Top 10 Challenges of HR in
India Today

chillibreeze writer — Kanika Paul

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They say people are the greatest asset, but like a mind is defined by its being, an organization is defined by its human resources practices. Mingling of cultural practices, policies, processes and integrity brings together the cultural material of an organization. Human resources have changed from time to time, and have been called by different names dependant on its core roles, also considering the Ulrich’ model and similar studies.

Till the 1960s, it was a personnel department, which transformed into an administration and training role in 1990s and now it has converted to a strategic business partner and a change agent role. With the industrial revolution and now the Asia market catching up its importance, the challenges cannot be ignored, they have in fact become exigent and valuable to organization’ growth. In my view following are the top challenges of human resources department today:

1. Scouting Talent
Be it IT, healthcare or manufacturing, there is dearth of talent and trained workforce. Employment of unskilled laborers in various fields of public and private sector industries can prove to be an unsuccessful venture, since hiring of unskilled labor will result in poor job and product quality. This will in turn decrease the market value of the product. Various surveys estimate that the Indian healthcare industry is set to grow from the present $40 billion to around $280 billion by 2020. However, owing to the lack of institutes, there is a lack of skilled manpower in healthcare management and administration. The solution to this lies in reformation of elementary education and an association between the corporate and government.

2. Training the untrained
Every organization spends almost half of its HR budget on training and development. The ROI (return on investment) is however measured quite rarely. Once an employee is inducted and has joined the organization, training him for the job and also aligning him culturally with the organization is a mammoth task. There is a lot of difference between star performers and experts. Thus, training the ‘coachable’ is a very important task and more so difficult to train them behaviorally.

3. Engaging the newer age workforce
Gen Y is the population born between 1982 to early 2000s. At the workplace, you may hear a Gen Y say: “Give me ownership in my work and involvement and I’ll give my all”. “It is frustrating when your boss tells you that you need to improve at this or that, but then doesn’t take any time to explain or teach you.” Managing the new generation workforce exudes lot more effort in aligning the values and principles of the organization. Organizational culture has to be construed in a different manner. The usual characteristics associated with Gen Y are flexible, go getter, culturally liberal, non-conservative, and direct.

4. Breaking clichés
Employees coming from diverse background and families put up different perception and have preconceived notions about the workplace. The whole blasphemy about breaking the glass ceiling and empowering women has generated because of the perception of men finding women inferior. For a human resources department, it is essential to build a workforce which is diverse, but at the same inclusive.

5. Partnering with the business
Human resources for long have been seen as a support function, now is the time for practitioners and professionals of HR to understand the business objectives and strategically align the processes with it. For this, it is of most importance to a close association with the senior management. The growing role of HR as HR business partner is coming in a lot of sectors.

6. Retaining Talent
Higher perks and salary is driving the workforce nuts! With the ever increasing options, a candidate out in the market looking for a job is spoilt for choice and chooses a job only for monetary benefits. For an organization to develop attractive employee value proposition and offer benefits like medical facility, insurance, flexibility in time, corporate discounts has become the norm.

7. Change management
Do not 'sell' change to people as a way of accelerating 'agreement' and implementation. 'Selling' change to people is not a sustainable strategy for success. For organizational change that entails new actions, objectives and processes for a group or team of people, use workshops to achieve understanding of what’s causing the change. This will lead to a more involved and committed workforce.

8. Promotion inclusivity
The challenge and problems faced of workplace diversity can be turned into a strategic organizational asset if an organization is able to capitalize on this melting pot of diverse talents. With the mixture of talents of diverse cultural backgrounds, genders, ages and lifestyles, an organization can respond to business opportunities more rapidly and creatively, especially in the global arena (Cox, 1993), which must be one of the important organizational goals to be attained. Thus, a HR manager needs to be mindful and may employ a Think Global, Act Local approach in most circumstances.

9. Recognizing the right behavior
As a partner to the business and to the functional heads, it is HR’s responsibility to create platforms for identification and recognition of the right behavior and thus a preferred result. A lot of rewards programs are not sustainable and unsuccessful because they aren’t driven with a long term perspective.

10. Governance and safe work place
Besides the finance and audit compliances, human resources challenge is to maintain a high decorum and safety at workplace, in aspect of health, mental being, and physical being. Making the grievance mechanism more acceptable and open is a challenge in itself. Thus, HR while going to be the core of businesses should cater to the changing needs of workforce and economy. A lot of challenges can be tackled with the help of strong reformations in association with the economic institutions.

 

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in January, 2012. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

 

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—About our writer: Kanika writes for Chillibreeze.

 

 

 

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