An Emphasis on performance
A recent survey of HR professionals shows that the pressure for more performance hasn’t been lost on HR managers. When asked to rate the importance of various business issues, their five top choices were competition for market share, price competition/price control, governmental regulations, need for sales growth, and need to increase productivity24. HR managers also know that establishing competitive, high-performance work systems under conditions of rapid change isn’t easy. This helps to explain why another survey of HR executives found that their main concern is “managing change”. So, today’s successful HR manager must have the capacity to visualize how he or she can adapt HR systems to support the company‘s strategic needs, and the ability to execute the required changes. These changes may range from new incentive plans that encourage employee innovation, to centralized HR call centers to boost the HR unit’s efficiency, to moving more HR activities onto the Web, and to organizing telecommuter programs 25.