Employers may be scrambling to meet the upcoming January 16 compliance deadline for the Family and Medical Leave Act regulations, which were published in mid-November of last year. And they also may be bracing themselves for other possible substantive changes in employment law once the Obama Administration gets underway, as the result of last November’s election. (See our pre-election coverage detailing Obama’s support of a number of workplace-related bills here.)
But when we asked you to identify the 2008 event that will most impact HR in 2009, your response was overwhelming enough to invoke a catch phrase used during the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
When asked “What 2008 event or news will have the greatest impact on HR in 2009?,” nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) answered “the troubled economy.” (Of course, it’s recently been determined that the economy has technically been "troubled" since December 2007, when the current recession actually began.)
Meanwhile, 24 percent said that last year’s presidential election will have the most impact on HR this year. Just 7 percent chose the new FMLA regs as the most significant development of 2008 in terms of impacting HR in 2009.
Economic turmoil can impact everything from an organization’s ability to hire and recruit to employee pay raises and benefits to employee morale and engagement--not to mention the prospect of downsizing/layoffs and making do with less--just to scratch the surface. These are all areas of concern specific to (and potential sources of gray hair for) HR professionals.
The HR.BLR.com/Compensation.BLR.com poll included 574 respondents.
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