Human Resource Management in the 21st Century:Challenges for the Future (Essay Sample)

Human Resource Management in the 21st Century: Challenges for the Future
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Human Resource Management in the 21st Century: Challenges for the Future
There is a strong perception that significant changes are taking place in the world of work. These changes are characterized by a decline in long-term employment and growth in temporary, part-time, and casual employment; an increase in female participation rates; increasing job insecurity; an increase in atypical working patterns, such as flextime, home working, and other flexible arrangements; and a reduction in skills required for work. These changes lead to emerging challenges for human resource management. Some of the future challenges human resource managers must tackle include increasing work flexibility, ensuring a work-life balance, and instituting strategies to motivate and retain workers.
The 21st-century human resource managers will find it challenging to handle an increase in work flexibility. These professionals need to prepare for this upcoming trend and start managing people who have multiple jobs simultaneously. While work flexibility has tremendous benefits, it comes with drawbacks, such as a higher stress level for both management and the workforce (Nasir, 2017). In the 21st century, managers must deal with these problems effectively. For instance, the rise of flexible work schedules led to an increase in the number of people who telecommuted in the US, from 3.9 million in 2015 to 4.7 million in 2020 (Lewis, 2020), a trend expected to continue and challenge human resource managers not used to these arrangements.
Instituting a balance between work and life is an emerging challenge that human resource managers will tackle in the coming days. In a scenario where people spend more time at work, striking a balance between work and life becomes crucial. Workplace competition, due to tough market forces, has led to both a rise in workload and a high level of stress among workers, demanding managers to make sure work and leisure remain separated (Jain et al., 2018). Therefore, work-life balance is an issue that many people in the 21st century worry about. Managers should address this issue now and in the future.
With the future of most corporations in question, they must find new ways to keep employees motivated and engaged. This may be difficult for many companies as their financial situation changes, but it is important to keep the workforce happy. If a company’s employee morale and motivation levels are low, it will affect their productivity and profitability. A company needs to find ways to motivate employees beyond financial compensation. Nasir (2017) reveals that new global hiring policies need designing to retain employees longer in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
In a nutshell, the future challenges human resource manager