Whats the Biggest Challenge facing HR Departments today ?

I very well agree to Taranjeet; It's not only salary that leads to attrition. Small things slowly and slowly start generating a feeling of unhappiness in the employee (e.g reimbursement not on time, Hr never visits, sick leave issue and many such small issue).

In one of the exit interviews, when HR asked why are you leaving the company. Employee told i'm complaining from last 6 months that the chair i sit is not comfortable and because of it i'm suffering from backpain. And you guys never bothered to listen to my problem. Now when you are in problem you are asking what is the issue.(It's a really time example)

We try to focus on the big thinks and forget small

I think all of you must have read two factor theory by Frederick Herzberg.

Increasing Globalization of business and access to resources across the world will lead to its own set of CULTURAL DIVERSITY CHALLENGES

Quantification of HR is yet another Big Challenge we will face, infact, we are already facing that challnge. HR as a department will need to prove itself as a profit and cost saving centre.

HR is the function which is responsible for attracting the TALENT - The Human Resource - The most crucial and critical Resource for any company.

Either the coming times will lead to "Commoditizing of Human Resources" through extensive Knowledge & Skill Management (KSM) OR the Role of HR to attract and retain and train the Best Resources will become more and more critical in the age of CUT-THROAT Competition

I also agree with sangeeta that attrition is the biggest challege that HR people are facing today and with the constant uncertainity in the marketplace, companies need to find out ways to combat this problem.

yes

I beleive that its change management that is the biggest challenge for the HR department of any organization. The others like hiring, retention, compensation are part and parcel of every HR life. In today's mature market, the business is increasingly expecting us to partner us in their goals and would like to see ONE - HR, rather than a split HR like Recruitment, Generalist, L&D, Comp-Ben, etc.

The major challenge for us is being able to partner with the business and be able to set pace to the change management vis-a-vis the business goals as well as the industry-trends-impact on the organization.

Hi,

To  build a talent pool  we need to either recruit new people or provide training to the existing employees, which means companies should invest a lot on Recruitment or T & D, and when a company invests on something it will definitely looks for ROI (Return on Investment), which will be very low or some times NIL if we cannot control the attrition levels or if we keep on focusing on building talent pool, so controlling attrition and at the same time upgrading your talent pool should go parallel to over come these kind of problems.

Dear All

The reason i put this generic question was to provoke some thoughts in the group.
While most of you came out with attrition as a challenge. I believe attrition is a result of the problem and not the problem itself. Why organizations are so bothered about containing something thats negative ? rather than focussing attention on building talent pool proactively and enhancing employee engagement ?

Why we continue to struggle for something that can be at best minimised and has no impact on productivity ?
Any answers?

Attrition is the biggest problem. The challenge is for the hr people to stop it since on e cannot stop any one to take up more lucrative offers with the promise of making one's career graph shoot up.