The challenges that we will face in the next millennium can only be anticipated. But the direction that we will tread is quite clear now.
This century has belonged to the manufacturing sector. Starting from the days of Fords assembly line to the present emphasis on quality systems. The next millennium will belong to the convergence of Information Technology. How organisations are able to leverage IT to get advantage in a highly competitive market will be the key to success.Leading the way would be the organisations who are in the IT industry.These are the ones which have shown that the quickest way to business excellence would be through optimum utilisation of IT.
The IT boom has brought with it, its own set of challenges to organizations. How to put in place systems and process that are in tune with the IT revolution, how to strategies and compete in the IT era? But a major challenge that the IT industry per se has been facing is in the field of Human Resource Management.
The IT industry is a service industry. How well are you able to offer quality service to individuals and organizations will determine the success of your organization. This leads us to the fact that the creativity, innovativeness, knowledge and skill of your employees are your important assets. How you are able to manage these assets is the challenge that the IT industry is facing. It is not capital or finance or marketing management that gives the competitive edge but rather how well you are able to manage your human resources whose intellectual applications drive your business.
Some of the HR challenges that the IT industry faces are in Recruitment, Performance Management, Training & Development, Compensation Management and HRM as whole.
Recruitment has become an important sub system in HR especially in the IT industry. When your major asset are your Human Resources, it is important that quality people join your organization. How you are able to fine tune your recruitment process in a manner that you are able to get the best talent available and how well you have been able to put systems in place so that the people that you recruit are a perfect fit for the job and the organization is one of the major challenges. The challenge does not stop with recruiting the right person but with how you are going to manage the performance of your employees. The challenge would be to create a performance culture wherein opportunities are provided for enhanced performance and where giving out optimum performance becomes a way of life.
Training & and Development is another area where challenges arise. In the IT industry training takes a new connotation. It will not be just identifying training needs and giving the required training. It is foreseeing and anticipating the requirements and develop suitable training so that the employees are well equipped to handle the challenges forehand.
The IT industry is one of the high paying industries. Since it is also very competitive, vying with each other to attract the best talent, offering the best possible compensation package to their employees is in itself a challenge.
But the real challenge would be how we are able to incorporate all the sub systems in HR and help them in achieving the ultimate goal – exceptional performance. In a high performance driven industry like IT, this becomes all the more important. People have to be groomed to get in tune with the performance culture. Creating an environment that stimulates the creation of knowledge, its sustenance and its decipation throughout the organisation will be the challenge for organisations in the future. How to go about doing this will fall on the HR department. No longer will the HR department carry on with its traditional functions. That will take care by Human Resource Information Systems that will be put in place. The function would be to build and sustain a performance driven culture. The role will shift to that of a facilitator. Facilitate the process of change, for change would be the only thing that will be constant in the future. HR will have to involve the whole organisation in this process and act as a guide, counselor and facilitator.In the future the competitive edge that the organisations will get will only be through their human resouces.How organisations are able to manage them ,will determine whether they will run the race or be left behind.