Critical Analysis of the Article “What’s (Still) Keeping HR up?”
Article Title: What’s (Still) Keeping HR up?
Source: Human Resource Executive, HREOnline.com
Date Published: July 17, 2015
Salient Points
- The role of the HR manager keeps changing and evolving (McGrow 1).
- There are new challenges which add up to the level of difficulty of the position.
- HR managers have remained steadfast over the past few years.
- The major challenge HR leaders have had since 2013, is to ensure employees are constantly engaged and productive.
- The second challenge the leaders face is to retain key talent followed by the need to develop leaders (McGrow 1).
- These three challenges remain the major obstacles for most leaders.
- The matter of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is ranked the first among the extreme significant problems that have been overcome.
- Anxiety levels are said to reduce, since HR leaders assume ACA as the part of their jobs.
Author’s Conclusions
- Manager roles indeed keep changing.
- There have been many challenges experienced in the last 18 months that HR’s are facing that are causing dramatic stress levels.
- ACA is only one of the sources of the HR’s anxiety.
- The level of stress is said to increase dramatically due to more anxiety.
- HR leaders, however, need to address more obscure issues such as tax estimation and how a company can minimize its impact.
Why I Agree or Disagree
I totally agree with McGrow that the roles of the HR leaders are changing in the present world. I also acknowledge the concern of the CEO of the Washington-based National Business Group on Health, Marcotte. From the recent research, job positions are presently becoming more competitive and skill levels continue to worsen. This places the HR leaders in more challenging positions, since they have to maintain employer brand and build trust between prospective employees and their organizations. The CEO, Marcotte, is among the few salient managers who can point out HR challenges and come up with pragmatic solutions (Higginbottom 1). As a cogent leader, Marcotte easily encourages the managers to share their worries and show compassion over the stressed managers. This is a likely solution to differentiate the causes of stress levels among managers. This is because there are more challenges that HR leaders are facing presently that are unlikely to be solved in the near future. For instance, there has been an increase of corporate scandal, which has affected the reputation of some companies and their sectors. Volkswagen remains a salient company to be negatively affected by the 2015 cheating debacle regarding carbon emissions. Besides this, HR leaders ought to come up with a solution to the age demographic that is affecting most of the HR managers in the EU countries (McGrow 1). The issue of age adversely affects knowledge transfer.
Seb O’Connell, the managing director for Europe and Asia-Pacific for Cielo is another Sagacious leader with the ability to discern major obstacles HR directors in the top 100 firms face (Higginbottom 1). O’Connell cites the challenge of recruiting employers to fill the skills gaps as a rising issue. He goes on to accentuate that this is the major cause of anxiety and stress among HR leaders. I consider that this issue is real with the changing work diversity that is presently perceived as a necessity rather than an objective among organizations in Europe.
Works Cited
Higginbottom, Karen. “Challenges for HR Directors in 2016.” Forbes. 2015.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karenhigginbottom/2015/12/30/challenges-for-hr-directors-in-2016/#480452d3198e. Accessed on 7 March 2017
McGraw Mark. “What’s (Still) Keeping HR Up?” HR Online.com. 2015.
http://www.hreonline.com/HRE/view/story.jhtml?id=534359037. Accessed on 7 March 2017