HRM Planning for 2009 will be very interesting. After several years of the growth bonanza the next year looks to be different. The assumptions and forecast for 2009 are completely different from the presentations taken last year.
As usually, the market grows and the people expect the growth to continue forever. We have many thousands years of the experience and we still do not believe the growth is always cancelled by the period of recession.
The HRM Employees are usually not good in forecasting the trends on the job market and how the trends from the job market can be transferred to the global economy. The years 2006 and 2007 were about the lack of skilled employees on the job market.
The lack of skilled employees can be always seen as the sign of the economic slowdown as the demand is much stronger than the supply and the economy needs to be balanced again. But as the forecast for 2008 was the growth again with no worry about skilled employees.
The HRM Function has to produce a lot of assumptions for 2009, including the job market development, expected salary review rate and the unemployment. But is HRM Function ready to make those assumptions? The market will not be definitely stable, the inflation is growing and would you expect to buy Euro for 1,6 Dollar a year ago?
The numbers for the business plan 2009 will be really interesting and the HRM Function has to face a lot of issues in its predictions.
