In her article in Forbes, Karen Higgin bottom identified that there are five key challenges which the global companies have to face in the upcoming five years namely, agility, collaboration, innovation, productivity and transparency. These were identified by the Hay Group from a research that was conducted among five million employees. The principal, Mark Royal states that the companies are failing miserably in exploiting their key asset which is their human resource because they do not have the appropriate strategies. It is the people within the organization that ensure a sustaining performance and firms need to realize that employees are the only unique asset that cannot be imitated by the rivals. Those firms which focus on employee engagement, earn 4.5 times more revenue than those who do not (Higginbottom, 2015).
Organizations require implementing a clear and transparent system of performance management because a misalignment between the efforts and expectations of the employees result in a demotivated staff. 45% of employees felt their pay and performance had transparent connections while 43% felt that there was no connection at all. Around 52% believed that they were paid unfairly while 41% felt a lack of clarity (Higginbottom, 2015). So, an open, clear and transparent system of performance management should be implemented so that there is consistency of evaluations (Guerra-López & Hutchinson, 2013). Further, a clear discussion with the employee on their performance would explain how and why the decision regarding the pay or promotion has been made based on performance.
The global firms are also facing issues because they do not build and develop on the ideas and abilities of their employees. The innovativeness of the employees is what helps the firms to achieve competitive advantage. Around 37% employees felt that they are not encouraged to be innovative while 47% felt that their ideas are not implemented (Higginbottom, 2015). The truth is that with innovation, businesses can cut costs and make higher profits because customers now want uniqueness and creativity (Herrera, 2015).
Last, but not the least, is the issue of creating a healthy working environment for the employees which helps them to work in an efficient manner (Vali, 2015). According to the group research, 44% employees believe that their organization operates inefficiently while 45% stated that the organization lacks effective structure (Higginbottom, 2015). Furthermore, half complained that in their business, levels of staffing are inadequate which burdens the employees and lowers their morale and productivity in the long run (Vali, 2015).
References
Guerra-López, I., & Hutchinson, A. (2013). Measurable and Continuous Performance Improvement: The Development of a Performance Measurement, Management, and Improvement System. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 159-173. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/piq.21151
Herrera, M. (2015). Innovation for impact: Business innovation for inclusive growth. Journal of Business Research. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.10.045
Higginbottom, K. (2015). Five Key Challenges Facing Global Firms over Next Five Years. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/karenhigginbottom/2015/04/22/five-key-challenges-facing-global-firms-over-next-five-years/2/#c615aff6386b
Meziani, R. (2014). Achieving Business Process Agility through a Pragmatic. IJCEE, 59-63. http://dx.doi.org/10.7763/ijcee.2014.v6.794
Schneider, B., & Pea, R. (2014). Toward collaboration sensing. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learning, 9(4), 371-395. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11412-014-9202-y
Vali, S. (2015). TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT PRACTICE RELATING TO ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNIC ATION AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. Jadbm, 1(3), 142-154. http://dx.doi.org/10.14260/jadbm/2015/17
