Trends and Challenges in Human Resources

Human resources (HR) departments face many existing and future challenges when working with employees such as diversity issues, turnover, health and safety, and benefits. These challenges will change as employees become more skillful and want more out of the company they work for to make them satisfied in the areas of pay and benefits. In this paper, reviewed will be the impact on HR regarding existing and future trends, existing and future challenges, advantages of turnover, performance appraisals, and safety and health in the workplace.
Existing trends in HR
Some of the major trends affecting human resource management today are the modern labor force, organizational strategy, growth,
Employee absenteeism is having a greater impact on human resource management than ever before. Direct disability and absence management costs are now 7.1 percent of payroll. Short-term absence costs, as a percentage of total payroll costs, have more than doubled from 2.0 percent in 1997 to 4.2 percent. Long-term disability costs, as a percentage of total payroll costs, have increased by 8% (Kettner, 2008). In order to counteract the cost of absenteeism, many corporations are beginning to use practices such as independent medical evaluations, employee assistance programs, and work life programs.
Annual Performance Appraisals and Performance Management Every company has to make decisions concerning the regulation of employee performance. Not everyone agrees on how to accomplish this task but in today’s job market employee performance and how a company approaches this type of appraisal must be fair and have positive effects on the company and the employees. Annual performance appraisals are conducted that many companies link to raises and bonuses, while performance management must be done on a daily basis. Annual performance appraisals are often viewed in a bad light by employees and managers alike. This is something that companies must take the time to make sure the approach and adequacy of the appraisals