HR Strategy: According to the researchers, to win in the marketplace, it is essential to first win in the workplace. The professional sector is changing continuously and abruptly. Previously, the working hours mostly were fixed where people usually work from 9 to 6 for 5 days in the week. All employees were responsible for accomplishing organizational objectives. However, with changing dynamics, HR managers need to define the internationally accepted structure to align the industry and business world with requirements.
The era is unpredictable and constantly changing, which is eventually called the VUCA world. It symbolizes volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, as it was first explored in 1987 when professionalism never looked back (Abidi, 2018). With VUCA elements, the dynamic environment objective is continuous modification even though the role of human resource personnel. In the 21st century, HR functions grab the position of a critical differentiator for a business instead of remaining behind the scenes.
In today’s world, employees prefer interdependence, flexibility, freelancing, telecommuting, etc. The organizational dynamics are evolving, and employees mostly have contrasting passion, interest, aspiration, and expectations (Abidi, 2018). Generation Z and millennials prefer managing themselves by considering utmost commitment for personality development and skill development. They do not further want to be the servants of the instructions or get managed by other people; instead, they become their boss. In such dynamics, the function of human resources is repositioning, reinventing, and transforming itself.
The Role of HR
The HR manager must reject outdated traditional leadership and management style to satisfy VUCA challenges. It is expected from HR to play the inclusive role for business strategies to the challenges of VUCA effectively. Like Reserve Bank of India has decided to hire more efficient consultants to get rid of the HR practices of 2012. The enlisted consultants would advise the central bank for hiring, training, salary, retention, performance, appraisal, and, most importantly, succession planning. The initiative is right as it suffered through different types of HR managerial issues.
Major challenges for HR in the VUCA business environment
Source: (Dhillon and Nguyen, 2021)
Volatile – stability is not there in the present scenario; hence HR managers have to deal with rapid transitions with fluctuations and more instability (Bader et al. 2019). The technological up-gradation for unprecedented levels mostly becomes the source of volatility. The workforce even becomes contractual from permanent where a professional struggling constantly is there for HR to find themselves reorganizing the organization’s functions to respond to the challenges.
Uncertainty – uncertainty or unpredictability of the business models eventually become asymmetric and nonlinear. The risk of crafting the organization with a changing environment leads to the requirement of changing everything and HR strategies.
Complex – the technological aspect is to connect people across the globe confirm feedback loops and interdependencies better than before (Dhillon, and Nguyen, 2021). However, actions can have unintended consequences due to multilayer networks which cannot even be ready or expose and confirms complexity.
Ambiguous – ambiguity gets initiated by ‘unknown unknowns’ as in this era, no presidents exist. Thereby, it becomes really hard to reach the position of agreement or clarity. Moreover, the constant demand for innovation leads to ambiguous times and situations. To have a well-defined strategy in such a context becomes difficult responsibility for HR.
HR strategy
The HR managers address all the challenges of the VUCA by changing the traditional management method and adopting a new framework to confirm lean management in culture (Falah, 2021). Major strategies mostly depend on tools and talent, which can justify the inconsistency of the VUCA world. The strategy is even reformulated to reflect flexibility and adaptability for the business.
The business partnering model is one of the models which accelerates evolution for HR functions. It leverages technology for innovation. Among several strategies, HR started to facilitate its concern to understand business avenues from the VUCA world to confirm alignment in every phase of the business. HR plays a pivotal role in ensuring that business strategies are articulated simply and clearly to confirm effective alignment with VUCA to deliver optimum business results. The understanding of HR for an organization becomes such that they can hold and grab the position of pushing back the business accomplishing individual or departmental goals to adhere to overall organizational goals (Hamid, 2019). In such a context as the Central Bank Of India, more efficient, technically competent people get hired to avoid gaps in the process.
At present, HR has become the business partner as it is not only responsible for recruitment, payroll, or attendance. Rather, it needs to understand the priority of the business to be adaptable for delivering the required result. HR adopts the hands-on approach rejecting the tandem management approach to make it effective for the VUCA world. Hence, the business partnering model becomes the key for accelerating the evolution of HR function.
The era is of technology and digitization. Thereby HR has adopted the strategy of leveraging technology for innovation to cater to the need of VUCA. It has started to hire a competent person who acknowledges technology and can implement that in organizational structure (Sharma, and Singh, 2020). For the VUCA world, HR has changed its strategy where recruitment becomes much more crucial. Apart from experience and efficiency for the particular designation, it becomes important to confirm performance management, employee forum, communication, information, desk talent management, background check, and hiring. Background checks become important for technological concerns to confirm enough scopes of innovation in the organization.
Endnote
In the VUCA world, managing change becomes the most crucial yet continuous process for HR. HR has sustained strategies like continuous learning skills, up-gradation to overcome the challenges of the VUCA world for which training programs become important to acquire desired skills in the workforce. HR has adopted the strategy of hiring those who are multitaskers and would not limit themselves to a specific role. With the changing employment structure from permanent to contractual, such types of changes are confirmed, and HR articulates its strategies for the VUCA world.
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