Globalization has been advancing at a hectic pace, fueled by greater international mobility, prosperity in the developed world, and a communications revolution that has transformed the exchange of information. The march of globalization has spread across a range of markets as diverse as motor vehicles, natural resources, energy, and food. However, labor is the latest ‘market’ to be engulfed by the tide of globalization, as human talent becomes a fluid and exchangeable asset across international borders.

The concept of globalization often attracts bad press. The image of hooded protesters hurling objects through the plate glass of McDonald’s® at a G20 summit is the ugly face of the trend. But globalization, as a phenomenon, has been advancing at a hectic pace in recent decades, fueled by greater international mobility, prosperity in the developed world, and a communications revolution that has transformed the exchange of information. Distance is no longer the obstacle it used to be in the pre-digital era. In many industries, a trained professional in, for example, Guangzhou can easily supplant a similar professional in New York or Dubai. In certain industries where skills are highly transferrable, there is little to stop workers from being recruited for assignments in any location around the world. This is truly revolutionizing the way that we search for, locate, and deploy talent. There are still many jobs that require a central locality, but there are an increasing array of jobs, and elements of jobs, that can be tasked to individuals in any part of the globe.

All of this presents a unique challenge to the HR profession. In a relatively short span of time, HR has moved from a comfortable position in which the boundaries of its work were defined by distance, to one where the talent pool is literally global, and may be sourced from anywhere. Companies realize the potential of tapping into a vast global labor pool, especially at times of talent shortage. They are heading in this direction and will need their HR partners to show them the way. HR will be expected to become proficient with a range of technologies and platforms that support an ever-broadening set of functions. They will also need knowledge of labor markets, cultural differences, key recruiting methods, and labor laws in a variety of different jurisdictions, requiring a level of expertise that many HR departments have never been called on to provide.

Not an easy task and it is by far not the only shift which is shaking HR today. There are seven meta-trends that are shaping the new workforce and changing the role of HR to meet the needs of business and commerce in the 21st century.

This blog post is extracted out of Seven Seismic Shifts Shaking HR.