Effects of workforce shifts in types of jobs during past hundred years

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Describe the workforce shifts in types of jobs during the past hundred years

The past hundred years there were a lot of industrial revolution whereby many people lacked time to run home businesses because they worked on assembly lines. The workforce was industrial based but has therefore shifted to service based whereby technology has improved communication methods reducing some of the communication challenges. Technological advancement has led to vast changes in the job sector. These changes have been realized over the last a hundred years due to the industrial revolution. In today’s world, most especially the developed countries, the number of manual laborers and factory workers is decreasing as compared to the past this is due to workforce changes. In America and other developed countries the knowledge workers in the workforce. Knowledge technologists are those people who require good and advanced formal education in their jobs. They are divided into advanced-knowledge technologists and knowledge technologists. Advanced knowledge technologists have substantial theoretical knowledge that include professionals like doctors, accountants, lawyers and teachers while the knowledge technologists include people who mostly in many cases do unskilled labour entailing lots of hand labour. Education labor has to embrace the merging urge of professionalism in the work-force so that the workers can be qualified enough and due to the task in this advancing world (David et al. 2016).

Knowledge technologists are the largest group among the knowledge-workers today. Their number has increased recently due to technological advancement and they are mostly employed in sectors of education, IT, manufacturing and industries. In developed countries the number of knowledge technologists is expected to rise even higher in the next twenty years this is because of economic growth rate predications. In addition this group of workers is said to be the sources and initiators of production. This is because without knowledge there would be no production which leads to development. They are therefore the dominant upheld of the social, economic and political society. Another critical and most important change is the role of women in the workforce. Women has for many centuries have been victims of discrimination in the workforce where there has been set jobs for men and women this happened due to the physical differences between men and women. In knowledge technology there is no discrimination in that no work is set for a particular gender all jobs are the same provided one is qualified and work in the required standards (Moschetto, 2014).

Another change in the workforce is the decrease in the number of employment opportunities in the manufacturing sector. In the developed countries industries have been the largest sources of employment where the largest number of employees are the manual labourers. This has changed due to technological advancements where machines are implemented to do quite a lot of work in a short time which would be done by many workers. Workforce has also recently changed from the industrial based employment where workers can now there is room to create individual industries and family businesses. This gives room of production and self-employment among all individuals (Roberts, 2012).

Implications of the shifted workforce to today’s human resource managers

There have been a lot of impacts not only to the human resource managers but also to the business communications. The change to service based workforce creates challenges to the current and future to HR. the labor force have become diverse which in turn force most of the organizations to make adaptable changes on the methods of approaching people’s management. Shifted workforce has led to a globalized workforce whereby many people are moving from one locality to another hence diversity and reduced cultural homogeneity. Globalized workforce also has led to job opportunity equality forcing the HR managers to understand and be aware of the different cultures. This is because the employees emanate from different ethnic groups and need to be understood and their rights to be respected. The globalized workforce requires the HR managers to have more qualified educational attainments in order to be able to recruit and screen the best personnel from different countries (Roberts, 2012).

Additionally, shifting of workforce has had implications on the aging populations whereby most of the developing countries have increased the working ages in order to keep the aging population in work. This is to reduce the pension being given during retirement. The pension systems have been strained by the aging populations whereby these are the experienced people who can work more skillfully than a fresh mind from the school. To reduce the rate of pension being given to the aging population, the pension system has increased the length of working age to keep these people working. This can bring conflicts between the young people and the older age whereby the young may see as if the aging group is blocking vacancies. HR managers therefore need to evaluate and implement other ways of incorporating both the aged group and also the young people to reduce the tension which may lead to serious problems in the future (Moschetto, 2014).

Conclusively, workforce shifts requires the HR managers to rethink and find ways in which they can be able to handle different effects. There are challenges caused by the shifted workforce globally which need new practices to be implemented in order to deal with. HR managers need to transform the workforce in the organizations they are working in to ensure that they are working ahead of the global emerging issues. HR managers also need to understand the youth labor force whereby these young people come with much expectations and need a lot of monitoring. Attracting and retaining will also be of much help to the HR mangers whereby the retained youth labor would have been adapted to the organizational practices for the achievement of the objectives (Lavery, 2011).

References

David A. DeCenzo, Stephen P. Robbins, Susan L. Verhulst (2016). Fundamentals of Human Resource Management. (Twelfth ed.). Wiley.

ISBN: 97811190327485

Lavery, J. (2011). Scandinavian Studies: The Past Hundred Years, The Next Hundred Years. Scandinavian Studies, 83(2), 299-306. doi:10.1353/scd.2011.0031

Moschetto, M. (2014). Key Trends in Workforce Management and New Challenges for HR. Employment Relations Today, 40(4), 7-13. doi:10.1002/ert.21428

Roberts, S. (2012). How Property Can Help Organisations Achieve their Objectives. Facilities, 9(3), 7-12. doi:10.1108/02632779110005566