HR challenges up to 2015
Maria Pia Chircop, CEO, FHRD
A recent Web survey, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group jointly with the European Association for Personnel Management (EAPM), revealed five critical HR challenges which organisations in Europe will face to keep up with the speed of transformation of the socio-economic scenario.
In the survey, 1,355 executives from 27 European countries shared their views on 17 aspects in human resource management.
The shortage of highly skilled workers is being experienced in most sectors, especially those in science and technology, where workers are moving from one European country to another and from Europe to other continents, choosing employers who can better meet their work and private life needs.
European organisations are also geographically moving their business to high value added countries, and this phenomenon is expected to triple during the next five to eight years. The workforce is aging and workers are retiring, taking with them their talent and expertise accumulated throughout decades of work experience.
Furthermore, in some countries the national education systems are failing to equip new workers with the skills they will need to keep pace.
The new face of the European labour market requires HR professionals to be capable to "manage talent" and "manage the loss of capacity and knowledge", according to the survey. To retain talented workers, they have to create new career tracks and reward systems, and to be able to meet their employees' needs, attracting and retaining diverse groups, regardless of nationality, gender and age.
The report recommends that the loss of capacity and knowledge could be managed through a system of job families across the company, which clusters employees whose skills and specific experience can be transferred across many levels of the company. Such clusters should be regularly monitored for any loss of capacity and knowledge.
This would enable organisations to calculate the difference between their demand for and supply of labour and expertise, and re-deploy surplus resources to those functions hit by such losses. Organisations are also expected to attract and retain retired or semi-retired workers for future shortfalls.
The latter requires HR professionals to understand the effects of an ageing workforce and implement HR strategies to maintain the highest level of productivity. To source highly skilled professionals, organisations have to explore new avenues from all over the world.
With organisations shifting their businesses overseas and becoming more multicultural, HR professionals should be capable of "managing both corporate and cultural change". They will be expected to develop tools and methodologies for line managers to communicate the need for change to their people and empower them to bring about this change.
While visible support from top leaders is crucial in the implementation of change initiatives, employees' behaviours and attitudes have to be monitored to ensure maximum effectiveness in this process. As the role for change management will become more important, the demand for such a position is expected to rise by 200 per cent among the responding organisations taking part in the survey.
A fourth challenge for HR professionals is to turn their organisations into "learning organisations" to ensure that their employees are coping with the rapid speed of the global economic transformation. This is most necessary since in certain countries the national education systems are failing to equip new workers with the skills they will require to keep pace.
Organisations therefore have to design their own learning strategy according to their needs and culture, but most importantly ensure a return on investment through clear goals and tangible outcomes.
As workers are becoming more selective in choosing employers who can better meet their work and private life needs, HR professionals need to be ready to attract and retain those highly talented workers by offering different work patterns. These can include flexible working hours, opportunities to work from home and job sharing.
Such "work-life balance programmes", together with programmes visibly embracing corporate social responsibility (integrating social and environmental concerns in business operations), should attract higher quality candidates and enhance the organisation's position in the market.
In addition to these five critical challenges, the survey report highlights that HR executives will have to get the fundamentals of the HR function right to gain the trust of their senior executives. These fundamentals include recruitment and staffing processes that must be renovated in co-operation with line managers and transforming HR into a strategic partner, with HR managers expected to demonstrate business acumen, pragmatism and efficiency while supporting cultural change.
The FHRD, a member of the EAPM, has a limited number of copies of this survey. To obtain one call 2137-8895. Priority will be given to FHRD members on a 'first come first served' basis. | 
