Human Resources Trends - Essay Example

Human resources is the business function of a company that deals with managing and obtaining employees. The profession is changing and people in the field have to adapt to new trends which will affect the future of human resources. Four emerging trends that are already affecting the way the profession is performed in today's organizations are outsourcing, online recruiting, flexible time and the aging workforce. This paper describes and analyzes these four HR trends. Outsourcing in an emerging trend the human resource field especially in companies established in developed countries. Business has become very competitive and companies are looking for ways to reduce costs. Labor costs might not be the high overhead variable affecting overall costs it was 30 years ago, but it still a cost reducing solution managers choose to utilize when they feel pressures from upper management and shareholders to lower costs. Outsourcing of employees is not the evil predicament many think it is. It is simply a solution that provides flexibility and allows costing reduction in different compensation areas. Outsourcing of a firm's workforce can occur in various ways. A company can choose to hire employees through job agencies in order to acquire a staff that is legally not theirs. Under this type of work arrangement the employee belongs to the job agency, but performs work and it is supervised by the manager of a firm. Once integrated into the company's system in reality the job agency employee and the directly recruited employee is treated equally and there is not way to differentiate them within a work setting. This alternative is chosen to reduce fringe benefits compensation costs and to have flexibility of not being forced to retain an employee after the typical short probation period expires. An outsourcing arrangement occurs when an enterprises hires a consultant to perform work in any type of project within the organization. A third way and the reason the typical American worker feels outsourcing is evil to outsource work that used to be performed in-house to third world countries to save on operational costs. The fact of the matter is that this shift was necessary and most of the time the type of work being outsource are functions which are perform at a fraction of the cost oversees. For example a Chinese worker earns approximately 95% less per hour than a person working in the United States or Europe (Ceglowski & Mawr, 2005). By reducing costs and outsourcing this type of work a company is able to hire more employees to perform other duties. The world environment of developed countries has shifted from manual work to a knowledge economy. There is not turning back and people in developed nation must educated and train themselves to compete in this new economy. Human resources must adapt and to the change by understanding the different contractual requirements of the various employees working directly and indirectly for a company. Another emerging trend in the business environment of the 21st century is online recruiting. The internet has become a part of the everyday life of humans. There are over 1.1 billion online users worldwide (Plunckett Research, 2007). Since there so many people online spending multiple hours daily in the internet, a great way to find and attract talented professionals is to find them at this time. Online recruiting is great because it provides access to a large pool of potential candidates, but it has many other benefits for human resource professionals. Online recruiting allows HR to find potential employees in places there would have never been able to find them in the past. It allows firms to recruit international players with ease. This must be done because there is shortage of talented professionals in a lot of technical fields such as accounting, information systems, scientists, nursing among many others. The HR field is adapting to the reality of marketplace talent pool shortage and in the future it is projected that the gap between demand and supply for talent will only increase. Online recruiting provides a way for companies to aggressively recruit talent and find the professionals needed and to reduce the time spend in the recruiting cycle. Online recruiting can occur in two basic ways. A company can contract a professional online recruiting company such as Monster.com to gain access to a large pool of actively seeking candidates. Monster.com receives over 5 million visitors to its website on a daily basis (Monster, 2007). Another way to recruit online is have a career section in the company's corporate website. The advantage of this technique is that the person applying is interested in the company, but this method can be slow at finding the right candidate for particular positions. Companies doing business in today's fast moving environment must utilize online recruiting to keep up with the competition. It is not far fetch for companies in the near future to hire all their employees online. There world might turn into a science fiction novel in which there is a complete class of people who are considered online residents and the offline people are considered social outcasts. The online trend and its influence on all business functions including HR is here to stay. Flexible time is a hot trend in the human resource field. Employees are looking for companies willing to provide them the opportunity to find a balance between work and family life. Flexible time is work arrangement that allows employees to complete their weekly work schedule utilizing alternate work schedules which are not based on the typical 8 to 5 work arrangement. Society is changing and humans realize there is more to life than work. It is common for families to have single parent homes in the 21st century. A hard working single parent needs to able to take care of their children needs such as picking them up from school while at the same time meet the employers hour requirements. Human resources is adapting to this societal transformation by offering flexible time work arrangements. Flexible time can be implemented in different ways. An enterprise operating in a 24 hours setting or extended hours beyond an 8 hour shift is able to let employees choose their weekly work schedules and provide the employees with the opportunity to change their schedule when needed as long as the employee notifies the company with anticipation. Another way employers can offer flexible time is through telecommuting arrangements. Telecommuting is a work arrangement in which the employee works from a remote location using computers, telephones, facsimile machines and other remote capabilities, rather then the person commuting everyday to a company's facilities (Gilgordon, 2000). This type of work arrangement is a viable option that actually has economic savings for both the employer and the employee. The employer saves money on physical space, supervisory labor and equipment for the employee, while the employee saves money in transportation costs and in the purchase of cooked meals. Technology has allowed this arrangement to be possible in the 21st century, especially due to people's access to cheap high speed internet connection which allows fast transfer of data. Telecommuting is changing the HR profession. Recruiting telecommuters is facilitated through online recruiting techniques. The way human resources handle the employee-employer relationship in these work setting is very important. The HR profession must adapt to this new reality by training its professionals to deal with humans in different ways than in the past. The world population is aging thus the overall workforce of companies is aging simultaneously. The aging workforce is a trend all HR professional must follow since it directly affects the operation of enterprises worldwide. The average age of the workforce in the United States is 48 years and it is expected for the working population in this nation of over 55 years of age to compose 38% of the total workforce which will increase to 75% 25 years from now (Sherman, 2007). These statistics are irrefutable evidence of the aging trend and it is obvious the HR profession must adapt to it. New incentives have to be created to attend the needs of the senior citizens that will compose a large portion of the workforce. Benefits such as child care will no longer be as attractive as elderly care. A medical plan with full coverage including prescription medicines is a way to retain employees. Companies must find ways to retain their experienced employee since these human assets have a wealth of organization knowledge that needs to be passed on to the younger generation. This trend represents the toughest challenge out of the four previously mentioned HR trends. Change in business is inevitable and it affects all the functions of an organization. The human resource function is no exception to this rule. There are many changes occurring in this profession some of them are outsourcing, flexible time, online recruiting and the aging workforce. Businesses must create strategies to adapt to these changes. It takes planning and research to understand and find effective solutions to the deal with these emerging trends. Some of the trends such as online recruiting are business trends which company can utilize to improve the way HR is perform. Others like the aging population are challenges human resources must deal with head on and create long-term plans to re-structure its HR practices to adapt to the needs of the future age composition of the workforce. Human resources now is an important business function, in the future companies will depend even more on the work professionals in this field perform. References Ceglowski, J., Mawr, B. (2005). Just how low are China's Labor Costs' Swarthmore College. Retrieved October 9, 2007 from http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/sgolub1/chinaslaborcosts11_7_2005.pdf Gilgordon.com (2000). What is telecommute' Retrieved October 9, 2007 from http://www.gilgordon.com/telecommutesafe/WhatIsTelecommute.html Monster.com (2007). Retrieved from http://www.monster.com Plunckett Research (2007). Ecommerce Industry Trends. Retrieved October 7, 2007 from Plunckett Research database. Sharman, B.R. (2007). Ergonomics & Aging Workforce. Retrieved October 10, 2007 from http://www.ergoexpo.com/EECE/aginglist.asp Read More