2012 - Trendspotting in HR

2012 is going to be another year of adjusting, giving up familiar terrain and adapting to the new. The economy has a mind of its own and keeps on acting like a twirling river. The predictions for the year are all out now and strangely nobody seems to know  which direction are we heading in. It becomes very difficult to say what the large trends for HR in 2012 will be or whether we will survive the Mayan predictions.

There is certainty that HR will be in forefront of business whether we are laying off or whether we are hiring (baked) talent. HR has become the new all pervasive function,  any CEO who wants to stay ahead in race will have to learn this new skill, partner consciously and deliberately with HR. HR function which largely stayed in the background is suddenly under spotlight.

HR Head(s) will have to learn new skills of managing the up and downturns of a twirling economy and getting out of the stability mindset, they have been used to all these years. Agility and managing ambiguity are the competencies one will have to add to the quiver. There will be little difference between the Business leaders and HR leaders, the gap needed to run a function effectively has been narrowing down over the years and will further reduce this year. More HR leaders will start their transitions into Business roles,  few of them will leave their functions to take on fresh roles and some of them will add more functions to their portfolio. Many of the current HR heads who are scared to make the transition will have to let go of their chances of promotion and value addition to the business.

Another area which will get impacted in 2012 is coaching. The current unregulated and non standardised infant industry (in India) of coaching might see more clients asking for credentials before engaging in the process. Early signs of certification in the (Indian Coaching) industry might start seeing the light of the day and ask for credentials of self claimed coaches .

Engaging with a younger, short attention span and multitasking workforce will call for different bag of tricks. It may mean more communication through social networking tools, using twitter, facebook and  blogging  for company communication and networking. HR Heads will have to get familiar with latest  technology and make sure that their management team also familiarises itself with the same. This will be essential for leaders of future and might start getting added to the management leadership competency list.

Compensation will be under stress as businesses reel under the pressures of economy and the nature of compensation will move to more variability and pay for performance schemes.  Fixed increases will move from double digit to single digit numbers in India.

HR Analytics will start playing a major role in defining the new dimension of decision making in the HR function. Buying/Leasing latest technology to effectively use this technology for business decisioning will see increased usage with many companies especially in the service industry,

Discretionary effort of the employees will be under pressure and hygiene level engagement will keep average performers in the company while high performers will be on the lookout for better opportunities...not a bad time for companies looking for talent. 

Highly competitive job market will see a war only for high performing talent, very different from the earlier years.

An interesting, adventurous and pressure cooker year in the offing which will bake the talent...much needed....isn’t it?