HRM has been expanding in its area of activities ever since the since the day when management began to include welfare and personal department in the organization structure. Today, the responsibilities of the HR department have grown to be broader and increasingly pragmatic.
Moreover, the advent of economic reforms in the form of globalization, liberalization and privatization in our country has changed the very profile of organization structured. Today, HR manager have to think beyond traditional activities like personnel planning, welfare measures, and industrial relations. The HR manager of tomorrow needs to be familiar with the operation aspects of the organization such as strategic planning , competitive pressures, return on investment ,and cost of production, to name a few besides their own filed. In brief, they must be prepared to function from the higher level of the management in close coordination with the top management in designing and implementing the HR plans and strategies. We shall now discuss the future role and challenge of HR managers.
Change in the Nature of Work
Technological development is changing the very nature of work. Due to technological advancement, even traditional jobs have become technologically challenging. These changes require the employment of more educated and more skilled workers in these jobs. Further, the service sector, which is fast emerging as the major provider of employment in our country, requires the use of knowledge worker. These new breeds of better informed employees will expect unconventional and world class HR practices and system. HR managers must plans and strategies to meet the changing expectations of these new generation employees. They should also be prepared to handle the emerging work culture, which keeps more focused on their individual career prospects.
Widening scope of HR activities
Human resource activities are getting integrated at the global level. Globalization and deregulation have deeply affected the functional HRM. Organizations, in their pursuit of new markets and greater cost effectiveness, extend their sales, production facilities, and supporting services to new destinations in several countries around the word. HR manager must have adequate dynamism and action plans to help these organizations successfully integrate their global HR operations. They must also ensure effective coordination amongst and control over the labor forces working in different countries.
Greater emphasis on HRIS
The organization of the future will be large due to world- wide mergers and acquisitions. The sheer size of an organization may compel the HR department to computerize its HR operation like recruitment, training appraising and pay –roll preparation. Thus, large companies may require an integrated Human Resource Information system (HRIS) for effectively coordination their different HR operation. HRIS actually means “interrelated components working together to collect, process, and store and disseminate information to support decision making, coordination, control, analysis and visualization of an organization’s HRM activities.” Future manager should be familiar with HRIS operations. HRIS can help an organization in several ways. For instance, HRIS can relieve HR managers from routine activities as the system taken over the task of updating the employee information. It can also help the HR department produce a variety of report in a short span.
Change in Labor market conditions
The increased industrialization of the country has thrown up many challenges for HR manger. Uneven economic development has resulted in the large scale unemployment of unskilled and under-skilled persons on one side and severe shortage of competent people on the other, This dichotomy in labor may compel HR managers to reduce their focus on the short-term need of the organization and to concentrate more on fulfilling the long-term capability requirement such as skill development and knowledge formation amongst its existing workforce.
Increasing Importance of High performance Work systems (HPWS)
Globalization is bringing about a tremendous change in the size, structure, composition. And style of functioning of organization so as to meet an intensified global competition. In fact, more globalization means more competition for a firm. This in turn puts increased pressure on an organization to improve its employees’ productivity. This calls for the adoption of effective HR practices by HR managers. In this regard, the HR management needs to focus on evolving an integrated set of effective HR policies and practices that produces superior employee performance. Thus, HR managers, with the help of dynamic HR policies, should develop HPWS that maximize the competencies, commitment and abilities of the firm’s employees.
Growing Need for measurement Tools to Evaluate HR Programmers
The inherent weakness of HRM is the absence of reliable and effective yardsticks for measuring the performance of HR programmers. The top management expects HR managers to express their plans and performance in measurable terms. Thus, there is an urgent need for HR managers to provide concrete and quantified evidence that their department is contributing in a significant and constructive way to the accomplishment of organization goals and objectives. HR managers’ focus in the future will be on the development and introduction of reliable and accurate HR tools to measure the efficiency of HR functions.
A prudent understanding and efficient management of these challenges are pre-requisites if HRM is to add considerable value, show business result, enact professionalism, and reveal fresh competencies in the future.
