 "Casting a wide net")
In the future, companies will probably continue to move along this continuum. Small – and medium – size enterprises, often in Africa and Latin America, will evolve from national to international markets as family businesses grow.
In particular, many local markets in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Asia are being grouped into regional entities. Multinational organizations will shift to becoming global networks. Even state-owned enterprises like those in China and India are likely to attend more to global practices as they learn from others in similar economic conditions.
The future global orientation has a number of implications. First, a global mindset involves more than any specific management or HR practice. Global thinking obviously occurs when someone moves to another country. But it also becomes mandatory for anyone in a local market who has global customers, who relies on a global supply chain, or who faces nondomestic competition. Second, global innovation occurs anywhere. We frequently hear people in traditionally global companies say that their most innovative work is being done in emerging markets that allow more flexibility and face greater demand for change. Their challenge is to use emerging-market innovation to enlighten mature markets. Third, in a flatter, more global world, work can be done anywhere with relatively similar quality but at much lower costs. Labor markets will be increasingly global since hiring for key positions can be done anywhere — and in many cases the work can be transferred anywhere.
The globalization of labor markets makes it difficult to justify hiring and locating work on the basis of mature market compensation. As work becomes more global in nature, so will pay rates. Since work can be done anywhere, a new global compensation equilibrium will raise the standard of living in emerging markets and may potentially lower the standard of living in developed economies. It will cause labor strife in mature markets when pay is reduced because it is impossible to justify being paid much more for essentially the same work. Finally, globalization will require more complex models of cause and effect. Political change in Europe, social reforms in the Middle East, education investments in Australia, and consumer demand in China all affect markets and organizations around the world.
To respond to these global realities, HR professionals need to become global thinkers. They need to make their organizations more global in mindset, processes, and standards. At the same time, they need to help their people and organizations recognize and adapt to local conditions. They should help develop the responsiveness of their companies to global happenings.
Demographically diverse
Employee demographics have traditionally focused on race, gender, and lifestyle. With the globalization trends, the makeup of the workforce will shift dramatically. We often use some simple exercises in workshops to demonstrate some of these emerging demographic changes:
* How many of your fathers or mothers worked for one company? Generally a majority.
* How many of you will work for only one company? Generally 20 to 40 percent. How many of your children will work for only one company? None. (In three years, with tens of thousands of seminar participants, we have never had anyone say yes, anywhere in the world.) Next generation employees will inevitably have mobile careers.
| Author Dave Ulrich tells Ankita Rai that HR managers in MNCs should use technology to give organisation a competitive advantage |
Which HR competencies are more important now, given that labour force has become demographically diverse and technologically connected?
Our statistics show that being a credible activist helps an HR professional to be seen as effective, and most professionals do reasonably well at this domain. However, HR managers need to improve on following fronts to drive success in business: they need to become a capability builder, should be a proponent of technology and should try to evolve into an innovator and integrator. These facts are consistent in all regions around the world.
What are the most important HR issues in countries like China and India?
Most of the people who work in India and China recognise the challenge of finding and retaining great talent. We, however, found that HR professionals also have to define and create organisational capabilities (or culture) in these countries. For example, in China, HR professionals are more adept and focused on the administrative processes of HR than the business or strategic issues.
What are the future requirements of HR in the rapidly changing competitive landscape?
We anticipate that by 2017, around 20 to 30 per cent of the 140 behavioural questions will be different. Some of the future competencies for HR professionals might include the following: (To what extent does your HR professional…):
Context and stakeholder changes
* Help your organisation become a more global organisation
* Build global thinking throughout your organisation
* Transfer innovative ideas or practices from one part of the world to another
* Recognise the implications of external changes on business processes
* Create a truly global workforce
* Use technology to collect and share information that gives your organisation a competitive advantage
HR granularity
* Tailor HR practices to employee needs
* Offer local solutions to challenges
Talent
* Invest in life time learning for employees
* Focus on retaining top talent
* Help employees find meaning in work and flexibility about where and how they work
Organisation capabilities
* Create an organisation that is flexible, collaborative, socially responsible, can turn complexity into simplicity and has integrity
Leadership
* Help leaders coach and communicate with their employees
* Encourage leadership sustainability
* Build leadership
GLOBAL HR COMPETENCIES
AUTHOR: Dave Ulrich, Wayne Brockbank, Jon Younger, Mike Ulrich
PUBLISHER: Tata McGraw-Hill
PRICE: Rs 595
ISBN: 9781259064531