Two notable trends are shaping the demand for HR services in India. One, organizations will be looking to offload some of the ever-increasing volume of transactional work to service providers. Secondly, organizations are also keen to develop more in-house expertise of human capital management critical to the business strategy. Companies, therefore, will employ HR services for not just realizing cost efficiencies, but also for improving their internal capabilities.

The human capital market has undergone some rapid transitions in the past four years. An increasing number of organizations are looking to adopt and align themselves with global approaches and standards. As a result, organizations will be looking at synergies that they can exploit in three to four areas to maximize their investments.

Organizations will be pumping in more investments into key areas such as compensation and benefits, talent development and assessments. Besides that, they will also be relying on partners who can help them build the right kind of organizational design for leveraging human capital opportunities in the coming months. The truth is organizations can no longer look at human capital from a local lens and therefore they have to be prepared to tap into the opportunities at a global scale.

HR service consumers in India often feel that some of the best talent in the country are not working for the industry. If the industry has to mature and keep pace with the dynamic needs of the future business environment, standard service offerings and standard templates will no longer work. HR services have to evolve to include sharper diagnostics and more customization. The Indian HR buyer wishes for more customization from the market.

Two service areas will continue to generate interest in the buyer market in the coming times. The first is transactional service companies and includes more and more work being executed by services for transactional processes related to recruiting and talent development. Secondly, organizations will look to invest much more in the areas of capability development and social media based services. With the proliferation of many start-ups, there will be a great demand for general expertise. There is a huge market for service companies in this area.

In the coming months, the best HR service will be defined by services which are customised, creative, and responsive to business needs.

As told to People Matters