Human Resources Management(HRM) within the context of globalisation and global
companies is an ever-evolving investigation. From the very beginning of its foundations,
global HRM has sought to explore social and organisational context as a tool to better
understand practices and their results, both for a better future and new perspectives on labour.
However, with global expansion and technology pushing progress at a lighting speeds there
are increasingly more issues and factors that HR professionals need to consider when
developing modern HR policies and practices. While this is an extensive area of concern, this
essay has a limited scope and will be focusing on what it believes are some of the most
pertinent modern issues, namely, Digital Transformation, Flexible Work, and finally,
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
The Digital Transformation HRM is currently facing has been adequately coined by
Klaus Schwab as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2016). It has propelled
organisations into a future which leverages digital technologies to significantly change
business’s activities, processes and competencies (Vial, 2019). In fact, this very digital
revolution has piloted “workplace changes that range from mechanical to computerized,
information based to knowledge-based, individualized to team-based, and hands-on to
minds-on” (Benson, Johnson, and Kuchinke, 2002; Thite, 2020). Overall, this covers a variety
of digital technologies which can be manipulated as digital tools for HRM and the effective
delivery of HR services, for example, Data Analytics and machine learning can be used to
facilitate recruitment (Albert, 2019) and A.I can assist employee well-being and mental
health (Oracle, 2020). This revolution holds some vital challenges for current HR
professionals. AI and automation in particular, have at times been outlined as projecting a
disconcerting future of job displacement (Strohmeier, 2020). On the other hand, some data
has implied that while some of these emerging technologies may have a role in displacing
some lower-skilled, time intensive, or ineffective, jobs, they are more likely to be
implemented as an additional complement to ‘Human capabilities’ rather than as a
replacement (CIPD, 2020), Nevertheless, areas such as E-Recruitment and E-Selection have
at times been proven to demonstrate gender and diversity bias due to algorithmic
configuration (Kerey and D’Alessandro, 2021) while also presenting significant cost
implications for underfunded HR departments. There is additional concern regarding the
requirement of data-related upskilling (Rao and Hill, 2019), as applicants and HR employees
will now be expected to be familiar with AI functions and share private information (Johnson
and Stone, 2019).
, In contrast, some experts have stood by digitilisation as a platform which can propel
the current approach to labour, while also creating new jobs and industries: such as AI-
trainers, explainers, sustainers (Wilson, Daugherty, & Bianzino, 2017). High-profile MNC’s,
Deloitte and PwC have continued to stand by AI Recruitment as a form of increasing their
competitive advantage and substantial cost-savings (Albert, 2019), savings which can be used
to offset the high fees often associated with AI Tools. Increasing number of applicants and
the ineffective nature of most recruitment practices has meant that businesses can lose
valuable candidates (Wright and Atkinson, 2016; Kerey and D’Alessandro, 2019). Moreover,
experiments have shown that in reality while there is a risk, AI has been reported to be far
less biased than human recruiters (Bersin and Chamorro-Premuzic, 2019; Tambe et al., 2019;
Kerey and D’Alessandro, 2021). Overall, HR professionals should be open to digitilisation,
but only as an augmentation of existing, well-defined, human led processes. As seen by the
journey DBS undertook to digital transformation, these steps into the future are at their most
effective when matched with a strong people and business strategy.
Moving on, digital transformation is not alone in its more recent growth. In fact, the
increased adoption of flexible working strategies has pushed HR to reconsider previous
approaches to the ‘Standard employment relationship’ (Stone and Arthurs, 2013). This is
largely as a result of the specific circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and
their consequences to traditional work strategy. Flexible working can be defined as the
‘Stable, open-ended and direct arrangement between a dependent, full-time employee and
their unitary employer’ (Stone and Arthurs, 2013). This can then be further broken down into
three types of flexibility, one which is flexible within the standard employment relationship,
another which is flexible through a non-standard employment, such as seasonal or outsourced
work, and finally, work which is flexible through self-employment, such as freelancing.
Businesses have found that while flexibility through non-standard employment can be
more cost efficient, it can also carry security and quality concerns (CitizensAdvice, 2020). In
turn, flexible work arrangements with direct employees can result in a higher organisational
performance but also have a negative impact on turnover, which then has knock on effects in
terms of costs and reported performance (Koch, 2012). HR strategists can consider offsetting
these costs by increasing remote work and cutting the cost invested in facilities. As COVID-
19 cements flexible work and its presence in future HR practices and policies (CIPD, 2021),