Seven Year-End Issues for HR

As 2009 limps — bloodied and beaten — toward its conclusion, here are a few issues that are possibly weighing heavily on HR managers’ minds:

1. Salary budgets are reportedly set for modest increases, at best, but given the last couple of years, for most of us any increase – however modest – is welcome.  According to one survey, increases for this last year averaged 1.9% worldwide and are expected to rise another 2.9% in 2010.  (However, at this time last year, they called for 3% and got two, so take a grain of salt. Another thing…how much is the financial sector skewing those numbers?)
2. Of course, this is the time of year for benefits reenrollment, for the declining numbers of us who still have company benefits.  In this corner, benefits aren’t being reduced, but we’re going to pay 5-10% more for them. (There went the salary increase.)
3. Speaking of health, GINA (the Genetic Information Nondisclosure Act) has just been introduced to the USA. A number of countries (e.g., Sweden, Israel) have had genetic privacy laws on the books for some time, but the US is taking a slightly different tack, not really playing catch-up.  HR departments will have to get the word out to hiring managers…for when they get around to hiring again.
4. How does a company retain its best and brightest if it can’t give salary increases?  Training?  Guess again.  Training budgets declined an average of 14% in 2009, according to “Chief Learning Officer“ magazine.  CLO also looks for an average 4% increase in training budgets in 2010, spent mostly on “efficient” delivery methods, like e-learning.  The ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) says that retail, government, and businesses operating on narrow margins are cutting back on training or cutting it out entirely.
5. Funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) have been handed out at a glacial pace (it’s the government, after all), though it has had an immediate effect on unemployment benefits.  Stimulus funds don’t appear to be having an effect on employment rolls, according to the news on mounting job losses across the board.  Look any day, on any news site you favor — a few thousand jobs lost here, another few thousand there.  Yet, the Federal government reports more jobs being created each day.  Who’s right? In any case, HR departments don’t appear to be preparing for a return to pre-recession employment levels.
6. H-1B visas.  Always a touchy subject in the USA, the numbers have risen and fallen with the state of the economy so, of course, they’re down now.  High-tech firms, health care institutions, and educational institutions appear to profit most from H-1B workers.  The current annual cap is 65,000, according to the USCIS (excluding various exemptions).  If the job market keeps on its current unsteady course, expect the “hire American / hire H-1B” tug-of-war between labor and employers to intensify.
7. The Health Care Bill before the U.S. Congress: What will its final form be and how will it affect HR managers in the years following 2010?  Will it actually put the brakes on employment growth, as some prospective employers suggest?  What will be the ripple effect, if any, on commerce?

While we seem to be dwelling mainly on the USA, most of these issues weigh heavily on the minds of HR managers around the world, as well.  (“It’s A Glo-bal E-co-no-my / Af-ter All…”.)  These and other concerns don’t have an easy or quick resolution, either, yet we continue to be optimistic about the days ahead.  As a friend said to me just today, “We must have hope.”

HR specialists and managers out there…is there anything else that concerns you as 2010 approaches?