Implications Of Demographic Time Bomb, Organizational Career Shift, Challenges Of ‘War For Talent’ And Performance Management

What is the demographic time bomb and its implications for organizations?

1. Demographic Time Bomb’ is an economic term that is used for a country where population has been filling faster than it has been ever before and this is what compels the economists to declare the country as a ‘Demographic Time Bomb’. This is mostly defined as the place or the country where the fertility rates have been failing at an alarming rate compared to the exponentially increasing longevity rate causing reduction in the death rate. United Kingdom has been facing the same trouble for some time and it has been reported that since 2006, the births in United Kingdom has dropped down to an alarming rate of 2.5 per cent with decreasing death rates; making the country vulnerable to the ‘Demographic Time Bomb’ (Buchan et al. 2018).

The country is thus susceptible to a lot of problems including the causing of implications for the organizations from the perspective of resourcing and talent management problems. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or CIPD has been warning that due to the demographic time bomb, the country of United Kingdom is predicted to be facing a lot of problems in finding talent and there would be severe shortages in skills when it comes to the year 2035 (Greve 2016). The CIPD also points out that the country should implement changes in the ways by which the workforce planning is approached to make sure that there are no stone unturned to let the demographic time bomb affect the skill enforcement. As suggested by the CIPD, this problem can be solved in the following theoretical ways and just needs to be implemented practically in the workforce enforcement system of the country:

• Retaining and re-skilling the employees:Retention policies should be made much more important since these problems can cause tremendous levels of employee turnover. 84 per cent of the respondents have been so far making changes to reduce the employee turnover and the ways by which career breaks have been considered before, and this would ensure that workforce would further become an increasingly important weapon for the battling of scarce resources (Buchan et al. 2017).
• Introduction of new working systems:Main initiative should be centred on the more part-time jobs and innovative departure must be included for flexible staff, flexible hours, term-time contrast and sharing of jobs.
• Competing for young people:Young workers should be expected to be continuing on relying heavily by the organizations for education liaison, job experience, career packs, recruitment fairs and open days.
• Government schemes:Youth Training Schemes and ET should be introduced by the government and even organizations can introduce their own version for the Youth Training Schemes.

2. The world has been changing much more rapidly than it has been speculated to be and much more rapidly than the previous generations. The business world has been in transformation and has been evolving rapidly. This is the reason that the there has been problems in the industry to differentiate between the various roles of the responsibilities and requirement of the role of organizations, employers, and the employees (Bounssiyal 2017). The roles and responsibilities of these have been on a huge confused state within this continually advancing environment. This is what is regarded with the phrase “organizational career is dead” when at the same time the protean careers have been on a rise of immense flourishing. It is thus is a huge state of confusion it is equally difficult to identify the responsible reason for such a drastic confusion.

It is not considered as a career plus where people used to be employed within an organization for a lifetime. It was a practise that was utilized a long time back. It would be a phase where a person would be employed within an organization at a preliminary level and started from the bottom (Hagberg and Kullgren 2016). The loyalty and the hard work would further take the person climb up the corporate ladder and ensured him or her with a lifetime security of job.

Is the organizational career dead? Who should manage employees’ career?

This phenomenon does not occur any longer in the business era today and it is more of a state in the latest world where the career of a person is no longer related to the measurement of the chronological ways of age but it is mostly promoted these days by increasing amount of continuous learning and developing the identity changes. In a generalized state of the change in organizational career being dead, it can be said that due to the fall in understanding the organizational change, there has been reports about people moving out of working in organizations and setting up business of their own (Garcia et al. 2015). However, the same problem is being faced by them as well as the process of recruiting resides in those cases as well. Thus, it is hard to decipher the actual root cause or the people responsible for the death or organizational career. It can be said that the overall understanding of the rapid changes in the organizational system is something that can be blamed for the phrase being popularised about ‘organizational career is dead’.

3. The term ‘War for Talent’ was first coined by Steven Hankin who used to serve in McKinsey and Company. He first coined the term in the year 1997 which can be declared as the competitive landscape that is related to the recruitment and retaining of the employees on the basis of their talent. This is described not as a superior process for the Human Resources but the way by which the common human mindset always prioritizes the importance of talent of candidates as the primary success factor for the organizations (Edwards 2017). Mostly the term was intensified due to the intensification of the demographic shifts, generally noticed in the countries of United Kingdom and the United States of America and which is primarily characterized by the increase in demand and the decrease in the demographic supply in the industry. It has been noticed that people in the countries of United Kingdom and the United States of America were not to be easily replaced, especially in the case of replacing the people under ‘baby boom’ retirement with that of the ‘post baby boom’ workers. Other factors like the aging of workforces or the shrinking of the labour force also acted in the same way to the problem.

Human Capital challenges are the most intrinsic professional service problems that the organizations face in the phenomenon of ‘War of Talents’. The studies have reflected upon the fact that the distinctive characteristics of the organizations offering professional services in the context of the knowledge intensity face the wrath of this phenomenon the most (Rabbi et al. 2015). Other challenges that they face are the low intensifications of the capital as well as the professionalized workplace. The in-depth studies have also reported that the empirical evidences have showed that the in particular, the law firms face this challenge the most compared to the other professional service offering organizations (Oladapo 2014). The talent management challenges that are the responsibility of the HRM system is attacked the most with building an responsibility problems, the employee autonomy, the acquisition of knowledge, the revenue and profitability through internationalization, managing the transfer of knowledge beyond the borders, the employee management system for mobility of the employees, the talent retention and acquisition, the engagement of talent, the management of performance, and the leadership capability. Thus it can be said that when HRM faces all these challenges, these become increasingly important issues as they should be considered by the organizations with professional service and that compels them to compete effectively in the global business contexts.

What are the key challenges of ‘War for Talent’?

4. Performance Management is a process that keeps on going for establishing a understanding of shared workforce to understand what needs to be done to achieve the requirements at an organizational level (Shields et al. 2015). It generally is utilized to promote the higher performances at the workplaces and generally is linked to the human capital management. Linking of the Human Resources with the strategic goals of the organization and their objectives is utilized together as performance management for the employees in an organization that boosts the performances of the employees as an individual and as a team as well. Instead of the focus being given to the internal issues of the Human Resource Management System, the issues face mostly on the solving of the problems that are associated with the major focus depending on the increase of employee productivity and the problem solving techniques of the people management programs (Berber, ?or?evi? and Milanovi? 2018). It is important for all the organizations to motivate the overall employee performances that need to be implemented in the long run. Thus, it can be said that it just requires the amalgamation of the HR functions with that of the business strategies. This further helps in the facilitation of the HRM to change its image as a “cost centre” to that of a “strategic business partner”. 

One of the main reasons that the organizations utilize this methodology is to bring about the new methods to drive the behaviours form the employees to generate specific outcomes from their overall performances. When this was utilized in the practical environment, it proved to be working really well for the set of certain employees who have been focused only on the financial rewards of that can be gained from their services at the organizations (Van Dooren, Bouckaert and Halligan 2015). The people who mostly involve with the learning from their work and developing their skills, they happen to fail miserably with their expectations. The difference that arises between the payment justifications and the skills development of the employees has so far become a massive problematic reason for the implementation of the Performance Management within an organization. The approach for which the performance management could be developed to inhabit a workplace system was first developed into the United Kingdom and the United States of America faster than its development in other countries like Australia. These developments can be increased with the utilization of factors like; the introduction of the human resources management employed as the strategic driver as well as the development and management of the employees in the process of performance management.

References:

Ait Bounssiyal, A., 2017. PREVIEW OF THE TRAJECTORY OF MOROCCAN EXECUTIVES.

Berber, N., ?or?evi?, B. and Milanovi?, S., 2018. Electronic human resource management (e-HRM): A new concept for digital age. Strategic Management, 23(2), pp.22-32.

Buchan, J.C., Amoaku, W., Barnes, B., Cassels-Brown, A., Chang, B.Y., Harcourt, J., Shickle, D., Spencer, A.F., Vernon, S.A. and MacEwen, C., 2017. How to defuse a demographic time bomb: the way forward?. Eye (London, England).

Buchan, J.C., Amoaku, W., Barnes, B., Cassels-Brown, A., Chang, B.Y., Harcourt, J., Shickle, D., Spencer, A.F., Vernon, S.A. and MacEwen, C., 2018. Response to:’Comment on:’How to defuse a demographic time bomb: the way forward?’. Eye, p.1.

Edwards, M.R., 2017. Employer Branding and Talent Management. The Oxford Handbook of Talent Management, p.233.

Garcia, P.R.J.M., Restubog, S.L.D., Bordia, P., Bordia, S. and Roxas, R.E.O., 2015. Career optimism: The roles of contextual support and career decision-making self-efficacy. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 88, pp.10-18. 

Greve, B., 2016. Is there a demographic time-bomb?. In The Future of the Welfare State (pp. 41-50). Routledge.

Hagberg, M. and Kullgren, S., 2016. Retention of employees in Swedish SMEs: The effects of non-monetary factors.

Oladapo, V., 2014. The impact of talent management on retention. Journal of business studies quarterly, 5(3), p.19.

Rabbi, F., Ahad, N., Kousar, T. and Ali, T., 2015. Talent management as a source of competitive advantage. Journal of Asian Business Strategy, 5(9), p.208.

Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., Johns, R., O’Leary, P., Robinson, J. and Plimmer, G., 2015. Managing employee performance & reward: Concepts, practices, strategies. Cambridge University Press. 

Van Dooren, W., Bouckaert, G. and Halligan, J., 2015. Performance management in the public sector. Routledge.