In the New Year, there will be critical changes in the Talent Management space and organizations will in turn change their focus in certain aspect. Retention of top performers will be an important consideration, whether the economy is slowing or growing. Further, the trends in 2010-11 show that line of sight and great career opportunities would be the key factors in their retention. High performers will be most motivated by diverse exposure and fast track growth/learning.

There will be a conscious focus on the bottom line. Organizations will optimize their resource spend and HR metrics would assume further significance. Attaining optimum productivity in the changing economic landscape will be a challenge. Employee morale and motivation would need regular thumbs up initiatives that will continue to pump adrenalin into employees, to do their best. Recognition of performance will assume a lot of importance. With increasing economic uncertain in the environment, the right recognition will matter most to employees and provide them with some job security.
Further there will be a focus on employee development needs, which will have to be focused upon, not for retention but to enable productivity upgrade in tune with the changing times. Employees will have to be prepared to meet the eventualities of the changing economic landscape. The change is rapid and proactive preparation will save organizations of a possible productivity slump in the need of the hour.

There will be more automation and use of shared services aimed at streamlining robust operations. It will aim to achieve consolidation of processes and resultant efficiency of costs and processes. While this trend started a few years back, it is sure to pick up pace in the New Year.

At last, employees may be hard bargainers and would not leave anything to chance now. Be it offers or promotions, employees will come across as hard bargains to obtain the best deal for themselves.