HR SHIFT!!

Most companies today face declining revenues, increasing costs, shrinking market share and depleting shareholder value. What does HR do in this situation? How will HR play its role to truly bring sustainable value to the company?

In the future, the HR's role will no longer be constrained to warming seats in the back office. It will play a critical front office role to address workforce performance issues and create sustainable business value. Traditionally, HR spends as much as 90 percent of its time, effort and costs on activities such as salary administration, medical claims processing, training coordination and employee-employer issues resolution. The remaining 10 percent is typically used for strategic HR work.

In the new paradigm, HR will have to allocate as much as 60 percent its time, effort and costs to perform strategic work and create workforce capabilities for profitable growth.HR is changing its role to the following -

• Strategic Business Partner—Address workforce and organizational impacts on business challenges and contribute directly to business plan.
  
  
• Change Leader—Lead company-wide leadership and culture change program, provide change management advice to guide business results.
  
  
• HR Functional Expert—Manage service providers instead of doing operational work, to increase efficiency within the HR function.

KNOW McD WELL!!!

McDonald’s is committed to providing all employees with a harmonious work environment. Right from your first day with McDonald’s you are entitled to a workplace which is enjoyable, safe and equitable (fair). Working at McDonald’s involves working with others as a team.We believe in employee satisfaction and development. We must all work towards creating and maintaining an enjoyable and respectful workplace.

From crew to senior management, it is everyone’s responsibility to discourage any behaviour which may embarrass others or make them feel uncomfortable. No one appreciates being ridiculed or being the basis of other people's jokes.

Discrimination could be on the basis of areas such as as age, race, colour, sex, appearance, religion, marital or parental status, sexual preference, disability, impairment or national origin. It may be as simple as the opportunity to learn a particular station or being given the opportunity for advancement into management. Everyone should be evaluated on their performance.

TECHNOLOGY AFFECTING HRM WORK - POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE?

Overall, has IT added or detracted from the amount of HRM work? In what ways? Interviews
among respondents provide a mixed assessment of this impact. Some managers felt their work was made easier; others said it was harder.One respondent reflected both views: “Life is easier as a result of IT.Work is more difficult because of the explosion of requests for information. E-mail has made communicating easier though.” Ways it was made easier include allowing greater access to information, gaining useful feedback, conserving time, improving data gathering and analysis, reducing reliance on paper forms and clerical staff, expanding managers’ capacity to visualize and model solutions to problems, enabling quicker and better decision making, and improving communication throughout the hierarchy and with a wider range of stakeholders. Typical comments in this regard are, “I feel I have better access of information which allows me to make decisions instead of spending time on research”; “I am excited about what it can do for us—so many processes that can expedite things and help in gathering and sorting data”; “I can set up meetings without making a phone call.” Examples of applications that made work easier are automated applicant tracking and screening (selection), job posting (Internet), contract bidding, position classifying, and training software.

TALENT- A GLOBAL COMMUNITY

“It's clear that talent has become a global commodity, fiercely fought over by multiple competitors,” says Mark Foster, Accenture's group chief executive. Corporations are experiencing seismic shifts in demographics, resulting in aging workforces with fewer, younger workers in some parts of the world and burgeoning sources of young talent in other parts; a rising demand for new skills paired with growing deficits in basic skills; more diverse, distributed, and mobile workforces; and, despite a global abundance of people, local scarcities of talent.

Facts about global workforce challenges are undeniable.

•Companies and countries will need more than 3.5 billion people by 2010 to fill knowledge worker positions. By 2020, that number will exceed 4 billion. Projections indicate that there will be shortages between 32 million and 39 million people to fill these positions. The U.S. will have the biggest shortfall—needing as many as an additional 14 million people.

• The shortage of talent is particularly acute at the management level. Two out of five Chinese companies find it difficult to fill senior-management positions, and turnover rates at the manager level in China are 25% higher than the global average.

• The balance of the global labor supply is shifting to developing economies. Between 2005 and 2050, the working-age population of emerging economies will increase by 1.7 billion, compared with a decline of 9 million in the developed economies.

• In the U.S., retirement of the baby boomers means that the 500 biggest companies could lose half their senior managers in the next five years.

Talent has become a global commodity. Senior executives are only now realizing that their talent strategy must entail more than just throwing money at high-performers in hopes of recruiting and retaining them. Indeed, talent must be redefined to include not just the best and brightest but the entire workforce—those who contribute all of the skills and capabilities that an organization needs to sustain growth.

WHAT"S MINE IS YOUR?

Teens world-wide are using Google Earth images to identify homes in their areas that have large out-door pools. Once found, they use social networking sites such as Facebook to meet other teens for impromptu parties.
Homeowners have awakened in the middle of the night or arrived home to un-welcomed guests on their property. In order to avoid arrest, party-goers show up in bathing suits with a bicycle so they can make a clean getaway. Is this an evolution of what teenagers do to satiate their boredom despite the consequences? What are the implications of an emerging generation that acts on their what's-yours-is-mine mentality?

IS THE TRANSFORMATION REQUIRED?

Maximizing the return on human capital investments is uppermost in the minds of executives today, and in many organisations it is the most critical success factor. However, recent survey reveal that despite an ever-increasing rise in HR budgets, the HR function still spends too much time on administrative and transactional activities rather than on HR strategy, which would make a more valued contribution to the business. Clearly, a transformation in HR is still required.

One way to dramatically improve the performance of the HR function - particularly for large, geographically dispersed organisations with multiple lines of business - is through shared services. Consolidating administrative and transactional processing activities within a dedicated administrative facility is not a new concept . Regional shared services supporting finance, IT, travel and expatriate management exist throughout the world. But shared services for HR have mostly been limited to the larger, uniform countries, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom. When done correctly, shared services can deliver significant cost savings and result in better, more efficient services while freeing up resources for activities that enhance human capital.

Some pioneering organisations have successfully multi-country shared services for HR and have achieved the sought-after savings and efficiencies. Although a regional approach to shared services introduces additional challenges, the HR function owes it to its business leadership to explore the potential benefits available from shared services.

Making an investment in shared services hinges on being able to demonstrate that a consolidated service center will provide better services to multiple customers at a reduced cost.