Outlining challenges in HR

In light of the current rapidly changing business landscape, the challenges presented to HR professionals are endless.

Beyond just staffing, the role of HR is constantly expanding and evolving to perform better in a business partnering role.

Driving best behaviours

One of the key functions of HR is staffing for an organisation. Within lies the key challenge of how to drive the best behaviours from their employees in the workforce and to ensure optimum productivity. HR professionals are now looking at reinventing their sales, incentive and compensation programmes. This is all in a bid to encourage good and desired behaviours from their staff, which are aligned with the strategic corporate direction of the company.

Macro HR: global perspective

Another emerging challenge for HR professionals is the increasing need for a global perspective. High turnovers and low retention numbers have led to a global talent crunch. HR professionals now need to look beyond the micro side of HR, turnover rates and mere demographics. Instead, they should focus on developing a global view of HR. This entails knowing what the organisation needs and where the kind of skill sets required to complement these needs can be located. As opposed to hiring based on lower costs, there is a growing need to hire based on skill sets and mature competencies which is in line with the overall strategic direction of the company.

Part of developing and improving the human capital is also the challenge of creating measurable standards. 

The balancing act

Maintaining a diverse workforce is an additional challenge for HR professionals today. Beyond the challenges of an international workforce, balancing different generations of employees in an organisation is also of utmost importance. As the talent pool in an organisation evolves to include more members of different generations and nationalities, there inevitably will be issues catering to the differences and attributes of the respective employees. HR professionals need to know how to manage different talent pools and create cohesiveness, to enable optimum productivity for the organisation.

Doing more with less

In light of the current talent crunch, organisations face a lack of human resources. In such instances, HR needs to think about developing and grooming their current talent pool. Part of developing and improving the human capital is also the challenge of creating measurable standards. While focusing on ROIs, HR professionals need to think about programmes, structures or processes that will be able to adequately track the creation of value. Moving past details such as headcount versus productivity or demographics, an analytical focus is also required on the part of HR professionals. They need to be able to analyse the needs of their organisation and look at how to create value measurably.

Planning, planning, planning

In the context of an Asian economy, there is a growing challenge of building and developing skill sets for the workforce in emerging markets. HR’s role is hence to create a sustainable workforce, as well as maintaining a diverse talent pool that will help to counter future challenges. This boils down to talent management and succession planning by the respective HR departments in organisations. There is a need to plan for future challenges, knowing what skill sets are necessary to develop and hone.

For a discussion on how we can help you with your recruitment needs, please feel free to get in touch with us at singapore@robertwalters.com