Human resource management (HRM) is adopted by many companies because of its benefits. But at the same time, various challenges and issues may emerge in front of managers of human resource department while performing their duties.
Any capable HR manager would work on these issues and challenges to prevent the organizational activities from being obstructed. But they must first identify these issues. Such issues and challenges are described here.
Recruiting new staff
Companies sometimes need to recruit new talent for various reasons such as an increase in project scope, operations. While recruiting, HRM faces major challenges i.e. selecting the best candidate and making the hired candidate familiar with the environment and culture.
HRM has to select such candidates which are not only technically expert but socially too because the company cannot receive expected output from employees who are unable to socialize. This affects the productivity of the company.
Retention
Hiring employees is not only the challenge that HRM faces; retaining them is also one. Retention of employees is essential to minimize employee turnover rate. This is a major challenge for HRM because of following reasons:
i. Contingent workforce
The contingent workforce includes part-time, temporary contract and work-at-home employees. Maintaining such employees in the company is a challenge because they are less attached to the company. So it becomes a major duty of HRM to make such employees feel that they are a part of the company in order to retain them for a long term.
ii. Demand of expert employees
Personnel with greater professional and technical knowledge are highly demanded in the job market as such employees have the ability to keep their company ahead in the race. Such employees are an invaluable asset for any company and HRM should focus on maintaining them.
Training
Skilled workers are the key to the smooth functioning of the organization. Therefore, HRM should manage on-site (within the workplace) as well as off-site (outside the workplace) job training for employees.
So how is training a challenge to HRM? Before organizing training programs, HRM should answer following questions:
- What kind of training programs are currently required?
- What is the objective of the training?
- How to make them effective?
- Who are the target groups?
- How much do the programs cost the company?
Not always, are these questions easy to answer. Finding out all the factors affecting the training like time, location, cost, etc. and making a clear roadmap in establishing an impactful event can be a big issue and working it out, a big challenge.
Productivity
Maximizing profit and minimizing cost is the essence of productivity. Higher the productivity level, more successful will be the company. HRM should always focus on maintaining high productivity level.
Despite HRM’s continuous effort, the company might sometimes get an unsatisfactory result. In such case, it should thoroughly analyze the situation and make a proper conclusion i.e. whether it is the result of inefficient employee or inadequate resources. If an inefficient employee is the case, HRM should look forward to train employee, or even recruiting new staffs while it should find alternative resources for sufficient input if inadequate resources are the case.
Health and safety
It is one of the essential functions of HRM to collect its staff’s complete information, including health information. It is necessary for employee’s personal safety. Keeping health information about employees help the company in knowing what kind of tasks or activities are safe for their employees to participate in.
Maintaining health information is also necessary to avoid the risk of legal complications. Several companies at present provide health insurance to its employees as a fringe benefit. In lack of proper health information about employees, various legal issues may arise when such insurance is claimed.
Workforce diversity
The composition of the workforce is getting diverse at present situation. Here diversity is not only created by age, gender, educational background and religion but also by the nature, personality and background of workers.
With more diversification of workforce, issues related to bullying, harassment, discrimination, etc may arise, to control which HRM should formulate and implement strict rules and regulations.
Payroll
Payroll is a written document which provides information about the company’s employees along with the amount of remuneration to be paid.
HRM has to conduct a number of tasks every day. In this process, HR manager might forget to pay its employees, if not then he can forget the amount to be paid to the individual employee.
With proper maintenance of payroll, HR manager will be able to pay right amount to right employee at right time, which is essential for extracting satisfactory output from employees.
Globalization
Globalization is a process by which a business firm or organization starts operating on an international scale, creating international influence.
Internationalization of firms is obviously a Sign of Success but it is a challenge at the same time because globalization invites issues related to unknown language, laws, work ethics, attitudes, management approach, culture and tradition.
A human resource manager will need to deal with more heterogeneous functions such as scheduling meetings, holiday management, human resource outsourcing, etc to overcome the challenge.
Discipline
Discipline is one of the important issues that HRM needs to handle at present days. Lack of discipline causes various problems which ultimately affect the productivity of the company.
For an instance, when discipline is not maintained, employees neglect their responsibilities and duties. They may procrastinate their tasks and may misbehave with co-workers, leading to a conflict that consumes time as well as energy to resolve. The ultimate result of these activities is decreased productivity of the company.
Advancement in technology
With rapid advancement in technology, companies nowadays require such human force that has the ability to learn and cope with the changes at an opportune moment.
Technological changes must be taken into consideration by any kind of company. It is because the present world demands every firm to move along with the change, or else be left behind and get extinct.
Technological changes influence overall nature of work and the company will need to find out employees that are capable to adjust with the change. During this process, unemployment, as well as employment opportunities, arise, creating new challenges for HRM.
Management of information
Up-to-date information is essential for the operation of any company. Information may be collected internally as well as externally. Once collected, all the information should be safely maintained so that they would be readily available when needed in future.
On the other hand, information is also essential to clear queries of employees. HRM should be able to present relevant facts and data while clearing such queries.
Managing any kind of information is a challenge to HRM because it should know which information are actually useful and which are not. After distinguishing this information, it should select such method of storing information which is safe as well as reliable.
