countries. By
2020, for every five retiring workers, only four new workers will join the labor force in most developed
countries. The shrinkage of talent will be more than compensated by growing number of professional talent
produced in emerging nations, yet the global supply of talent is short of its long-term demand, and the gap is a
challenge for employers everywhere. The shortage between

the demand and supply of talents is likely to continue to increase, notably for highly skilled professionals. The
demand for talented people is increasing from developed and developing countries alike. Only the multinational
enterprises that will be willing to adapt their human resource practices to the changing global labor market
conditions will be able to attract, develop and retain high performing employees, and will likely survive, and
succeed in the global competition. Management of culturally diverse and geographically dispersed workforce is
a key goal of global human resources. It is also critical that the businesses not only familiarize with local ways
of doing business, and understand needs of the local consumers, but also develop a global mindset among their
employees. Human resources must play roles and responsibilities in leading the organization towards openness
to cultural diversity.

The human resources need to focus on organizations‘ long-term objectives and on future-oriented plans. Instead
of focusing exclusively on internal human resource issues, human resource departments need to take a balanced
and broader approach. HR departments of global companies must assemble data on factors, such as employees,
attrition and hiring, compensation and benefits, ethnic, gender, cultural, and nationality distributions, and load
into data warehouses and data marts. By applying advanced analytical techniques on the data, human resource
professional will get business insight, predict changes, and make informed decisions at operational and strategic
levels. The human resource professional accesses current and anticipates future skills shortages through strategic
skills planning. Global organizations not only need to a networked, collaborative and open to culturally diverse
workforce, but also consists of high talent.

The Future trends in Human Resource

Management
Introduction:
Human resource management has undergone extraordinary changes in the past generation, a fact we have
continually noted in the previous many years. We suggest that the next generation will bring changes of
similar magnitude. While the next nature and direction of changes are difficult to predict, it can be stated
with little changes.
Forecasting the future carries certain risks. If anybody is going to make an effort, he should either limit his
forecast to the very near term, or to a time frame so for in the future that he can be sure that he will have
long been buried when the results are finally in.
Our approach to forecasting will be to describe some of the major changes in our society and then attempt
to interpret the possible implication of these changes on HRM. Whether or not these forecast turn out to be
accurate is not as relevant as the process itself. But it must consider the future if only for the realization
that you will work and manage in the future.
Implications of these changes on HRM
The Future of the HRM will Reflects the Recent Past, i.e., advancement and effect of the significant
changes in our society brought about by technological advancements, social alterations, economic
influences, and political pressures.
Technological advancements: The organ transplants, The space shuttle, Artificial organs, Fourth
generation computer software, etc will fall under this category.
Social alterations: Human rights movement, Women’s movement, unprecedented growth in higher
education enrolments, Skyrocketing health care costs will be considered in this category.
Economical influences: The dramatic rise in the average living standards, Rapid expansion of the checkless
society (credit cards), highly fluctuating interest rates, Foreign competition etc will be fall under this
category.
Political pressures: The budget deficit, Medicare for the aged, Government employees allowed bargaining
collectively; Star Wars, space defence system, etc are considered.
The changes listed above, are reflects only the past and consider the impact of these changes for HRM
practices.
Increased concern for HRM:
Today it has become more important and human resources Managers have become more powerful. This
can largely be attributed to such factors as increasing labour costs, concerns for improving the workman
productivity, searching for compensation plans which motivates, and the requirement for interpreting and
implementing new government laws and regulations.
Successful HRM executives will have become strong decision makers and will accept the responsibilities
that go with greater influence.
Removal of termination as a threat:
Legislation regarding the appraisal and termination of employees has increasingly placed the burden of
proving inadequate performance on the employer. This trend coupled with greater demand by the unions
for guaranteed life time employment, should find more employees permanently attached to organization.
Life time employment, whether controlled by legislation or contract, will reduce the Manager’s power to
extract compliance through the threat of termination. There will also be a greater need for the organization
to become actively involved in career development and planning with its employees.
Creation of Bimodal workforce:
Growth in the workforce will be concentrated at two extremes of the incomes spectrum. There will be a
greater demand for the educated professionals who earn high salaries and among low skilled service
workers who make only the minimum wage. The workforce of the future will tend toward a bimodal
distribution-two large group with very different wage rates.
Major salary and benefit structure changes will have to be made to reflect and accommodate this bimodal
workforce. The competition among companies for the highly skilled workers will increase, reflecting the
need for even higher wages and benefits. Career development efforts will focus towards providing forced
skill, retraining in as effort to enlarge the pool of qualified, educated professionals. This retooling of skills
will be needed to allow the organization to adapt to the dynamic environment. Because of the bimodal
nature of the workforce, tension between the two groups will grow. Motivating the low paid worker will
become a major challenge. The question of how to motivate an employee, who makes the minimum wage
and has a little opportunity for advancement, will challenge both manager ands and researchers. The
answer is likely to suggest the need for more employee participation and non financial rewards.
Management move to make to make their organisation lean and mean:
As a result of deregulation, foreign competition and the like, organisations will further act to trim the fat,
inefficiencies, from their ranks. We can expect more layoffs. Furthermore all employees will feel less
secure in their jobs.
Organisation will embark heavily on de hiring practices. There will be a significant increase in emphasis,
ranging from providing career growth opportunities to providing outplacement services. Organisation will
be buying out their employees, especially older employees and senior executives. This will involve large
out lays of cash, a severance pay will be required. Commitment and loyalty to the organisation are likely to
suffer. Employees will become more self oriented and will act as if they were in fact individual
entrepreneurs. Those individuals close to retirement, either by age or by years of service, will increasingly
be forced into voluntary retirement. Many individuals in their middle to late fifties will find themselves
back in the job market. Accordingly unemployment rates for this group are likely to rise dramatically. Age
discrimination suits can be expected to increase. Organisations will rationalise buying out employees and
forced retirements on the grounds that it necessary to improve productivity and efficiency and to make
room at higher level for younger workers.
Dual-Career Couples:
The woman’s movement and inflation have caused the proliferation of dual career couples. The one bread
winner householder’s rapidly disappearing. Because of the greater number of dual career couples,
employees mobility will decrease. Organisations will continue to face more resistance to offers of
promotions that require geographical moves.
Organisations will also have to implement better human resource planning systems. Promotions from
within will become more prevalent, especially at the middle to upper levels. However because of the
leanness of organisations, there will be a fewer of these positions to fill. The search for applicants will
focus on the local job markets. Increase of dual career couples also witness a redundancy of benefits
especially in the offering of health insurance. Companies will become more concern about this duplication
and will seek a better co-ordination of benefits. That is, a company will pay for health coverage for its
employee and the spouse’s coverage will be paid by the spouse’s organisation. Children of the marriage
will usually be cover under the husband’s health plan.
Benefits and health:
To attract and keep good female employees, the organization will provide expanded day care benefits. This
will be especially true of organizations that require its employees to work evening or night shifts. Healthier
work environments will become a political issue. For instance, smoking on the job is likely to be banished
or highly restricted.
Operating and paying for day care services will increase an organizations cost. To remain competitive,
however, organizations will have little choice but to offer this as a benefit. More and more organization
will recruits non smokers and make non-smoking a condition of employment. Companies will have
gymnasium facilities to their premises or offer corporate membership at health clubs. Time off from work
will be given to those who participate reflecting the organization’s commitment to improving the health of
its employees.
Working at Home:
Through the use of personal computers, more workers will be able to process information by working at
home. In an organisation’s efforts to become ‘lean and mean’ more work will be done at home by
employees. Individuals who need more flexibility in their schedule and older individuals seeking to
augment their retirement income will be doing work at home that was once done on the company premises
the outcome of more individuals doing work at home will likely be a major restructuring of pay levels.
Company will have to determine the worth of each job and pay accordingly. This will probably results in
wide variance of pay being offered to different individuals.
Working at home will also require the organisation to implement new quality control measures.
Performance evaluations will have to be revised, for close supervision of the work will not be possible.
Monitoring techniques will have to be developed to ensure accuracy and timeliness of the work.
Matching the environment to the employee:
Organizations are studying their office furniture, their work environment and their space utilisation in an
effort to provide a productive atmosphere. New kinds of office furniture are being designed to ease fatigue
and back strain. Experiments with various office decors are being conducted in an effort to provide
pleasant workstation, one that promotes efficient work in a supportive environment. The new decors, office
furnishings and space utilization will make employee’s surroundings more pleasant and more conductive
to working. Work related health problems, especially back strain should be reduced by having offices
furnished with ergonomically designed furniture’s.

Future Global Trends Affecting Your

Organization
Challenges for human resource
management and global
business strategy
More than ever in history, companies and organizations today face both
the opportunity and the challenge of employing global workforces that
diverge in age, gender, education and culture.
This paper has shown how and why workforces will continue to comprise
these differing attributes, as well as the advantages and pitfalls. This
section presents the challenges human resources managers face when
ensuring that their organizations succeed in the global environment.
I. The globalized workforce
HR challenge: Adapting hiring and retention strategies to prepare
for tomorrow’s changing workforce
A dwindling youth population in developed economies and high youth
unemployment in developing regions is causing skills shortages. Some
of these shortages are being filled by older workers, more women in the
workforce and cross-border migration. Demographic as well as cultural
diversity will continue to define the global workforce as companies seek
to fill shortages, gain market efficiencies and acquire strategic assets.
Older workers provide experience, but they also pose challenges for
organizations, including providing healthcare for a population that will
experience four-and-half-times as many disabilities as younger
workers,127 creating flexible work schedules and shifting responsibilities
away from physically demanding work. This is compounded in a global
workforce that combines differing management and work styles based
on individual cultures. The challenge is to identify the right job roles,
incentives and retraining opportunities for each worker while avoiding
age-discrimination practices.
The challenge is similar where gender is concerned. Governments and
companies are creating accommodations such as day-care centers and
flexible working hours for women, but taking advantage of a gender-
diverse workforce requires an understanding of how to attract women
into the workforce and providing rewards parity. In South Korea, only 60
percent of 25-64-year-old women are contributing to the workforce owing
to social pressures, resulting in senior-level positions being exclusively
filled by men. In response to this imbalance, Goldman Sachs is
promoting underutilized female talent in South Korea.128
Many organizations are already using HR analytics for workforce
planning. To avoid coming skills shortages, HR can expand its use of
analytics such as gender and other diversity metrics to further
understand the make-up of recruits and provide matching incentives.
HR challenge: Preparing for the complexities of hiring, managing
and integrating a global workforce
The growth of liberal cross-border trade, the use of communications
technology and the expansion of transnational companies are not likely
to let up. Attracting global talent requires staying abreast of new
strategies for finding and attracting talent. Business technology
consultancy Infosys decided to hire Chinese graduates and started by
inviting and teaching a select group of Chinese students English at its
office in Mysore, India, allowing the company to source workers from a
neighboring country cost-effectively.129
Technologies such as social media are essential for recruiting, but the
challenge is to align these new strategies with business goals. Aberdeen
Group, a provider of business research intelligence, found that
successful organizations are taking a holistic approach to recruitment
that includes company branding, screening, assessment, hiring and
onboarding, with technology helping at each step.130
Companies are also faced with the need to develop the means to assess
skills across divergent talent sources and then creating training
programs to fill skills gaps after employees are hired. In addition, they
need to understand how to manage and integrate multicultural
employees. When US pharmaceutical Upjohn merged with Swedish
Phamarcia AB, no one foresaw the resistance to company-imposed
policies such as alcohol-testing and smoking, which resulted in cost
overruns, a slowdown in product launches and the eventual sale of the
company.131

Managers can begin by understanding the nuances of the cultures using

various tools such as Hofstede’s lenses, explained earlier in this paper,
or the GLOBE project’s nine dimensions of culture.132 Although these
tools tend to simplify the complex issues, they provide good bases for
understanding the diverse cultures of employees and encouraging
sensitivity.
II. Guiding corporate strategic
decision-making
HR challenge: Incorporating the human capital opportunities and
risks from operating abroad into corporate strategic decision-
making
Workforce opportunities are marked both by steady improvements
through the political machinations that open trade across borders and
enable cross-border migrations, and by sudden and often unexpected
changes such as the relaxation in relations between the United States
and Cuba; conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine; and dramatic swings in oil
prices. The challenge for companies is to remain nimble to take
advantage of the opportunities while avoiding the risks.
HR’s challenge is to gather, assess and understand all the cultural, labor
and market complexities of operating in each market so that the
company can predict opportunities and risks, know when to enter or exit
a market, and integrate successfully into new local markets.
The success of a company’s global growth hinges on HR integrating the
workforce. HR-led teams need to assess the complexities of bringing
together workforces with often dissimilar societal and corporate cultures.
HR can, for example, identify potential roadblocks early and plan
interventions before problems arise. The food facilities management
company Sodexo identified a need for diversity and inclusion across its
355,000 employees from North American to China. It developed training
programs that resulted in significant numbers of women, youths, people
with disabilities and indigenous workers productively joining its workforce
across the globe.133
HR challenge: Making the business case for CSR
Corporate social responsibility is among the top challenges companies
face when expanding into new markets, especially in developing regions.
Business practices that are acceptable locally are frequently at odds with
the values of the company and the laws of its regulatory agencies. This
creates a tug-of-war between social responsibility and the need to be
successful in those markets, which can turn into significant risk.
The challenge for HR is to gain a detailed understanding of local
environments and their accepted business practices. It then needs to
establish protocols that are customized for each region and
communicate these protocols throughout the organization and across its
supply chain.
When local labor laws or practices conflict with the organization’s CSR
policies, HR needs to be the voice of the individual and ensure that the
company maintains its integrity, even when this goes against the
potential economic value. HR faces the additional challenge of
demonstrating to the company how good CSR policies strengthen the
brand, increase customer loyalty and boost shareholder value.
HR challenge: Balancing corporate and societal cultures while
promoting diversity
Some cultural attributes, such as a command-and-control management
style, can be modified to fit local cultures, while others, such as integrity
and human rights policies, cannot be compromised. HR needs to
understand and deal with the complexities, deciding which corporate
culture elements can change and which are essential to protecting the
organization’s values and ethics. The company cannot change anti-
bribery policies, but it may choose to change its dress-down-Fridays
rule. Management may also choose to impose cultural elements, such
as giving back to the community consistently across the global
organization. The challenge becomes even more complex when dealing
with new workers, those engaged through means such as
crowdsourcing, as well as remote and temporary workers. HR also
needs to develop programs to assist executives to adapt when they
move from the head office to regions with different societal and cultural
norms.
III. Preparing for the future
HR challenge: Preparing a new set of globally prepared leaders
Cultural diversity is frequently seen as a challenge, but it also provides
great advantages. For example, a culturally diverse workforce may come
up with more creative and innovative solutions to problems, because
each person brings more unique perspectives and experiences to the
table.
The challenge for HR is to educate managers on how to take advantage
of the cultural differences while mitigating any friction. Developing
practices for promoting collaboration among diverse workers and
communicating values and policies across countries and ethnicities will
be important to driving success within global organizations.
HR challenge: Identifying skills on a local level
Companies that can identify skills beyond those presented in traditional
CVs and résumés will have an advantage over their competitors.
Identifying the desired skills and finding them in a pool of candidates is a
significant challenge for HR, especially when entering new markets and
geographies.
IV. Staying within laws
HR challenge: Maintaining a comprehensive understanding of
regulations and hiring laws
Temporary and part-time workers play an important role in today’s
workforce. Yet laws regarding these workers differ from country to
country. Indonesian law, for example, does not recognize the concept of
part-time workers, who are consequently entitled to the same rights as
full-time workers. Temporary workers, too, must receive the same
benefits as permanent workers.
HR’s challenge when conducting workforce planning is to understand the
nuances of the laws and customs in each of the regions where it
operates and ensure that it is treating part-time, temporary and remote
workers legally.
Regulations become murkier when the employment process is
conducted through online crowdsourcing or other, less traditional
recruiting methods, further increasing the risks while demanding greater
understanding of compliance from HR.

Keeping up-to-date with ever-changing and complex labor laws in each

country and region will continue to present a constant challenge beyond
the traditional visa issues, local versus foreign worker regulations and
migration laws.
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Technology Trends In Human

Resources
Human Resources Management is one of the important departments in each organization. HRM
is where the process of hiring and developing employees so that they become more valuable to
the organization. HRM includes conducting job analyses, planning personnel needs, recruiting
the right people for the job, orienting and training, managing wages and salaries, providing
benefits and incentives, evaluating performance, resolving disputes, and communicating with all
employees at all levels. (WebFinance Inc)
Technology had made things become easier for HRM and faster to gather, collect and deliver the
information and to communicate with employees. Technology also helps to reduce the
administrative burden on the HR department and it will make the HR manager to become more
focus on the task and their activities such as, providing the managers information that they
collected and help to make a better in making decisions. Company that doesn't taking
advantages in using the benefits of technology for their company will not get the significant
advantages of it over those who use the technology. (Julie Bulmash,2009)
The objective of this assignment is where I want to explain about the changes of technology
trends in the organization, which it will affect the performance and the organization productivity in
the long-term. Since the technology had developed in past years, many company had practices
the advancement in their department and it is also affected the Human Resources, which it helps
them to improve and be more efficiency in the organization.

Research Question
As the improvement of technologies today, many of the organizations use technologies to
communicate, doing business globally, and making improvements of their organization, as this
can create the competitiveness between them. So, I came with this topic, "How do the changes
of Technology Trends in Human Resources Management affect the performance and productivity
of the company?" because I want to know how does the changes of the technology today had
affected or influenced the organizations to become more productive and well care to the
employees and also the market.

Importance of Study
The importance of this research where, we want to know what is the reason why the technology
have had influenced the organization especially the HRM in the company. We all knew that,
technology advancement had helped us to be improved and innovation by taking advantages on
it and become more competitive in the business. By doing this research also, it is important to
know that how the technology have influenced the organization in recruiting, the process, the
workflow of the company and how they want to maintain their operations. The changes in some
trends such as technology have influence in many aspects in HRM. Making this research also
helps us to improve the critical thinking by analysing and also by giving the recommendation.

Literature Review
HR is transforming because of technology because it is altering the way that firms
departmentalize. Where, before this, firms usually divided among the task or differentiated
internally, while technology facilitates differentiation externally. Where, it facilitates outsourcing
and also technology has enabled human resource management to dispense with routine and
transactional administrative tasks (Mitchell Langbert, 2011)
As this, technology helped the organizations to become more competitive in their business; they
can grow their organization as the changes of the technology trends today. From the topic that I
want to discuss is from the question, it is, How do the changes of Technology Trends in Human
Resources Management affect the performance and productivity of the company? From that, I
have found, the technology trends had grows and it helps the HRM to become more competitive
as it affects the performance and productivity in the organizations in side of, effective recruitment,
and communications improves and lastly the cost efficiency.

Point of Discussion:
Effective recruitment
Employer can filter all of their interviewees by using the technology as they want to enhance
efficiency when recruiting. Employer can ask specific question which the technology is available
to filters the input and the output of the question and will know if the interviewees is obviously
when answering the question and research told, it is claimed that 80 percent people telling truth
and also in their CV's (Kris Jarzebowski,2008)
Employer also can make the job recruitment a lot smarter by pursuing technologies. The
company can use profiling. By using profiling, company can reduce their workloads by 80
percent, as it had been proved company has save their cost and their time in recruiting because
time converts to money. So by profiling, the recruitment become easier, lot more efficient and
effectively. (Kris Jarzebowski,2008)
It's now time for HR professionals to make sure the Web is part of their HR strategy. I believe all
HR professionals should be incentivised to save their companies money, and if they are
incentivised through a financial or other incentive, then that will encourage them as also using
many types of media, social networking, and job seeks site and others to find the career. (Kris
Jarzebowski,2008)
Social media can give company a great and efficient way to engage with the community,
candidates, clients, customers, partners, and potential prospects. The key is to make sure the
supervisors or employer have the time to invest in to the web and spent more time in using the
social networking for recruitment. At a very basic level this is all about networking. The use of
social media tools will be greatly enhanced the ability to build, grow, and nurture company
network. (Sharlyn Lauby,2012)

Communication improves
As the communication improves, it can give the HRM clear and good direction and information.
Most of workers wanted to know what is happening and why to follow the policy and doing task.
Effective communication can give the employees accurate, timely information as it makes them
feel more appreciated and respected (Joey Papa,2012)
Technology in communication also helps to reduce the employee's turnover and the customer
turnover, as effective communication contributes to learning, teamwork, safety, innovation and
improved productivity across the organization (SnapComms,2012)
New developments in IT have led to an increasingly mobile workforce. We are no longer tied to
our desk in order to stay in the information loop. We can take our office with us wherever we go.
Cellular phones allow us to be reached almost anywhere. Blackberries and Ultra-mobile PCs
permit to access e-mail and other data products at a wide range of locations. A wide range of
new technologies have given businesses access to faster communication, increased efficiencies,
and the ability to work away from the office (Jason Todd,2007)
Between cell phones and email, an employer has a way to contact employees at all times. An
employer can also more easily send mass messages, whether about a new company policy or
an upcoming meeting, with mass emails. (Zachary Fenel,2009)

Cost efficiency
Not also by improving the communication and the benefits for the recruitment. Technology also
helps to cut the cost of the company.
"IT investment may be easier to make today than ever before, since the benefits are more
tangible and many of the supporting elements are in place. In particular, implementing XaaS,
cloud and collaboration technologies may require little up-front spending. Furthermore, by
replacing expensive technologies with services at lower and more flexible prices, new
technologies can create a win-win in overall costs for the business. An additional potential benefit
is increased flexibility. Boards are seeking investments that not only will deliver rapid payback,
but also can be scaled up and down as conditions indicate, enabling the organization to respond
rapidly and manage both risk and opportunity. Workforce collaboration technologies unite both
cost and flexibility benefits. By enabling employees to work from any location and any device,
workforce collaboration technologies enable the organization to shift toward a "virtual
corporation" and multiply its options for managing people and costs across locations and
premises." (Accenture Ltd,2010)
"Technology can help cutting cost so many areas of operations perform more efficiently.
Statistics can be sliced & diced in more ways. The potential benefits are endless where it helps
to improve the operations of the company and to monitor the employees work performance."
(Jason Wisdom,2013)
"Technology also helps to reduce cost in communication where, implementing an IP-based
telephony solution enables you to use your existing Internet investments to consolidate your
communications networks to reduce costs and increase functionality, for example Voice over IP
(VoIP) and Unified Communications." (Staples Advantage,2010)
"It also helps in cutting cost in training, where in the case of Training & development, e-learning
is an intense opportunity provided by the companies for their employees, which help them to
increase their knowledge level. The training materials are provided online; employees can utilize
these materials and get trained. In the case of e-learning, employees have an advantage that
they can learn at their own pace." (mmwebz,2012)

Summary of Key Point

"In this fast growing market, if you are not aware of the latest technologies in HR, ensure that you
don't get left back in the dust, as your competitors are already experimenting new technologies.
In particular, Companies need to look at adopting technological assistance in the major HR
functions such as recruitment, training, performance management, pay roll, employee benefits
etc. HR personnel need to be updated on the technological options that are available, select the
best options that will make significant difference to their functioning and leverage them to bring
efficiencies." (mmwebz,2012)

Analysis
2.1. Analysis of Key Point
2.1.1 Analysis of Key Point 1
Technology in the HRM can help the employer to improve their recruitment. Where they can find
potential candidates to hire and could highly contribute to the company production and
performance. As mentioned in the key points of effective recruitment, by using the filtering,
company can filters their candidates and look at their resume and CV's before calling them for
interviews. For example, if the company want to hire new workers for the empty position in the
company, they will be loads of people to come for interview, so by filtering, they can filter which
one is more potential in their information and past experiences and calling them for the interview.
By filtering also they can identify if the interviewees are lying in their CV's and while being
interview.
Other method is by using profiling. By using the recruitment software, it helps the manager to
filtering and profiling their candidates. Profiling also helps the company to reduce their workloads
in interviewing and looking for the resume of the candidates which it reduce the works by 80
percent. It can give them more time to focus on their production. As the company workloads
reduce by the technology for recruitment, it also makes it more effective and efficient while
profiling. They can find good candidates to be hired that could contribute to the company and
perform well. If recruiting wrong person for the job, it will be more costly for the company and the
task can't be done as the company needs. It will affect the performance of the company and also
the productivity as the workers does not meet the job requirement to fulfil the works.
Today, people are more spend their time in the internet. Mostly of them use internet in their daily
day such as using for online using smart phone, gadgets such as iPad and tablets and also
Personal Computer and laptops. They use it gadgets to communicate them to the internet so it
helps them to find information and communicate between them. The increasing of the usage of
the web is not only by the people, but also by the organization that uses internet, web for the
work purposes such as recruitment and marketing. Internet can help the company to promote
their job in the website such as Jobseekers.com and also by Mudah.my. For example, SPA the
government website that is to seek for the potential candidates for the works available really
helps the company from each sector to find good workers. The applicants will need to fill the
information in education, backgrounds or any achievement before they want to call for the exam
and lastly for the interviews. It is the kind of profiling and filtering by the government before hiring
any workers. By doing this, technology has really helps the citizens to find a better carer and also
for the company to find a good placement for any position in the company. Not only by using the
web, the increasing of the users of social network such as Twitter, Blog and Facebook has lead
the company to create their account in the social web so them can easily interact with the
customer and promoting if there is any job available in the company. Using the web and social
network not also make the recruitment and selection become easier, it also can attract good
candidates to come for the any interviews that available.

2.1.2. Analysis of Key Point 2

Technology also helps HRM to improve the communication in the organization between the
subordinates and also between the company to the clients or customer. By this improvement, it
will help them to be more understanding what the company want and what they want to achieves
so they could fulfil the objectives and vision of the company.

Challenges faced by
modern human resource
management
Nolan et al., (2007) mentioned that globalization has
drastically altered the business environment through the
fall of national borders and the rise of multinational
organizations. Through this environment global
competition has intensified, new markets have emerged
and the flow of international labour has increased
(Friedman, 2006). According to Watson (2007) in the near
future, liberalisation is expected to continue along with
standardisation of business language, processes and
regulations. Coupled with technological advancements
associated with increasing rapidity to market will
continue to shift the basis of competitive advantage
towards creative and innovative practices (Florida, 2002).
Today, it would be difficult for any organization to achieve
and sustain effectiveness without having an efficient
Human Resource Management programs and activities.
Both organizations and individual are facing with
increasing rates of changing coupled with intense global
and competitive market environments which led to new
challenges .According to Iversen (2000) changes in
workforce demography, technology and other
environmental aspects are creating the need for new
structures and management practices, which contribute
to organizational commitment and flexibility
Lastly, as the importance of organizational effectiveness
is within an international context, it is imperative to
investigate the challenges facing human resource
management within a global economy. While these
challenges exist not only because of globalization, but
also due to technology and telecommunication advances,
deregulation, diversity and other workforce changes, as
well as trends in the nature of work and legal issues
(Dessler, 2000).

Current Challenges
The increase of
independent worker and
self employment
Nowadays, people tend to have more freedom in terms of
whether to work or not, depending on their particular
circumstances, than ever before. In addition, more people
are choosing to work on a freelance, contract basic or to
work part-time. They have more choices with regards to
who they work for, the kind of work they do and for how
long they are prepared to work. With this portfolio working
also reduces a person's dependency on an individual
employer and creates a workforce more able and
predisposed to shape its own careers and lifestyles.
Hence, people are able to exercise greater control over
levels of discretionary effort and are willing to engage in
negotiations over what has become known as the
psychological contract (Hiltrop, 1996; Castells, 2000).

Balancing Work-life
Balancing work and life assumes relevance when both
husband and wife are employed. Travails of a working
housewife are more than a working husband, thus
balancing it is becoming a major challenges. So there is a
need of a programme which is capable of balancing work-
life and is supposed to include a childcare at or near the
workplace, job sharing, care for sick children and
employees, on-site summer camp, training supervisors to
respond to work and family needs of employees, flexible
work scheduling, sick leave policies, variety of errands
from dry cleaning, dropping children at schools, making
dinner reservations etc and many more like the same or
other.
Motivational Approaches
Workplace motivation is an important aspect as it
influences people to do things which help to achieve
organizational goals. For instance, in order for an
individual to be motivated to complete organizational task
effectively, their needs must be satisfied and met. Due to
each individual may have different needs so different
motivational tools must be utilized by the organization in
order to encourage their employees to put in the needed
effort thus increase productivity for the company.
Organization survival and success are measured by the
contribution from motivated employees in such a
competitive market environments and changing
workplace. Basically job characteristics, working
environment and appropriate organizational reward
system are the factor of motivation. Therefore the
strongest motivational factors which can influence both
job satisfaction and employee motivation are through a
reward system wihch will affects the job satisfaction by
making the employee more comfortable and contented as
a result of the rewards received.

Changing Workforce
Dynamics
Normally, physical relocation is required and with the
increasing number of dual-career professionals will limits
individual flexibility in accepting such assignments and as
a result may hinder number of dual-career professional's.
With that limitation in individual flexibility in accepting
such assignments may also hinder organizational
flexibility in acquiring and developing talent. Some
demographic changes in the workforce having their own
implications to the HR managers are:
Increasing number of working mothers
a steady decline of blue-collar employees who are giving
way to white-collar employees
Increasing awareness & education among workers

Changes in the external

regulation of employment
The misused of power by managers in areas such as hiring
and firing, promotion and payment has been reduced by
developments of legislation that give greater rights to
employees and create new responsibilities for employers.
Important examples of this trend are to be found in the
areas of race, gender and age discrimination, employment
protection, the treatment of pregnant women and trade
union membership. One extreme example of the influence
of the law on employment decisions can be found in the
recent case in which the Swiss giant Nestle was ordered
by a French court to reopen a loss-making plant,
employing 427 workers, which had been closed in June
2005 (Evans-Pritchard, 2005). Despite sustained losses
over several years, and a commitment either to find the
employees jobs in other parts of France or to offer an early
retirement package, the judge ordered the company to
restart production and re-employ the workers. This
decision was described by Nestle as unbelievable and
unprecedented. While such extreme cases of legal
intervention in business and employment are rare, the
trend within the European Union to limit management's
freedom to take rational business decisions where these
threaten the legitimate interests of employees is
increasing.

Changed Employee
Expectations
Nowadays, employees demand empowerment and expect
equality with the management. Krafft and Mahtrala (2010),
states that it is only through true empowerment that staff
will really contribute to the changing needs of a business,
since they will then be doing things because they
understand them and for the right reasons, thinking and
reflecting on the changes and their likely impact, and
above all feeling at ease with the implementation of
change.

Outsourcing HR Activities
The trends towards outsourcing have been caused by
several strategic and operational motives. Outsourcing
has also been used to help reduce bureaucracy and to
encourage a more responsive culture by introducing
external market forces into the firm through the biding
process. It is a big challenge before the HR manager to
prove that his/her department is as important as any other
functions in the organization. The relevance of HR is at
stack.

The challenges and

replacement of physical
power and manual skills by
the power of knowledge,
creativity and intellectual
capital
Knowledge-based industries are becoming more important
together with the rise of the number of knowledge
workers is creating a different kind of labour force, which
has different requirements and expectations of work, and
different expectations of how it will be managed.
Knowledge workers can be seen to be different from other
professional groups because, unlike those who draw upon
a distinctive body of knowledge and work from this, the
knowledge worker works with knowledge not only their
own, but that generated and used by others, generated
through such mechanisms as 'communities of practice'
and professional networks.

Employability and
Continuing Education
This is a major area of challenge to most employers,
especially those who employ large number of staff. Staffs
have to take retraining in order to adapt a constantly
changing external environment. It is a question of mind-
set, working environment, and attitude towards self
responsibility. The future will be characterized by the
following needs, amongst other;
The need to handle increasing complexity
The need for continual enhancement of the management
skill sets known as Life-Long Learning for example, the
ability to adapt to changing environments, challenges and
technology
The need for a positive attitude to newly emerging
opportunities as managers themselves has to become life-
long learners.

Recruitment and Retention

Employee recruitment and selection is one the most vital
HR functions as it is difficult to attract highly educated
people. Next, retention focuses on the goal of keep well
performing staff in the company. This depends not only on
interesting work, fair compensation, and a motivating
climate and management culture, but also on transparent
and achievable career paths combined with a supportive
management that provides guidance.

Challenges of new
technology
With latest and advanced technology tend to reduce the
number of jobs which require little skill and at the same
time increase the number of jobs that require considerable
skill. This shift we refer to as moving from touch labour to
knowledge work. This will need to displace some
employees and while other requires to be retrained.

Challenges of globalization
Globalization influences a significant portion of economy
and affects the free flow of trade among countries.
Besides that globalization also influences the number and
kinds of jobs that are available and requires an
organization to balance a complicated set of issues
related to managing people with different cultures,
geographies and legal environment.

Managing Diversity
Its value is getting more important issue because of
increase in the number of young workers in the work-
force, increase in the number of women joining the work-
force, increase in the proportion of ethnic minorities in the
total work-force, increase in mobility of work-force,
international careers & expatriates are becoming
common, international experience as a pre-requisite for
career progression to many top-level managerial positions.
Human resources management approaches are not static
due to they are not made one time and hold good forever.
As a result they will have to undergo systematic changes
in order to meet the requirements that may be happened
in the future. For instance the methods that worked well
in the past or now may not necessary work well in the
present as operationally effective currently may need
readjustment in order to cope with future needs. It is wise
to have prior preparations by foreseeing possible changes
and what required for the future.

Future Challenges
Workplace flexibility
It is expected to be on the rise as the future workplace
also known as the virtual office is characterized by
creative and flexible work arrangements. As more
employees tend to work off-site, there will be an increase
in emphasis on performance and results as opposed to the
number of hours worked. Besides that, off-site employees
can expect to attend fewer meetings and as a result
specified work will become much more collaborative and
as a result management will have to spend nearly all its
time managing cross-functional work.

Technological
Developments
While organizations are growing in term of size,
complexities and automation (computerization), it is
important to examine:
How technological development affects the specification
of jobs in terms of different requirements of education
skill required and organizational structure performance
control. The suggested methods for instance including
selection, personnel recruitment, analysis of job,
developing compensation plans and appraisal systems.
The strategies in ensuring employee acceptance of the
programme are vital through the introduction and
management of technological changes.

Changes in the Socio-

Cultural expectations of
the work force
These include changes in the compositions of work force
in terms of their education, social background, and roots
in urban setting and exposure to larger democratic culture
of our country, all of which bring about changes in their
expectations, attitudes and value-orientations which have
bearing on the approaches to Human Resources
Management.

Challenge in Human
Capital
Human capital is intangible and cannot be managed the
way organization manage jobs, technologies and etc. As
employees own their own human capital, so if valued
employees leave a company, they will take their human
capital with them, and any investment the company has
made in training and developing those people is lost.

Increasing Shortage of
Labor
After the year 2010, the growth rate of workforce is
projected to be declining even further. The annual growth
rate is projected to be only 0.4 percent which is the
lowest in more than a century. Therefore it is important to
recognize that these statistics are very predictable based
on the knowledge of birth, immigration, retirement, and
death rates. Besides that, the terrorist attack of
September 11, 2011 in the United States has caused the
immigration laws to be more aggressively administered
and as a result the immigration opportunities for skilled
positions have been drastically reduced.
To conclude, managing human capital is an ongoing
challenge, especially as social, political and economic
events take their toll. Strategies must continually be
redefined to deliver improved return on investment in
human capital. As HR professionals work within their own
organizations, they must also cope with good and bad
economies, new technology, and the social issues global,
regional and national which affect their organizations.

Human Resource
Management Challenges
Software Industry Business
Essay
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Published: 23rd March, 2015
This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of
the work written by our professional essay writers.
The main focus of the article is to study the challenges and issues
governing the management of human resource in the software industry
in India that is brought about by the trends in technology as well as
global economy. Due to the dynamic nature of human resources in
software industry, increasing annual growth and lack of any set rules and
regulations, it is obvious that the managers of Human resources in
Indian software industry face new challenges. Organizations continue to
grow and diversify their business prospects, which lead to additional
human chain. The increasing pressure of clients, cost limits, productivity
issues etc. demands high levels of talent in managing the manpower. In
addition, Indian companies that have workforce globally present and
compensation benefits that are varying across industries leading to High
attrition levels. This paper explains some of the challenges in motivation,
delegation of authority, work culture, training , pay compensation and
attrition faced by HR managers and addresses certain solutions in facing
such challenges though every industry has a unique structure.
Key words: Delegation, Work
culture, Attrition, Pay
compensation and Training.

HUMAN RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
IN SOFTWARE INDUSTRY
INTRODUCTION
In India, beginning 1980, the software industry has become the driving
force of the economy. The government formulated the computer
software policy in 1986. The economists began to analyze the potential
of the Indian software industry. Today it is one of the fastest growing
sectors of the economy and provides high quality employment for young
people. Further, it earns significant revenue from exports and it is a
highly desirable industry and has no undesirable environmental side
effects.
The Software Industry is defined as the part of computer programming
activity that is traded between software-producing organizations and
corporate or individual software consumers. Just as coal and steel were
the essential ingredients in the Industrial revolution, Software industries
are the ingredients of is Information Technology revolution. Software
industry has become a tool in our daily life as it finds its applications in
telecommunications, air traffic control, computer controlled traffic lights
and train reservation, banking and financial services, business
administration, education, health care, entertainment, etc.
Over the past years a number of trends have emerged in the software
industry in India as well as worldwide. IBM has been the market leader in
the software industry. However, Microsoft is the leading operating
system supplier for the personal computers. Other companies namely,
Sun Microsystems, the developer of the Java platform, Oracle , HP,
Novell , Red Hat and Symantec had substantial presence in the software
industry. In the internet era, Google is by far the fastest growing software
company and it is also expanding its activities beyond internet search.
However, in terms of revenues coming from software sales, the software
industry is clearly dominated by Microsoft. India has been one of the
their major presence in the operations of the above industries..
Based on the revenue and number of employee population software
companies in India are significantly classified as Tier -1 , Tier -2 and Tier
- 3 Companies. Companies usually have a revenue more than US dollar
1 billion comes under tier-1 companies with more than 50000
employees. Global companies such as Accenture, HP Enterprise
Services, IBM fall into the category of tier -1 software industries which
have large number of India-based employees and show a strong
presence in India. Companies with revenue over 100 million US dollar
comes under tier 2 companies with approximately less than 50,000 and
above 10,000 employees such as TCS, Tech Mahindra Limited, Infosys
Technologies Limited, Patni Computer Systems Limited, Wipro
Technologies Limited, Mahindra Satyam Computer Services Limited,
HCL Technologies Limited and Larsen & Toubro InfoTech Limited fall
into the category of tier -1 software industries which also have large
number of India-based employees and show a strong presence in India..
Companies having revenue less than tier 2 companies are classified as
tier 3.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:
Motivation: One aspect of maximizing work performance will involve
motivation. According to Peter Drucker,(2004) " The good ones among
managers do not talk about their problems, but they know how to make
subordinates talk about their problems". The managers should make
their employees to speak about their issues and motivate them
accordingly. As per Morley Steltner ,(2006) "Good managers should
avoid criticism and give feed back by inviting employees to evaluate their
feedback and ask follow up questions."
Delegation: Morley Steltner,(2006) says "Delegation should not be
confused with assigning routine work to employees that falls within their
normal jobs. True delegation involves giving someone the responsibility
and authority to do something that is part of Manager's job."
Empowerment of employees plays a major role in retention by an
employee in an organization. Employees should be delegated with
adequate powers to carry out the works. Even for petty works, when
there is dependency it will make the employees to get annoyed. Malone
(1997), says 'Empowerment of employees could help to enhance the
continuity of employees in organizations'. Prof Bruce L Katcher,(2007)
says 'Employees are not happy when they aren't free to make their own
decisions. They hate management for lack in trust '. Keller,(1995), says
'Superiors empowering subordinates by delegating responsibilities leads
to subordinates satisfaction with their leaders and this makes employees
to be committed to the organization and chances of quitting are minimal'.
Therefore it is to be understood that when an employee is free to make a
decision, he will be more satisfied and committed towards the job and
chances of turnover will get minimized.
Work Culture: Certainly, the mismanagement of growth has contributed
to the demise of most companies mushroomed since last few years.
There are many issues involved but the fact that most managers come
from a technological background is significant as is the difficulty of
growing and mastering a company beyond its entrepreneurial phase.
Both of these are exacerbated by the reluctance of software companies
to buy in general management talent and use non-executive directors. It
is evident that the software companies are more susceptible to
stagnation and at an earlier stage than companies in other industries.
This may be due to a gradual decrease of dynamic qualities, loss of
competitive edge, inability to adapt new technologies, losing technical
competence due to a promotion into managerial position etc. Couger,
(1988) says "Workers who have a greater variety of tasks stay in the job
and task chacteristics have been found to be potential determinants of
employees stay in the industry". Reiji Ohtaki Hugh Bucknall,(2005), says
"The executive who is willing to move has become far more attractive.
Organizations need the flexibility to move talented people quickly to take
on positions where they needed.
Training and development: W.David Rees and Christine porter ,(2008)
says "Training and development has become even more important as a
result of recent developments such as the accelerating rate of change
and increased competitive pressures brought about by factors such as
globalization and increasing development and application of information
technology. Training and Development has always been an issue that
organizations have to take seriously and if organized effectively should
be viewed as an essential investment and not an avoidable cost. The
return on investment involved should be such that as a result of training
employees reach an acceptable stand and of performance more quickly
than would otherwise have been the case." Snell,(2007) says "The
organization is responsible for supplying information about its mission,
policies and plans for providing support for employee self assessment
training and development."
Retention and Attrition: Employee retention has been a major concern
for software industry in the present scenario. Many researchers have
analyzed cause of employee attrition. The managers should read
employees mind power with interest and offer new challenges. B.B
Mahapatro , (2010) said "One of the toughest challenges for the HR
managers in the software industry is to deal with HR audit the prevalent
high attrition levels. Though there is an adequate supply of resource staff
at entry level, there are huge gaps in the middle and senior level
management in the industry. Further, the salary growth plan for each
employee is not well defined. This situation has resulted in increased
levels of poaching and attrition between organizations. The industry
average attrition rate is 30-35 per cent and could range up to 60 per
cent."
Pay & Rewards: The HAY Group - Thomas P. Flannery ,(1996), says
Senior leadership which often remains focused on cutting costs and
increasing profits . They look at pay as anything more than a margin in
terms of reducing expense. And HR compensation professionals often
see pay purely in terms of attracting and retaining talent. Monetary
satisfaction is the one way of retaining the employees. Griffeth,(2000),
says 'Pay and pay-related variables have a modest effect on turn over.
There is relationship between pay, a person's performance and
turnover.' Actually the pay and pay related issues are indirectly
proportional to employee turnover. More the employee paid, less the rate
of attrition. Hence it is the responsibility of an organization to make
employee satisfaction towards pay and perks to reduce attrition rate.
Christian M.Ellis,(2002), says 'Measurement is the key to the success of
incentive plans because it communicates the importance of established
organization goals. What gets measured and rewarded gets attention'.
Employee will be interested in job and committed to work if rewards
based on performance are given. It will be appreciated by the employee
if their performance is noticed and rewarded by top management.
Stress: Firth,(2007), says 'The experience of job related stress, the
range factors that lead to the same , lack of commitment in the industry
play a major role for an employee to quit' . Hudson says 'Employees who
experience increased stress due to work/life conflict and decreased
perceptions of control over their work and non-work demands are less
productive, less committed to, and satisfied with, their organization and
more likely to be absent or leave the organization'. The managers of
software organizations should be able to recognize the symptoms stress
and place successful techniques in managing stress. J.A.Fuller,(2003),
says 'A constant diet of even low-level stressful events has the potential
to cause workers to experience gradually increasing levels of strain over
time'. Such increasing levels of negative emotions will impact in work.
HR focus implies 'Over achievers can experience burnout when
unrealistic work goals are unattainable'.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Current trends in Indian Market
The Indian economy facing challenges in managing growth and
containing inflation a backdrop of an uncertain global environment. Due
to the recent, global economic issues such as Euro zone crisis and rising
commodity prices, during this fiscal year 2011 -2012 Indian economy
show slow down. Domestic growth rate was impacted by tightening of
the monetary policy by RBI. The budget pegged Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) for the year 2011-12 to have grown at 6.9% primarily due
to deceleration in industrial growth. The estimated GDP growth in 2012-
13 is at 7.6% . The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation for all
commodities for the period of March 2011 to January 2012 moderated to
6.6 per cent.(Source : Economic survey 2011 -12). The key challenges
for the software industry are:
Economic Slowdown in the west as software industry has its revenue
linked to the western markets
Attrition and retention of talented personnel
The gap between supply and demand of quality trained people
Motivation: The most widely reported motivator of software professionals
is the ability to identify with the task. This means that the task should
have clear goals, be interesting to the individual, be clearly defined and
be linked into the wider set of activities .Some of the other factors that
can motivate the employees in software industry are
Employee participation/involvement/working with Others
Support from senior management support, teambuilding and
communication
Opportunity for advancement, promotion prospect, career planning
Sense of belonging/supportive relationships
Scope for increased pay and benefits
Recognition for a high quality job done
Opportunity to specialize in Technically challenging work
Flexibility in work times, work location
Empowerment/responsibility
Trust/respect
Delegation: The work structure of the software industry show the
software teams are globally distributed in software development projects.
Virtual teams are an important work structure in global software
development. The distributed team structure enables access to a diverse
set of expertise which is often not available in one location. This
distributed structure requires the best leader delegation to sub-teams
and trust between sub-teams. Leader delegation related to teamwork
process that improves team members' motivation and satisfaction with
the leader. Cultural distance and geographical distance impair trust
development between members across sub-teams is greater challenge
to be tackled. Temporal distance causes conflicts related to excessive
overtime and meeting scheduling. Trust in sub-teams is critical to
improving motivation in a global software project There exists language
differences among software team members posing additional challenge
for the HR managers for evolving delegation strategies to improve team
members' trust and their motivation.
Work Culture: The work culture of software industry is different from
other traditional industries in many ways. The software industry follow a
'global corporate culture' where lack of bureaucracy, openness, flexibility
and employee empowerments are the key ideologies. Mobility is
particularly important whether the small size of single operations limit
both carrier opportunities and available talent pool. Treating all
operations within the region as a single executive resource pool creates
economies of scale and opportunities of advancement "
Training and development: Employees form the basis of the software
industry. Training & developing employees to keep them abreast thus
forms a major challenge. Most of the top software companies have their
own training facility wherein the training to fresh employees given for
three to six months. Thus, training programs form a huge part of the cost
.As software industry found to be competitive employing of skilled talent
has come up as the most critical challenge as the fight for best talent is
greater than ever. Further Training & Developing Potential Leaders &
Engaging employees come up as the other two top concerns requiring
dedicated efforts
Retention and Attrition: It is always more profitable by retaining
employees than acquiring new employees. Managers have to build an
effective employee retention system as shown in the Figure.1.
Figure -1.Employee retention system model.
Management has to understand 'why employees leave' and identify the
high risk of attrition by accurately predicting attrition rate. Most of the
employees have given better pay as the topmost reason to leave points
to increasing presence of MNCs with better pay scales in the industry.
Better utilization of current skills is one of the top attrition reasons.
Employees also leave organizations for personal reasons like marriage,
relocation etc. Before many employees leave , they become disengaged;
This in turn makes the employee uncommitted, marginally productive,
absenteeism and in extreme cases working against the interest of the
organization. If root causes of the employee disengagement is correctly
found out , the root causes can be eradicated by on-target solution
which in turn increases the performance of employee in right positive
direction. The following facts found to exist in the current year:
Junior management (JM) level faces highest level of attrition.
Better pay in other software companies is the foremost reason for the
employee to leave the organizations.
Many employees wants to pursue further studies in India and abroad
looking for improves skill sets.
Improved work - life balance is another area which is slowly but steadily
gaining
momentum as employees seek to consciously decrease levels of stress
at the workplace.
Pay & Rewards: According to the Economic survey 2012 -13, during the
last year the overall pay increments in software sector remained
relatively low. Majority of the software companies have given increments
to all their employees in the range of 10-12%, across all levels - Junior,
Middle, Senior & Top Management. Top Management increments across
organizations have been the lowest. The reason for this low rate of
increment can be attributed to the Economic slowdown in the West. The
industry Median for annual Increment is 11% (50th) and it is lower when
compared to the previous year. This is due to the uncertain market
sentiment.
Stress: Most of the employees in the software industry work based on
definite time line, which naturally induces stress. It is understood that
when there is stress in the job, naturally commitment towards the work
will get reduced. This arises the tendency of the employee to quit and
seek comfortable job. Low spirits and short temperedness are some
indicators of stress. Lesser stressful work for long period , also
sometimes induces distress and make the employee to think of moving
out. Whenever software industry gets downsized, work pressure will be
more on remaining employees because of more work expected to be
performed by them, with fewer sub-ordinates. This will lead increase
trend of attrition.

CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents an overview of the challenges faced by the
changing scenario of software industries in India. The complete dynamic
nature of the business requires constant involvement of the Human
resource manager to provide strategic solutions for the challenges. HR
must constantly be aware of the business strategies and the
opportunities and threats facing the organization. It is also of critical
importance that the top management also fully involve in implementing
the processes sincerely and to add value to the organization. The
various strategies suggested in this paper including the retention can be
better practiced by motivating the employees which the will result in
increased organizational effectiveness.
Vid
Eo

The Emerging Trends In

Human Resource
Management
Information Technology
Essay
Human resource management is a process of bringing
people and organizations together so that the goals of
each other are met. Human resource (or personnel)
management, in the sense of getting things done through
people. It's an essential part of every manager's
responsibilities, but many organizations find it
advantageous to establish a specialist division to provide
an expert service dedicated to ensuring that the human
resource function is performed efficiently.
The role of HR manager is shifting from that of a protector
and screener to the role of a planner and change agent.
Personnel directors are the new corporate heroes. The
name of the game today in business is personnel.
Nowadays it is not possible to show a good financial or
operating report unless your personnel relations are in
order.
Over the years, highly skilled and knowledge based jobs
are increasing while low skilled jobs are decreasing. This
calls for future skill mapping through proper HRM
initiatives.
With the continuous increasing competition and countries
becoming global, the Organization's concept for HR has
changed. It's the need of the time to consider the
employees as the resource. The organization which are
working on the principle of Attracting, Managing,
Nurturing and Retaining their employees are moving ahead
with the competition and are having competitive
advantage over other organizations. The employees are
being involved in the workings of the organizations, and
their efforts are recognized and rewarded.
"People are our most valuable asset" is a cliché which no
member of any senior management team would disagree
with. Yet, the reality for many organizations is that their
people remain
under valued
under trained
under utilized
poorly motivated, and consequently
perform well below their true capability
The rate of change facing organizations has never been
greater and organizations must absorb and manage
change at a much faster rate than in the past. In order to
implement a successful business strategy to face this
challenge, organizations, large or small, must ensure that
they have the right people capable of delivering the
strategy.
As organizations vary in size, aims, functions, complexity,
construction, the physical nature of their product, and
appeal as employers, so do the contributions of human
resource management. But, in most the ultimate aim of
the function is to: "ensure that at all times the business is
correctly staffed by the right number of people with the
skills relevant to the business needs", that is, neither
overstaffed nor understaffed in total or in respect of any
one discipline or work grade.

EMERGING TRENDS:
Following are the emerging trends in human resource
management
Human Resource outsourcing
Six Sigma Practices
Work/Life Balance
Talent Management

OUT SOURCING:
Outsourcing means, shifting or delegating a company's
day to day operations or business processes to an
external service provider; of course done in anticipation of
better quality, lower rates and in a sense getting an edge
over one's competitors. To be more precise; Outsourcing
is the work done for a company by people other than the
company's full time employees. Now these people could
be anywhere and they might have their offices in any part
of the world, speaking a different language and working in
a different time frame. That's the reason why selecting
your outsourcing destination becomes so very important.
Outsourcing is the process by which an organization
contracts with another individual or company to get some
of its work done. Viewed this way, most organizations go
for some kind or other of outsourcing. Generally it is non-
core aspects of the business that are outsourced.
The firms that offer the services thus required are called
service providers or third-party providers. Businesses may
thus tie up with service providers for either individual
processes or whole projects or operations.

HUMAN RESOURCE
OUTSOURCING
Human Resource Outsourcing is a process in which a
company uses the services of a third party to take care of
its HR functions. A company may outsource a few or all of
its HR related activities to a single or combination of
service provides located in offshore destinations like
India, China, Philippines, etc.
Rapidly changing market dynamics and global competitive
pressures have caused organizations to spend more time
focusing on their core business. Organizations are fast
realizing that they can't be all things to all people. So
companies now, be it a software company, a service
provider or a manufacturing firm, decide what they are
good at and outsource everything else, i.e., focus on their
core competency, and let someone else do the rest in a
more efficient and cost-effective manner.
As a result, human resources outsourcing is becoming
increasingly prevalent. The number of companies
outsourcing HR activities continues to rise, and the scope
of outsourced HR activities continues to expand. HR
outsourcing can happen in HR functions, like payroll
administration (producing checks, handling taxes, dealing
with sick-time and vacations), employee benefits (Health,
Medical, Life insurance, Cafeteria, etc), human resource
management (hiring and firing, background interviews,
exit interviews and wage reviews), risk management, etc.
Outsourcing has become a common response to manage
people and technology resources strategically, enhance
services, and manage costs more effectively.It includes
HR recruiting outsourcing helps cut costs, helps
concentrate on core business and most importantly helps
in ensuring employee satisfaction. By Human Resource
Outsourcing companies can save huge amounts of money
and be free of complications that are otherwise involved
in maintaining an internal HR department. By doing so,
companies can concentrate on their core competencies
saving their valuable time and resources. Some industry
sources believe that Human Resource Outsourcing is the
future, making the next generation of in-house
professionals simply integrators of the company's
outsourced services.

SERVICES OFFERED BY HR
OUTSOURCING:
Maintenance of personnel
records
Annual review and revision of employee handbook
Audit of HR strategies, policies and procedures
Implementation of employment/termination procedures
Job description process
Exit interviews
Employee development program
Performance management process
On-site support
Employee retention programs
Long term incentive/equity stock option programs
Employee Morale Building
Compensation plan review

Recruiting services
Retained Search
Job Description Development Strategy
Ad Placement
Applicant Screening
Reference and Background Check
Candidate Interviews and Recommendations
Development and Coordination of Offer
Integration of New Hire

HR management services
Compensation plan review and analysis
Culture development
Due diligence/Acquisition planning
Incentive and retention programs
Executive Coaching
Succession Planning

Benefits administration
Brokerage Services
Custom Benefit Plan Strategies and Design
Benefit analysis, cost control and reduction
recommendations
Development of Employee Communications
Eligibility and Enrollment Services
Employee claims resolution
Monthly invoice audit and reconciliation
On-line employee access to benefits information

Payroll services
Employee self-service features
Payroll processing and reporting
Payroll tax reporting
Time off tracking
Online benefits enrollment

MEASURES OF
SUCCESSFUL
OUTSOURCING
The HR department traditionally has been a cost-
consuming function, but is now slowly contributing
significantly to a company's bottom line. This has led to
outsourcing tasks like payroll, benefits,
education/training, recruiting, personnel administration,
organizational development and workforce management.
The outsourcing market is beginning to see HR as a
preferred choice. A Gartner Focus Report (Outsourcing:
Time to Deliver Results) echoes that thought: "Only those
companies ready to address the necessary transformation
of their HR processes will find that outsourcing will bring
access to world-class processes, competitive advantage,
and increased shareholder value."
Technology compatibility, confidentiality and cost are
other challenges that both sides must work on. Mutual
trust is critical, as it's a long haul commitment. It is
imperative that senior management are involved right
from the beginning and also drives the initiative. In
addition, a clear understanding of requirements and
expectations from both sides is an important platform in
building the relationship. Compatibility in culture and
values along with an open and flexible approach go a long
way in ensuring that the outsourcing venture is a
successful one.

HUMAN RESOURCE
OUTSOURCING SOLUTION
HR OUTSOURCE SERVICES
TO INDIA
One of the reasons to outsource HR operations is to
streamline processes and make them more transparent to
employees. Technology is usually a key enabler in
achieving this transparency. It also helps preserve the
sanctity of information between employee and employer.
Indian Internet IT service companies (software and web
developers) are considered a viable outsourcing option
today. What they offer is a strategic initiative to cut costs
and access to intellectual capital not available in-house.
The increasing emphasis on customer response activities
in the West have made Indian outsourcing service
providers reinvent themselves and extend their web
development activities to ASP (Application Service
Providing) and other high-end outsourcing solutions.
When you outsource HR services to India, you can save on
time and effort and concentrate on your core business.
You will also be able to increase your flexibility to met
needs such as, changing and new business conditions and
increasing orders for products, services and technologies.
By outsourcing a non-core process like HR services, you
can concentrate more on increasing customer satisfaction
and on increasing the value of your products / services.
Outsource HR services to India and benefit from the skills,
expertise, latest technology and professional services
that India offers in the field of HR. When you outsource HR
services to India, you will find your operating
performance, risk management and control improving. By
outsourcing HR services, you can also gain access to
professional services. Your outsourcing provider will be
able to provide you with proficient HR services that can
bring about a change in your organization. Outsourcing HR
services can also help you benefit financially. One good
reason for outsourcing HR services to India is that you can
save on costs and at the same time get access to high-
quality services.

ORGANIZATION THAT
OUTSORCE HR SERVICES
TO INDIA
Large organizations mostly outsource their HR services to
India in order to concentrate on their core processes.
Such large organizations can increase the profitability of
their business by outsourcing. Large organizations also
stand to gain from better HR services for their employees.
Small and mid-size organizations also outsource if they do
not have enough of HR staff to manage their HR functions.
Mid-size and small organizations can also benefit from
cost-effective services when they outsource to India.
Outsource HR services to India to enhance your
productivity and return on investments and also to
achieve the economies of scale.

ADVANTAGES OF
OUTSOURCING IN INDIA
When you outsource HR services to India, you can see an
improvement in your HR support functions. Outsourcing
HR services can help you bring out more effective and
efficient processes within your organization. Payroll
functions can be completed on time accurately and your
outsourcing partner can come up with ingenious ways of
improving HR functions in your organization.
Outsourcing HR services to India can help you achieve
your targets. Your business can become more productive
with the help of effective business and HR strategies. You
can also on save time, effort and manpower. You can
concentrate more on your business and can be relieved
from taking care of your HR work in-house. With strategic
HR strategies, training programs and development
programs, you can retain your employees.

FUTURE OF HR
OUTSOURCING:
Growth-Maturation of HRO market
Increasing weight of non-cost drivers
"Communization" of HR functions
New roles for internal HR departments
New career opportunities for HR professionals
Expansion of small/mid-sized HRO markets
Demographic changes
Improved HRO metrics
Reshaping of industry
RISKS OF HR
OUTSOURCING
Trust
Confidentiality
Dependency
Spillover risks
Relative proficiency
Strategic capability
Commitment
Flexibility

CONCLUSION:
The ultimate aim behind this topic" Emerging Trends in
Human Resource Management" is to build better human
resource management through human resource
outsourcing. This emerging trend executes the best way
of human resource management that makes the
organization to run smoothly where the employees and the
organization goal are met.
Video: Discover UK Essays!
U
Emerging Workplace Trends that
Challenge the Organization

The role of the Human Resource Professional is evolving with the change in
competitive market environment and the realization that Human Resource
Management must play a more strategic role in the success of an
organization. Organizations that do not put their emphasis on attracting and
retaining talents may find themselves in dire consequences, as their
competitors may be outplaying them in the strategic employment of their
human resources.

With the increase in competition, locally or globally, organizations must

become more adaptable, resilient, agile, and customer-focused to succeed.
And within this change in environment, the HR professional has to evolve to
become a strategic partner, an employee sponsor or advocate, and a change
mentor within the organization. In order to succeed, HR must be a business
driven function with a thorough understanding of the organization's big
picture and be able to influence key decisions and policies. In general, the
focus of today's HR Manager is on strategic personnel retention and talents
development. HR professionals will be coaches, counselors, mentors, and
succession planners to help motivate organization's members and their
loyalty. The HR manager will also promote and fight for values, ethics, beliefs,
and spirituality within their organizations, especially in the management of
workplace diversity.

This paper will highlight on how a HR professional can meet the challenges
and Trend of HR Professional, how to motivate employees through gain-
sharing and executive information system through proper planning,
organizing, leading and controlling their human resources.

II. Review of Literature and Studies

Organizations have entered a new era characterized by rapid, dramatic and

turbulent changes. The accelerated pace of change has transformed how
work is performed by employees in diverse organizations. Change has truly
become an inherent and integral part of organizational life.

Several emerging trends are impacting organizational life. Of these emerging

trends, five will be examined: globalization, diversity, flexibility, technology,
and networks. These five emerging trends create tensions for organizational
leaders and employees as they go through waves of changes in their
organizations. These tensions present opportunities as well as threats, and if
these tensions are not managed well, they will result in dysfunctional and dire
organizational outcomes at the end of any change process.

Globalization

To stay competitive, more organizations are embracing offshore outsourcing.

Many functions are being shifted to India, the Philippines, Malaysia, and other
countries for their low labor costs, high levels of workforce education, and
technological advantages. According to the 2002-2003 Society for Human
Resource Management (SHRM) Workplace Forecast, companies such as Ford,
General Motors, and Nestle employ more people outside of their headquarters
countries than within those countries.

Almost any company, whether in manufacturing or services, can find some

part of its work that can be done off site. Forrester Research projects that 3.3
million U.S. service- and knowledge-based jobs will be shipped overseas by
the year 2015, 70 percent of which will move to India. Communication and
information sharing are occurring across the globe in multiple languages and
multiple cultures. Global competition and global cooperation coexist in the
new world economy.

One major consequence of globalization is greater mobility in international

capital and labor markets. This creates a global marketplace where there is
more opportunity, because there are more potential customers. However,
there is also more competition, as local companies have to compete with
foreign companies for customers.

According to Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at

Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, the processes associated with the
global integration of markets for goods, services, and capital have created
two sources of tensions.

First, reduced barriers to trade and investment accentuate the asymmetries

between groups that can cross international borders, and those that cannot.
In the first category are owners of capital, highly skilled workers, and many
professionals. Unskilled and semiskilled workers and most middle managers
belong in the second category.

Second, globalization engenders conflicts within and between nations over

domestic norms and the social institutions that embody them. As the
technology for manufactured goods becomes standardized and diffused
internationally, nations with very different sets of values, norms, institutions,
and collective preferences begin to compete head on in markets for similar
goods. Trade becomes contentious when it unleashes forces that undermine
the norms implicit in local or domestic workplace practices.

Diversity

According to Thomas (1992), dimensions of workplace diversity include, but

are not limited to: age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, physical abilities/qualities,
race, sexual orientation, educational background, geographic location,
income, marital status, military experience, religious beliefs, parental status,
and work experience.

The future success of any organizations relies on the ability to manage a

diverse body of talent that can bring innovative ideas, perspectives and views
to their work. The challenge and problems faced of workplace diversity can
be turned into a strategic organizational asset if an organization is able to
capitalize on this melting pot of diverse talents. With the mixture of talents of
diverse cultural backgrounds, genders, ages and lifestyles, an organization
can respond to business opportunities more rapidly and creatively, especially
in the global arena (Cox, 1993), which must be one of the important
organizational goals to be attained. More importantly, if the organizational
environment does not support diversity broadly, one risks losing talent to
competitors.

This is especially true for multinational companies (MNCs) who have

operations on a global scale and employ people of different countries, ethical
and cultural backgrounds. Thus, a HR professional needs to be mindful and
may employ a 'Think Global, Act Local' approach in most circumstances. The
challenge of workplace diversity is also prevalent amongst Singapore's Small
and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). With a population of only four million people
and the nation's strive towards high technology and knowledge-based
economy; foreign talents are lured to share their expertise in these areas.
Thus, many local HR professional have to undergo cultural-based Human
Resource Management training to further their abilities to motivate a group of
professional that are highly qualified but culturally diverse. Furthermore, the
HR professional must assure the local professionals that these foreign talents
are not a threat to their career advancement (Toh, 1993). In many ways, the
effectiveness of workplace diversity management is dependent on the skilful
balancing act of the HR Professional.

One of the main reasons for ineffective workplace diversity management is

the predisposition to pigeonhole employees, placing them in a different silo
based on their diversity profile (Thomas, 1992). In the real world, diversity
cannot be easily categorized and those organizations that respond to human
complexity by leveraging the talents of a broad workforce will be the most
effective in growing their businesses and their customer base.

In order to effectively manage workplace diversity, Cox (1993) suggests that

a HR Profesional needs to change from an ethnocentric view ("our way is the
best way") to a culturally relative perspective ("let's take the best of a variety
of ways"). This shift in philosophy has to be ingrained in the managerial
framework of the HR Manager in his/her planning, organizing, leading and
controlling of organizational resources.

Flexibility

Globalization and diversity trends are forcing organizations to become more

flexible and adaptable. To be able to function globally and to embrace
diversity, HR Professional in organizations have to become more flexible and
develop a wider repertoire of skills and strategies in working with diverse
groups of people in the workplace as well as in the marketplace.

The response to increased diversity has, in many cases, been increased

organizational flexibility. Some organizations allow workers to have very
different work arrangements (e.g. flex-time) and payment schedules. Some
organizations (and workers) have found it convenient to treat some workers
as independent consultants rather than employees. In certain occupations,
advances in communication and information technologies have enabled
telecommuting -working at home via computer. One consequence of this is
the blurring of boundaries between work and home, and where and when work
occurs. The benefits of greater flexibility may be countered by the negative
consequences of working 24/7 including higher stress and burnout.

The response to increased competition, however, has resulted in a tension

generated by the demands to be flexible and yet maintain some stability as
changes are implemented in organizations. To stay competitive, organizations
are constantly changing and restructuring to increase flexibility and decrease
costs. Business process reengineering, business process out-sourcing, job
redesign, and other approaches to optimize business processes have been
implemented to increase operational and process efficiency while reducing
the costs of doing business.

Changes in business and operational processes need time to stabilize for

employees to learn the new processes, become familiar with them, and be
able to operate effectively and efficiently. Yet, competitive pressures can
cause organizations to go through a series of changes without giving
employees adequate time for learning and training, and for the benefits of the
change to be fully realized in the organization. This tension is well-captured
by Columbia Business School professor Eric Abrahamson in his book, Change
Without Pain (2004) in which he discussed how organizations can go through
change overload and how employees can experience change fatigue and
burnout. Professor Abrahamson proposes "creative recombination" as an
alternative approach to the highly destructive, destabilizing and painful
changes caused by "creative destruction".

Technology

A Human Resource Management System (HRMS, EHRMS), Human Resource

Information System (HRIS), HR Technology or also called HR modules, or
simply "Payroll", refers to the systems and processes at the intersection
between human resource management (HRM) and information technology. It
merges HRM as a discipline and in particular its basic HR activities and
processes with the information technology field, whereas the programming of
data processing systems evolved into standardized routines and packages of
enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. On the whole, these ERP
systems have their origin on software that integrates information from
different applications into one universal database. The linkage of its financial
and human resource modules through one database is the most important
distinction to the individually and proprietary developed predecessors, which
makes this software application both rigid and flexible.

The function of Human Resources departments is generally administrative

and not common to all organizations. Organizations may have formalized
selection, evaluation, and payroll processes. Efficient and effective
management of "Human Capital" has progressed to an increasingly imperative
and complex process. The HR function consists of tracking existing employee
data which traditionally includes personal histories, skills, capabilities,
accomplishments and salary. To reduce the manual workload of these
administrative activities, organizations began to electronically automate
many of these processes by introducing specialized Human Resource
Management Systems. HR executives rely on internal or external IT
professionals to develop and maintain an integrated HRMS. Before the client-
server architecture evolved in the late 1980s, many HR automation processes
were relegated to mainframe computers that could handle large amounts of
data transactions. In consequence of the low capital investment necessary to
buy or program proprietary software, these internally-developed HRMS were
unlimited to organizations that possessed a large amount of capital. The
advent of client-server, Application Service Provider, and Software as a
Service or SaaS Human Resource Management Systems enabled increasingly
higher administrative control of such systems. Currently Human Resource
Management Systems encompass:

1. Payroll

2. Work Time

3. Benefits Administration

4. HR management Information system

5. Recruiting
6. Training/Learning Management System

7. Performance Record

8. Employee Self-Service

The payroll module automates the pay process by gathering data on employee
time and attendance, calculating various deductions and taxes, and
generating periodic pay cheques and employee tax reports. Data is generally
fed from the human resources and time keeping modules to calculate
automatic deposit and manual cheque writing capabilities. This module can
encompass all employee-related transactions as well as integrate with
existing financial management systems.

The work time gathers standardized time and work related efforts. The most
advanced modules provide broad flexibility in data collection methods, labor
distribution capabilities and data analysis features was outdated. Cost
analysis and efficiency metrics are the primary functions.

The benefits administration module provides a system for organizations to

administer and track employee participation in benefits programs. These
typically encompass insurance, compensation, profit sharing and retirement.

The HR management module is a component covering many other HR aspects

from application to retirement. The system records basic demographic and
address data, selection, training and development, capabilities and skills
management, compensation planning records and other related activities.
Leading edge systems provide the ability to "read" applications and enter
relevant data to applicable database fields, notify employers and provide
position management and position control not in use. Human resource
management function involves the recruitment, placement, evaluation,
compensation and development of the employees of an organization. Initially,
businesses used computer based information systems to:

• produce pay checks and payroll reports;

• maintain personnel records;

• pursue Talent Management.

Online recruiting has become one of the primary methods employed by HR

departments to garner potential candidates for available positions within an
organization. Talent Management systems typically encompass:

• analyzing personnel usage within an organization;

• identifying potential applicants;

• recruiting through company-facing listings;

• recruiting through online recruiting sites or publications that market to

both recruiters and applicants.

The significant cost incurred in maintaining an organized recruitment effort,

cross-posting within and across general or industry-specific job boards and
maintaining a competitive exposure of availabilities has given rise to the
development of a dedicated Applicant Tracking System, or 'ATS', module.
The training module provides a system for organizations to administer and
track employee training and development efforts. The system, normally called
a Learning Management System if a stand alone product, allows HR to track
education, qualifications and skills of the employees, as well as outlining
what training courses, books, CDs, web based learning or materials are
available to develop which skills. Courses can then be offered in date specific
sessions, with delegates and training resources being mapped and managed
within the same system. Sophisticated LMS allow managers to approve
training, budgets and calendars alongside performance management and
appraisal metrics.

The Employee Self-Service module allows employees to query HR related data

and perform some HR transactions over the system. Employees may query
their attendance record from the system without asking the information from
HR personnel. The module also lets supervisors approve O.T. requests from
their subordinates through the system without overloading the task on HR
department.

Many organizations have gone beyond the traditional functions and developed
human resource management information systems, which support
recruitment, selection, hiring, job placement, performance appraisals,
employee benefit analysis, health, safety and security, while others integrate
an outsourced Applicant Tracking System that encompasses a subset of the
above.

Networks

Organizations that flatten tend to encourage horizontal communication among

workers. Rather than working through the organizational hierarchy, it is often
faster for workers who need to coordinate with each other simply to
communicate directly. Such organizations are highly networked.

Another meaning of networked organizations refers to their relations to other

organizations. Organizations that have downsized to just their core
competencies must then outsource all the functions that used to be done
inhouse. To avoid losing time and effort managing contracts with suppliers,
organizations have learned to develop close ties to their suppliers so that
social mechanisms of coordination replace legal mechanisms, which are slow
and costly. In many industries, such as the garment industry in Italy, strong
relationships have developed between manufacturers and suppliers (and
other manufacturers), so that considerable work is done without a contract
and without even working out a firm price. For these networked organizations
to work, high trust and social capital between organizations are key
elements.

Networked organizations are particularly important in industries with complex

products where technologies and customer needs change rapidly, such as in
high technology industries. Close ties among a set of companies enables
them to work with each other in ways that are faster than arms-length
contracts would permit, and yet retains the flexibility of being able to drop the
relationship if needed (as opposed to performing the function in-house). The
trend towards networked organizations and structures create a new tension
between interdependence and independence. The forces of aggregation and
disaggregation throw up new challenges for organizations, for example, the
use of independent contractors, joint ventures, strategic partnerships and
alliances even with competitors.

One advantage of networks is that organizations have greater flexibility and

thus they can become more competitive in the global marketplace. Another
advantage is that organizations do not require that many resources such as
employee benefits, office space, and financing for new business ventures.

On the other hand, networks have distinct disadvantages. Organizations may

find it more difficult to control quality of goods or services as they now have
to depend on their partners in the networks to deliver the quality that is
desired. Legal and contracting expertise as well as negotiation expertise will
also be important for networks. Alternative forms of control may need to be
developed to control quality. Alternative mechanisms for coordination may
also need to be developed to manage the growing constellation and
sometimes tenuous nature of other partner organizations in the network.

All the five trends produce result in greater organizational or system

complexity for HR Professional in organizations. The tensions produced by
these trends cannot be solved. They have to be managed. Effective
approaches in organizational change will involve not one strategy but many
alternatives and will require leaders and employees to develop greater
resilience in confronting these tensions.

III. Reaction

True enough that the HR Professional is phasing a lot changes and trend that
encouraged huge change in any organization. HR Professional must accept
this trend in able to for them to grasp in never ending change. This 5 trend are
now being embrace by many organizations.

Globalization trend, may organization specially here in the Philippines are

using outsourcing instead of hiring a HR Professional. Example: Instead of
hiring Payroll and Time Keeper, may company are using electronic time
captured device that allow the outsourcing company to time and payroll. This
trend are creating advantages and this advantages

Advantages: There will be no HR professional will focusing this area, there

are strategic allocations for HR Professionals and HR professional will be
focusing on Human Development. In the contrary it also has disadvantages:
since time keeping and payroll are being done by the outsource company
there would be a possible problem when it comes to employee satisfaction,
Time keeping problems such us: failure to finger scan, un computed time,
wrong computation due to time discrepancies and not all organization can
embraces this trend .

Diversity trend - May organization here in the Philippines are owned by

Koreans, Japanese, American and other foreign investor. This could be one
factor that added cultural diversity in industries. Local plus foreign
differences that could be resulted in a mixed local-foreign diversity. For
instance an organization made of ilocano, batangeño and manileño could
create cultural and social diversity. HR Professionals must learn how to adopt
the differences because they are mainly the model in accepting diversity thus
it must be reflected by HR Professional because they are creating human
development that include diversity acceptance.

Flexibility - Because of Globalization and Diversity may HR Professional are

now flexible. They can easily adopt changes. This characteristic must be
posses by all HR Professional to become more successful to handle big
responsibility.

Technology - evolution of technology is very fast. It changes the way of life.

HRIS is one of the products of technology; before we are doing 201 file (we
will need a lot of folders, paper and other staff) but because of HRIS we can
make this thing eliminated. We can now create paperless 201 file and also we
can now file are absences, leaves, overtime online. But the problem is, not all
company can buy this thing. They still using traditional method and this really
affect HR professional because they are being left behind.

The role of the HR Professional must parallel the needs of the changing
organization. Successful organizations are becoming more adaptable,
resilient, quick to change directions, and customer-centered. Within this
environment, the HR professional must learn how to manage effectively
through planning, organizing, leading and controlling the human resource and
be knowledgeable of emerging trends in training.

I.V Reference

1. SHRM Workplace Forecast: A Strategic Outlook 2000-2003. Alexandria:

Society for Human Resource Management.

2. Earley, P.C., Soon Ang, and Joo-Seng Tan. CQ: Developing Cultural
Intelligence in the Workplace. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.

3. John M. Ivancevich.: Human Resources Management. Mc Graw-Hill

International, 2007

This paper will highlight on how a HR manager can meet the challenges of
workplace diversity, how to motivate employees through gain-sharing and
executive information system through proper planning, organizing, leading
and controlling their human

K Essays!