Human Resources professionals today
Find 6 different current events and prepare a one page summary for each current event of the article and your opinion of how it affects Human Resources professionals today.

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Human Resource Trends
The world of business is changing rapidly characterized with new technological developments, increasing regulatory scrutiny, expansion of the global economy as well as talent crisis, especially at the workplace. As a vital component of the organizations, human resources is faced with the need to understand the work-force diversity, effects of globalization, changing skill requirements, continuous improvement initiatives, corporate downsizing, and contingent workforce to keep up. The paper discusses six trends in human resource and how they impact on business processes.
Globalization
Globalization has become the order of the day in today business environment. Most organizations are seeking to expand their markets and customer base to attain large economies of scale. Globalization means extending business processes beyond borders and hence creating an inclusive human resource management process (Lawler 57). A global human resource management will have to handle workers from different cultural backgrounds, countries with disparate labor regulations and employees speaking a different language.
The task of balancing the factors that come internationalization thus remains with the human resource manager who has to ensure that employees are well coordinated so that they can work towards the organizational goals. He or she has to ensure that there is an appropriate mix of workers based on skills, knowledge, and cultural adaptability to handle the international assignments effectively. Moreover, assigning employees to global assignments would require the workers to have efficient knowledge of culture and language regarding morals, values and customs of the host country.
For example, Employees in the sales department will have to accustom themselves with the language and culture of the host country to carry out successful brand promotions. Understanding the country’s morals values and customs would help them tune their promotional messages for the wide customer base. Moreover, it is important to avoid some adverts which are against the country’s morals and values which may lead to conflict with the general public thus affecting business.
Human resource management in a global business environment would also ensure that mechanisms are in place to help multicultural employees work together (Lawler 86). They are required to develop ways to prevent conflicts that may arise as a result of differences in language, background, or customs. The emergence of globalization has thus changed human resource management as it is required to acknowledge different workers and appreciate such differences.
Contingent Workforce
One of recent development in the current workforce is the contingent worker. These are persons hired by an organization for a shorter period. Contingent workers are hired for particular tasks which require unique skills and are always employed when a firm experiences workflow deviations. However, many HR issues arise whenever a strategic decision is made by an organization to apply a portion of its labor from contingency ranks. Such a decision impacts on the HR on issues such as having virtual workers available when their services are required, creating a scheduling system that incorporates their needs as well as deciding on whether to offer benefits to the contingent workforce (Beardwell 91).
More importantly, contingent workforce is vital to many organizations especially the large firms that outsource many services. Instead of the outsourcing business process such as IT services, a firm can hire contingent workforce at affordable salary rates to perform the task. For instance, a deviation in the workflow can occur due to losing of company data resulting from damages by criminals or even power problem. In such a situation employing contingent workforce to recover the data would be economical and less risky.
On the other hand, a transition to contingent workforce requires efficient planning by the organization (Beardwell 94). As such, the presence of human resource is vital when such decisions are being made. It is the responsibility of HR to search and employ the workers. Moreover, HR is faced with the challenge of orienting them to the firm.
Decentralized Work Site
Decentralization of the work sites is one of the recent development in business. The use of technology of telecommunication has enabled workers to be anywhere in the world. The need to locate business near employees has been of less importance with the new potential. The new development has also been beneficial to the business as it enables those in high-cost area conduct their operations in low wages area (Balakrishnan 42).
For example, research or data Management Company situated in the United States can hire employees from other regions such in Africa and Asia where wages might be lower to carry out research or perform data entry services. As such, can enable it to reduce the expenses on salary and wages thus reduced operation cost. Additionally, there is minimal effort on managing the workers as most of them work independently from their home.
Decentralization of work site is also beneficial to the workforce. For instance, the employees with disabilities or family responsibilities such as child care would prefer working from home rather than going to the firm’s facility. However, such development comes with challenges, especially to Human Resource management. Much of it revolves around establishing and ensuring on-time completion and work quality (Balakrishnan 43). This is because monitoring or supervising individuals working from home may be impossible. Therefore, there is need to establish policies to guide the work process to ensure high quality and on-time completion. Additionally, decentralization also requires the HRM to review its compensation policy. As such, is because as opposed to contingent workers, the organization is responsible for safety and health of decentralized workers.
Workplace Diversity
Workplace diversity is another new trend in the modern business. Although closely related to globalization, workplace diversification involves various factors such ethnicity, age, gender, ancestry, sexual orientation, race, physical abilities, educational background, income, geographic location, marital status, parental status, religious beliefs, and work experience among others (Current Trends in HRM). Many organizations are now turning to workplace diversification to utilize various talents and capabilities to increase their productivity.
The challenge experienced by organization practicing workplace diversity is the fact that their future success depends on managing and utilizing the wide array of talents that can give birth to innovative perspectives, ideas, and views. Given the mix of talents from various genders, cultural backgrounds, and lifestyles, a firm can rapidly respond to business opportunities especially in the international arena. More importantly, an organization risks losing talent to its rivals if it does not support diversity.
Especially for companies in the global market who employ individuals from various countries, cultural and ethical background. HR in such organizations is therefore tasked with the duty of searching highly qualified personnel but culturally diverse. The HR is also responsible for balancing local and foreign talent and integrating them with the company goals. Effective workforce diversity is mainly important in helping to develop talents and sharing skills with other workers. As such, in case a specific position is vacant, the HR department can assign temporary duties to an employee before finding a replacement (Current Trends in HRM). Being able to leverage talents of diverse workforce enables an organization to grow its business beyond its rivals reach.
The management of workplace diversity, however, requires a change by HRM from the ethnocentric view of leaning on the traditional ways of management to a culturally relative view of choosing the best approach possible. As such, the shift in the ideology must be incorporated in the managerial framework in their organizing, planning, controlling and leading the resources of the organization. The HR is also required to adopt various best practices for efficient management of workplace diversity so as to achieve organizational goals.
Use of Social Media by HR
Many companies have embraced the use of internal social networks for cross-location and international communication and cooperation. It is thus important for HR to be involved determination and planning of such collaboration and communication procedures since it is part of corporate and management culture. It means that HR needs to be well-equipped with social media skills as it play a major role in HR marketing (Rosenblatt 56). Moreover, individuals especially the young employees can work in decentralized teams which are possible through social media by enhancing involvement and communication among the members.
According to Rosenblatt, more than 43% of companies perform employee branding through social media by posting company profile as well as the job description on social media platforms (112). It is, therefore, important for HR to ensure that information relayed tallies with the actual working environment of the company. However, conveying an image different from the experience may ruin the company’s reputation. The studies also reveal that such trend has been adopted by numerous companies from countries such as Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The organizations in such countries have integrated their HR systems with social media functionalities to enhance communication and cooperation.
Social media platforms have also enabled HR access candidates’ social life before recruitment. By allowing candidates to connect with the company through social media, HR can view their profiles, the type of information they post online, the type of friends they keep to access their characters. Although social media does not provide conclusive information on a candidates’ behaviors, it provides an insight that might be useful during the interviews. Additionally, the cooperation of workers in social networks helps ease away the work pressure hence improving their productivity.
Talent Management
The modern business is characterized by constant changes in job requirements with ever-changing technology, acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures. A number jobs existing today were not there a few years ago. Similarly, jobs that exist today may not be there in some few year to come. Such changes are attributed to needing for businesses seeking new talents for efficient performances for increased productivity (Parry 125).
Such developments, however, poses a challenge to human resource personnel charged with the difficult task of looking deep into the firm for the visionary and talented individuals with a passion to catapult the objectives and goals of the organization (Parry 127). The HR need to carry out an wide organizational research to be able to predict the type of skills that will be required in future. As such, has led to the development of talent management procedure to help determine a pool of potential employees to offer a basis for the success of the organization despite the changing structure. The organization then invests in such individuals to develop their competencies to enable them to perform their duties effectively for ultimate organizational success.

Cited Works
Balakrishnan, lalitha, and S Srividhya. Human resource development. Mumbai: Himalaya Pub. House, 2007. Print.
Beardwell, Ian; Claydon, Tim, ed.; Holden, Len, ed., Human resource management: a Contemporary Approach, Prentice Hall, 2004. Print.
CURRENT TRENDS IN HRM (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46525559_CURRENT_TRENDS_IN_HRM [accessed Apr 23, 2016].
Lawler, Edward E, and W. Boudreau. Global trends in Human Resource Management: A Twenty-Year analysis, 2015. Print.
Parry, Emma, Eleni Stavrou, and Mila B. Lazarov. Global trends in human resource management. 2013. Print.
Rosenblatt, Valerie The impact of institutional processes, social networks, and culture on the diffusion of global work values in multinational organizations‘, Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 2011. Print.