BSMAN3003 - Strategic HRM: Addressing Workforce Challenges Today

This essay addresses three major challenges faced by Human Resource departments in today's globalized world: managing generational differences, fostering workplace diversity, and navigating the gig economy. The challenges posed by generational gaps include age disparities, differing value systems, and communication barriers between baby boomers and millennials. Diversity challenges encompass cultural misunderstandings and language barriers that can impact team relationships and decision-making. The rise of the gig economy presents integration issues, a lack of employee commitment, and difficulties in managing conflict and maintaining service quality. The essay concludes that these challenges, stemming from globalization, require HR departments to develop sophisticated strategies to effectively manage a diverse and evolving workforce. Desklib provides this and many other solved assignments to help students.

Running head: CURRENT CHALLENGES OF HUMAN RESOURCE
CURRENT CHALLENGES OF HUMAN RESOURCE
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1CURRENT CHALLENGES OF HUMAN RESOURCE
Introduction:
Each and every organization of today’s time is characterized with a human resource
department. The human resource department essentially refers to the people that make up the
work force of an organization or an industry. The human resource department is essentially
responsible to guide and undertake the responsibilities of the human capital of an organization
or an industry. Therefore, the responsibility of the human resource department includes the
screening process and the hiring process of an organization, and the management of the
payrolls and the payments of the employees and the associated organizations and the
outsourcing departments of an organization or an industry (Stone, & Deadrick, 2015). Along with
this the human resource department of an organization is responsible of the talent acquisition
and talent management, knowledge acquisition and knowledge management. The human
resource department also, essentially implements and practices the labor laws, the employee
laws and the company law, as well as it undertakes and guides the practice of employee rights.
The human resource department is also responsible to guide the employees to claim their rights
and look after the instances of incidents of sexual harassments within the organizational
premise. Along with this the human resource departments of the organizations or the industries
look after and guide the social responsibilities that the organizations or the industries are
supposed to look after.
In the recent times, with the rise and wide and dominant practice of globalization, there
are certain challenges that the human resource departments of the organizations and the
industries have come across. With growing time, and the changes in the market and in the
changes in the requirement or market and talent, there are increasing challenges that the
human resource departments are faced with, and this is a universal scenario across the world
(Stone, & Deadrick, 2015). Therefore, in the following essay three major challenges that the
organizations or industries across the world are facing, will be discussed and analyzed. There
are many challenges that the human resource department is faced with, however, for the
considered assignment, the aspects of generation, diversity and gig economy will be included
and discussed.
Challenges of Generation:
Generation gap is one of the most important challenging area which the human resource
department of the organizations are faced with. Irrespective of the significance of the aspects
there is considerably very limited research with in this area. According to the human resource

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managers the aspect of generation is one of the most potential are holding effective threat to the
human resource management. According to the researchers, the dominant population of the
country is the baby boomers and the generation Y, who are also known as the generation
Millennials, and had been the part of a great social, environmental, political and economic
change (Costanza, & Finkelstein, 2015). Therefore, it is extremely difficult to manage theme.
More importantly, this is the generation who has contributed into the field of psycho- social
attributes.
In the organizations it is effectively found that the since there is an increasing age
disparity among the employees of an organization. And this age difference is essentially
between the baby boomers and the millennials. Considering the challenge posed to the human
resource department, the challenges can be differentiated into three folds. First, the challenge of
the age gap. It is found that, among the organizations, with the development of the educational
patterns and with differences at the recruiting requirements, the age gap is increasingly
becoming a major issue. Many higher posts are held and or posited by the millennials with the
baby boomers working under them. Therefore, there is a position of respect and fairness within
the organization, on many situations it is found that the millennials do not show a good behavior
to those elder to them, and in certain cases, the baby boomers feel that they must have been
paid with more respect (Kicheva, 2017). Even in case of promotion the age structure and the
service period becomes a matter of question, which pose challenging situations to the human
resource.
Secondly, there is a difference in the value system which is one of the major attribute
contributing into the challenges to the human resource department. Each of the generation
holds different values both at the professional and the personal level. While the millennials are
more concerned about the material gains and the work satisfaction, the baby boomers are more
concerned with their family life, and aims to gain stability (Kar, 2018). Therefore, such a
disparity at the value system impacts upon the professional sphere of each of the groups, and
thus poses challenges to the human resource management.
Lastly, the aspects of communication. The generation Y is more dependent upon the
digital media, and are more active on the social platforms and are completely gadget freak, and
all these are not the characteristics of the baby boomers. Therefore, while managing a business
meet or the team meetings, the human resource departments has to come across a number of
challenges due to this generation gap (Kar, 2018).

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Challenges related to Diversity:
The workplace diversity is another major challenging aspect to the human resource
departments of the organizations and this particular attribute effects on the interpersonal
relationships along with impacting upon the professional live off the employees. The aspect of
diversity has been risen in the industries with the development and wide practice of globalization
(Noe et al., 2015). Therefore, the problems related to diversity can be divided into two folds.
First is, the aspect of culture. While managing a team or a work force it is very important
that each of the team members have an understanding of the cultural practices and attributes of
each other, and more that, each of the employees must develop a respect towards the cultural
attributes of each other. It is often observed that the cultural prejudices held against one
particular culture, can impact upon the professional relationships and professional practices of
the employees (Noe et al., 2015). It also impacts upon the decision making structure.
Second is, the aspect of language, and it is essentially perceived during the time of
training and management or during team management. Diversity helps the organization is
gaining work force and making a potent and competitive workforce, however the gaps in the
language potentially impact upon the team relationship and in the training of the employees
(Theodorakopoulos, & Budhwar, 2015). Also, the differences in the language also lead to
confusion among the work force and thus creates challenging situation for the human resource
department.
Challenges related to Gig Economy:
Another major challenge for the HR professionals is the gig economy. Gig economy
refers to the market or pool of cheap labors, and freelancers or the contractual jobs or the
temporary employees. The gig economy refers to anything and everything opposing to the
permanent jobs. It is called gig economy because instead of the full and regular wage, the
employees or the workers get gigs or payments. The prevalence and practice of gig economy
had taken place because of two aspects. One, in order to practice independent work, while
pursuing personal choices and passion. On the other hand it is practiced by the companies to
get the work done in less payment, or because of the cheap labor (Kuhn, 2016). Now, with the
increasing population, and with the changes in the requirements of the employees, it is found
that there is a rise in the culture of gig economy, and the human resource department of the
organizations or the industries, universally, are facing certain major problem or challenges
(Prassl, 2018).

4CURRENT CHALLENGES OF HUMAN RESOURCE
One of the major challenging area is to integrate the employees. Since the employees
are mostly freelancers and irregular workers, therefore they lack the organizational value which
is needed in order to work for an organization, more importantly, since they do not belong to the
organization therefore, there is often a lack of commitment among the labors. These employees
also lack the inhibition to innovate or to moderate the work, and since there is a lack of
commitment, therefore, there are certain issues like quality management and timeliness (Kuhn,
2016). Therefore it is often observed that the production or the service quality of an organization
are hampered or compromised because of the practice of gig economy.
Along with this, another challenging area of this practice is conflict management or
conflict resolution, which takes place because of the lack of commitment and the lack of
attachment to the work or the company. As most of the workers or labors see it as an
opportunity to earn more money, therefore, the human resource department finds it impossible
to manage the work force and to manage the conflict situation (Horney, 2016).
Conclusion:
The human resource department of the organizations or the industries are perceived
with a number of challenges from diversified fields. However, the documented three aspects are
undoubtedly the most challenging areas for the considered department. These challenging
areas are new and essentially the resultant of the practice of globalization, and compared with
the other challenging areas, these three challenges are much complicated and difficult for the
human resource departments to manage.

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References:
Costanza, D. P., & Finkelstein, L. M. (2015). Generationally based differences in the workplace:
Is there a there there?. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8(3), 308-323.
Horney, N. (2016). The gig economy: A disruptor requiring HR agility. People and
Strategy, 39(3), 20.
Kar, S. (2018). Managing generation y employees-Hr challenges and opportunities. Sambrham
Academy and Management Studies.
Kicheva, T. (2017). Management of employees from different generations-Challenge for
Bulgarian managers and HR professionals. Economic Alternatives, 1, 103-121.
Kuhn, K. M. (2016). The rise of the “gig economy” and implications for understanding work and
workers. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 9(1), 157-162.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2015). Human resource
management. Gaining a Competitive.
Prassl, J. (2018). Humans as a service: The promise and perils of work in the gig economy.
Oxford University Press.
Stone, D. L., & Deadrick, D. L. (2015). Challenges and opportunities affecting the future of
human resource management. Human Resource Management Review, 25(2), 139-145.

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Theodorakopoulos, N., & Budhwar, P. (2015). Guest editors' introduction: Diversity and
inclusion in different work settings: Emerging patterns, challenges, and research
agenda. Human Resource Management, 54(2), 177-197.

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