The dawn of 1999 shared several challenges of the new millennium with enthusiasm and expectation for achieving great heights. HR professional and practitioners also shared many HR challenges across the country through seminars and conferences. It is almost five years since the various organizations have not only faced the challenges, but have also managed to tackle most of them successfully. Major HR challenges were thrown up because of the mounting pressures on organizations to cope up with the turbulent and changed business environments as a result of globalization and liberalization in the early 1990s. It did set new global trends with several implications for human resource management and the proactive ways in which HR professionals should respond.
This article discusses the state of those organizations, and their HR practices and functioning, the changed HR practices in the context of the forced organizational changes, the need today for conforming, aligning and synchronizing the HR practices to the continuously changing and vibrant organizational demands. Liberalization and globalization in the last decade set new trends in industry and business. Business has seemingly gone through the throes of chaotic change. HR professionals have to grapple with several challenges of the industry and business. The key challenges to be faced by organizations today are: Retaining customer loyalty, cost-reduction at every level, investor pressure on organizations, industry consolidations, mergers and acquisitions, critical shortage of top and middle leaders, vision-linked innovations, etc.
Organizations have to be on the threshold of a performing culture. At the fag end of the century, HRD conventions have debated on what had gone on in HRD; what was the scenario then; and what all needed to be changed to meet the demands of the future. The debates and discussions centered round taking some proactive steps and correcting the speed and direction of the `HRD Craft'. Sharing of experiences, discussing and formulating some workable strategies for meeting the challenges in the foreseeable future has been the prime agenda (HRD National convention, Jaipur 1999).
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