The 2007-2008 Workplace Trends Lists

The 2007-2008 Workplace Trends Lists
_The Top Trends According to SHRM's Special Expertise Panels

It's a summary of the Society for Human Resource Management Special Expertise Panel 2007 Trend Reports. Come to learn what issues that HR subject matter experts believe will have biggest impact in workplace.

Key theme emerged:

• The importance of globalization and integrating markets
• Demographic change and its impact on diversity and labor availability
• The Implications of increased health care costs
• Immigration and global labor mobility
• Skills shortages and a greater emphasis on talent management
• The growing importance of demonstrated ethics and corporate social responsibility
• The influence of new technologies, especially social networking and HR technologies
• A greater reliance on metrics

You can see most of trends are related to the "globalization", including the implication of health care costs, skills shortages, and new technologies which to greater extent also contribute to the increasing importance of globalization.

Let's take one step further to look into the trends of Global HR in the order of importance:

1. Managing talent globally and having the “right” talent to achieve business strategy, particularly in high-growth countries.
2. Multiculturalism of global workforce.
3. Global teams that can manage distances effectively and balance a U.S.-centric view versus a global view.
4. Global leadership and the recognition of a need to cultivate specific global leadership competencies.
5. Demographics: Generational differences in work styles/preferences as well as workplace shifts as baby boomers retire.
6. HR communication and expertise across borders to leverage globally dispersed pockets of knowledge.
7. Demand for HR skill sets (strategic/international versus transactional).
8. Immigration reform and the staffing shortage (construction, engineering, output from universities).
9. Domestic is global and global is domestic.
10. Movement of people in Western multinational corporations (MNCs) to other economies and growth of emerging-market-based MNCs.

So, how would you or your company position yourself in the trends?

More quarterly and special report about "Workplace Trend and Forecasting" are available at SHRM website (http://www.shrm.org/trends/)