Demographic changes that are currently affecting HRM
There are three main demographic changes that are significantly affecting the global management of human resource. They include the high costs to be incurred for the coverage of healthcare services for the aging employees, the rapidly evolving technological advancements that renders some employees obsolete as well as the high costs of retirement planning for the aged employees (Mello, 2006, p.57). All the aforementioned changes affect the HRM of most organizations since they are inevitable and have to be dealt with promptly for effective operations of the organization.
Response to the changes
The HRM could respond the mentioned demographic changes by first making an assessment of the current position of the work environment and comparing it to the employee expectations in order to determine the adequacy of the systems. The HRM could also make adjustments to the employee benefits to ensure that they meet the needs of the employees and the organization.
The HRM could also respond to the demographic changes by making sure they satisfy their employees on crucial human resource matters such as healthcare benefits and job security. On the issue of technological changes, the HRM ought to ensure that they do on-job-training on information technology for most of their employees to ensure that they are up to date with the computer world.
Improving the responses
It is important that proper channels of communications are put in place especially during the critical periods of change in a bid to minimize the effects of the demographic changes to the organizations.
Addressing the gaps
The best way of addressing the gaps is by making sure that they are identified as early as possible before they affect the HRM and putting in place mitigating measures to prevent their impact on the organization.
Emerging critical HR issues
The five major emerging critical issues that need to be addressed by HR and companies around the globe include technology, organizational culture, competition, decentralization and restructuring of organizations. These issues are critical because they are able to determine the success of an organization in the global market. Failure to address the emerging issues listed above would lead to poor performance of HRM and affected companies.
Assessment of the critical issues during in flux
For effective assessment of the emerging HR critical issues when they are in flux the HRM looks at the internal and external factors that influence the rapidly changing environment. In this, the human resource department selects and implements strategies that are geared towards organizational high performance. Nevertheless, the selected strategies have to be inconsistent with the vision and mission of the organizations.
Resolving the emerging issues by HR
Just like it is in the case of other organizational matters, the human resource management resolves the emerging HR issues by adopting the proactive method of problem solving instead of the reactive method. In this, the HR identifies the certainty of the emerging trends and puts in place measures to prevent them from affecting organizational performance.
In addition to this, the HR could also encourage critical thinking by the employees as well as the other managers as one way of ensuring that problems are solved diligently. In determining the success of HR’s role, it is important that any advancement in the organization is identified. For instance, a reduction in challenges as well as an increase in opportunities is an indication that the HRM has succeeded in solving the emerging issues affecting the organization.
Reference List
Mello, J. (2006). Strategic Human Resource Management. Westford: South-Western Cengage Learning.