3GE Collection on Business Management: Critical Issues in Human Resource Management

The 21st century workforce is complex as HR remains one of the key challenges business leaders face every day. In several industries human capital challenges recruiting, retaining, motivating, training, and developing the workforce. But although working on these human capital success factors is now an essential part of every business leader’s role, for human resource management professionals it is their role. The challenges HR professionals face each day as they carry out their responsibilities give them a good insight into the broader business and human capital challenges their organizations face now and in the future. There are a number of critical challenges inherent in the nature of HR decision making that make its strategic implementation so difficult. Human assets have characteristics that differ from most other resources in the company, such as its physical product and financial capital. Most notably and similar to other investments, such as the value associated with an organization’s name recognition or brand they are intangible and therefore, simply unclear. Human performance is difficult to predict; it is very challenging to make a strong case that a particular investment in employees (e.g., a new pay policy, a new training platform) clearly leads to specific improvements in employees' performance, which then has a direct effect on the financial results of a company. The strategic nature of HR decision making extends far beyond the doors of the HR department. Just as money changes hands and is important to more than those in a finance department, nearly all decisions in a company's purview involve HR in some way, shape, or form.

The purpose of this text entitled “Critical Issues in Human Resource Management” is thus to help students as well as those already making HR decisions do so in a way that takes advantage of strategic human resource management (SHRM). The need for educated, skilled and technically savvy employees continues to ramp up and is no doubt driving recruiting difficulties and highlighting the importance of human capital issues. This book explores important insights into how the workforce is changing and how organizations will deal with these changes in order to succeed. Apart from technical knowledge, competence in foreign languages also became an important factor. Human relations became a key factor, and the fact that these companies mostly managed to realize higher performance than local ones became apparent.