HUMAN RESOURCES CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS: CASE STUDY OF TURKEY

Abstract

Today, it is critical for businesses to utilize their resources to gain and sustain competitive advantage by having skilled workforce, retaining, and using employees in line with their business objectives and strategies. Therefore, possession of skilled workforce is recognized as one of the determining factors in the success of enterprises in today's competitive environment. It is important to emphasize that this can be achieved only with effective management policies and practices. The concept of globalization will not be missing within next 10 years considering that it has been one of the most important phenomena of the recent decades. In this context, human resources managers, who continue to remain “local” in terms of their knowledge and experience, need to improve themselves by learning new markets, new legislation, new cultures and different norms required by the changing business conditions. In the past, while practices known as employee record keeping, social work duty, personnel management were constituting the main understanding of Human Resource Management (HRM), following the industrial relations, HRM processes have started to be subject to major change and transformation. Currently, HRM has become a critical topic for the organizations due to its significance and impact on their strategic management. Within this context, application, and transformation of HRM is the focus of this study within the projections about its future considering the potential problems may have been encountered during this transformation process. Therefore, this study will examine the difficulties and challenges that may be experienced by HR managers within the next 10 years. Firstly, the current problems of HRM and the main discussions on this subject in the literature will be examined together with the predictions for the next 10 years. Later, in line with the survey results conducted to the HR managers in the Istanbul region, the discussions in the literature will be compared with the predictions of the local HR managers. Considering the complexity of human resources that derives from its own nature and the environment in which it operates, the everyday challenges experienced by HR professionals while handling their routine tasks should be discussed thoroughly by encouraging everyone to share their ideas and to put their best effort to improve their HR processes, policies, and practices.