Human Resource Management Today
Introduction
The term human resource management is utilized in describing the organization's formal systems which are designed with the objective of offering administration of individuals who are within a given organization (Prescott, & Rothwell, 2012). The administration is thus conducted by a manager of the human resource whose responsibly are primarily under employee’s benefits and compensation, work design, and staffing. The management department of a human resource today is faced with numerous challenges as it deals with employees directly. In the working industry human resource is the most significant aspect that helps in determination of business success. This is mainly because the success of the firm primarily relies on the general capabilities held by the members (Prescott, & Rothwell, 2012). Most of the issues, challenges, changes as well as disappointed are normally related to individuals. Human resources can be termed as the general flow of the organization. The human resource management is complex at it is full of issues because the employees in an organization do not easily accept or embrace changes or the objectives of the corporation. Individually every employee in an organization holds their own needs, interests, inspirations, desires and so much more (Prescott, & Rothwell, 2012). The individual aspects are therefore responsible for influencing their behaviors while they are performing their duties. This aims and desires at the most time get into conflict with the objectives of the corporation. In order to provide reconciliation and solution to the generated conflict, the tools of HRM are utilized in generating harmony within the aims and the objectives of the employees continuously. The surrounding of HRM is complex and challenging today based on the fact that transformations are occurring rapidly across growing issues.
Human Resource Management Challenges and Trends Today
From a professional interview that I had with an HR manager, the role of HRM is fast transforming today with the growth of technological advances and globalization (Parry, Stavrou, & Lazarova, 2013). This change holds a positive impact mainly because the HRM professionals are presented with the chances of operating in more strategic roles. For the HRM the challenge is keeping up with the emerging innovations which are both legal and technical. The major challenges that are facing the HRM today are grounded mainly on competition surrounding and the concerns of the employees (Parry, Stavrou, & Lazarova, 2013). From this perspective, it is clear that the major challenges that are being faced by HRM are technological transformations, economic changes, business globalization, and availability of the workforce and the concerns of generating quality, issues of diversity and demography and the organization restructuring process.
HRM Trends Today
There are several trends that are affecting the HRM in organizations today. This trend includes cost, corporation strategy, and technology, and development, the labor force in the modern era, responsiveness, globalization, human capital, and the changing employment relationships (Parry, Stavrou, & Lazarova, 2013).
Currently, organization is struggling to establish those that will take part in providing a workforce for them in the future. Globalization is a current trend that impacts HRM because it involves distinct cultures, regulations, laws as well as geographic practices (Parry, Stavrou, & Lazarova, 2013). The issue, therefore, lies in the identification of appropriate training programs, adjusting the benefits and plans of compensating workers and identification of capable employees. On the other hand, it becomes difficult for the HRM to adapt technological advancements because they change rapidly and therefore this challenges the capabilities of the corporation. The technological advancement has, therefore, to apply in sectors like job evaluation, planning, tracking of applicants hiring as well as recruiting employees. With the growing diversity in the workplaces organizations are required to develop an environment that incorporates and respects everyone through recognition of abilities. In addition, the HRM is required to develop a work surrounding that has the ability to maximize the capabilities of everyone (Parry, Stavrou, & Lazarova, 2013).
HRM Challenges Today
Business globalization
In both an economic and a political status globalization can be described as the denationalization of the international markets legal and political systems, globalization in other words is the extension that works beyond national boundaries which is based on similar forces in the market which have been in operation for a period at all economic human activities status (Rothwell, & Benscoter, 2012). This, therefore, implies that the financial and Trade markets globally are being integrated. The rapid development of globalization holds different impacts on HRM in regard to the issues that surround, regional laws, practices, arrogances, business ethics, as well as the models of management. This, therefore, possess a challenge to the HRM managers as they are forced to handle more functions and get more involved in the individual lives of their employees. Through globalization, the business completion has increased rapidly due to the creation of fresh markets and the global labor flow which has increased (Rothwell, & Benscoter, 2012). In organizations, toady success cannot be achieved without the incorporation of an effective HRM which is mainly is influenced by management practices and flexibility changes.
Workforce Diversity
Workforce diversity is characterized by numerous dimensions such as ethnicity, age, gender, qualities, religion, and race sexual orientation and so on (Lawler, & Boudreau, 2015). Based on the growing competition toady the role of HRM is becoming difficult by the day. This is mainly because it is highly necessitated to attract highly qualified employees and develop strategies for retaining the talents and capabilities. In addition, the tendency of independence and self-employment has grown gradually. In the working market today, individuals have attained more freedom in the context of opting either to work which is based on their current situations. Most individuals opt to work under part-Time jobs which make the role of the HRM difficult in trying to design tasks (Lawler, & Boudreau, 2015).
With the growth of competition domestically and internationally organizations are highly required to become agile, adaptable and focused on both the consumers as well as the employees who are major determinants of productivity (Rothwell, & Benscoter, 2012). Diversity is, therefore, becoming a major issue as managing it is not easy. The management of the diversified workforce is therefore not required to portray any form of discrimination as this result in high turnover rate. This, therefore, challenges the HRM professionals because they are required to enroll into training programs to acquire knowledge and motivation in handling the diversified group. The another challenge is that the diversified workforce may be challenging to motivate or control towards a specific goal as each group is characterized with its unique desires and wants in regard to the working environment (Rothwell, & Benscoter, 2012).
Technological Advancement
Technology poses a great challenge to the HRM. This is mainly because it is challenging for the organization to rapidly adapt to the growing technological transformations (Lawler, & Boudreau, 2015). This is mainly because the adoption influences the work flow’s nature which generates several issues. Technological advancement today results in a decrease in the number of jobs which requires skills which can thus be termed as the tendency of shifting from labor towards knowledge operation. The fresh working world neither is nor characterized by technology and this, therefore, requires the organization to transform its technological approaches (Lawler, & Boudreau, 2015). With the fresh technology, the rate of unemployment has been widened and skilled labor is therefore very scarce. This, therefore, demonstrates how the advancement of technology challenges the functions of the HRM in an organization.
Legal and Political Surrounding Changes
Transformation in the political and legal surrounding affects the operations of the general organization. The changes in both the politics and legal world relate to the transformations in political rules, parties as well as legal regulations. With this fresh laws are generated and this implies that the business has to adapt them while conducting activities. Today there are too many transformations that are occurring in the politics and legal framework within which the organizations are required to function (Prescott, & Rothwell, 2012). With the changes, the HRM responsibilities are developed further. This is because in the industry it is the full responsibility of the HRM professionals to establish and evaluate the implications of the changes. This, in addition, requires them to develop adjustments strategies or solutions within the particular organization so that the human resource later utility can be attained at ease. Moreover, the HR manager is required to anticipate the transformations in the environment and thus prepare their particular corporations to handle the changes without altering the operations of the organization. This task is therefore not easy because they are required to manage the effects of the changes as well as ensure that the human resource sector is effectively responding (Prescott, & Rothwell, 2012).
Economic Changes
The economic transformations that challenge the HRM are in exclusion of production factors. The key factors that surround the economic changes challenge are raw materials scarcity as well as tasks inputs that generally involves quality products demands, brands awareness, consumerism of culture and effectiveness pressure (Kumar, 2011). When the economy fluctuates there is a growing tendency of the resources scarcity occurrence. This, on the other hand, implies that the cost of operation increases as the cost of purchasing materials and acquiring labor heightens. The operation and the capital of the organization are pushed up. This, therefore, poses a challenge to the HRM in that the HR is required to hire workers with high productivity ability to generate increased revenue for the organization as well as attain efficiency. This cannot thus be achieved with increased cost of operation since the organization is required to incur more than it generates (Kumar, 2011). The HRM, on the other hand, is necessitated to develop solutions to ensure that the issue does not occur again.
Information Technology Rebellion
Information technology has been established to be a major influence in the context of HRM development today (Lawler, & Boudreau, 2015). This has mainly been achieved through the utilization of HR information systems which plays part in data processing streaming thus ensuring that employee’s data is available readily to the HR managers. The rebellion of information technology affects the ability of the HRM to develop decisions and coordinate employees. This is mainly because it does not encourage the creation of interaction as anything that relates to the employees can be acquired by the managers at ease (Lawler, & Boudreau, 2015).
Organization Restructuring Process
Organization restructuring is another challenged that is faced by HRM today. Most organizations toady have restructured in the quest of attaining competitiveness (Stone, & Deadrick, 2015). Through acquisitions as well as the merging of corporations that are in the same industry corporation is fully able to attain competitiveness. As a part of the transformations, most corporations have adopted a resize by reducing the number of managers, merging, closing the corporations or even outpacing their workers. The most common adoption today is the elimination of manager’s players in the organizations. This is conducted in order to develop productivity, increase quality, increase revenue and decrease the costs of operations. From this conduct the redesigning of jobs is on the rise and most individuals within organizations are highly affected. The major challenge that professionals in the HRM sector faces is handling the human implications generated by change (Stone, & Deadrick, 2015).
Employee’s Expectations Changes
In the working industry toady employees are demanding empowerment and they also expect that the organization demonstrates equality (Kumar, 2011). According to Kumar, (2011), to different studies employees are only expected to embrace changes in the business world through empowerment. This is associated with the challenge of employability which is a major challenge for an organization that requires to employee many employees. For the employees to adapt to changes training has to occur based on the growing working complexity that requires vast knowledge and well-developed skills (Kumar, 2011). The approaches of HRM cannot be regarded as static because they cannot be made today and last forever. They require being changed with time to generate better outcomes.
The Impact of the Affordable Care Act in Relation to HRM
The ACA was developed to ensure that everybody in American is able to access a health care insurance that is affordable. This, therefore, holds a direct impact on HRM as it is required to develop strategic approaches (Frederickson, Witt, Patton & Lovrich, 2015). The ACA holds impacts on every individual and especially organizations. This is mainly because the HR managers are required to understand the changes that will be developed by ACA and how the changes will affect the organizations as well as the workers. In the context of ACA, HRM professionals need to know several factors in the relation. The first factor is the requirement of health insurance provision to employees. The ACA requires the large corporations to give their workers a health insurance (Frederickson, Witt, Patton & Lovrich, 2015). This is in that if a corporation employee fifty and above employees there is a necessity to provide them with insurance coverage. The second factor is the benefits limits and related salary changes where the corporation is required to forward their insurance expenses on the employees. The third factor is that ACA required HRM managers to educate their workers about the law, the connected benefits and their legal obligation towards the law. The ACA in the context of HRM can be termed as the most important lawsuit systems that have to be implemented recently (Frederickson, Witt, Patton & Lovrich, 2015). This is mainly because it can affect the operations of the HRM as this requires organizations to oblige to its stated rules without fail in the quest of protecting employees’ rights. The businesses are therefore required to gain full knowledge of the act and ensure that ever stated rule is complied with for the success of HRM and organizations in general.
Conclusion
The role of HRM in organizations today cannot be ignored. It is clear that human capital management is a challenge that is currently growing based on the changing, political, economic and social business surrounding changes. For the future success of business HRM will be required to adapt more redefined approaches which will help in delivering more ROI in the context of HR management. This, therefore, requires the HRM today and in the future to develop abilities to handle fresh technological advancement, changing economies, global and social issues while focusing on achieving business efficiency.
References
Elizabeth D. Frederickson, Stephanie L. Witt, Patton W. David & Lovrich P. Nicholas. (2015). Human Resource Management: The Public Service Perspective. Routledge. Print.
Kumar, R. (2011). Human resource management: Strategic analysis text and cases. New Dehli: I.K. International.
Lawler, E. E., & Boudreau, J. W. (2015). Global trends in human resource management: A twenty-year analysis.
Parry, E., Stavrou, E., & Lazarova, M. B. (2013). Global trends in human resource management. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Prescott, R. K., & Rothwell, W. J. (2012). Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management, Key Topics and Issues. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Rothwell, W. J., & Benscoter, G. M. B. (2012). Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management, Critical and Emerging Issues in Human Resources. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Stone, D. L., & Deadrick, D. L. (2015). Challenges and opportunities affecting the future of human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), 139-145.
