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With 2012 almost upon us, we ask experts what they think the New Year has in store for us.

HR professionals predict that the coming year will demand from our human capital more productivity, efficiency, diversity of thought and people, greater numbers and other similar pressing requirements. Let us run through some of the changes experts foresee.

More the merrier

Corporates will increase their investments in upskilling employees to improve employability and access to talent. "India faces a complex talent gap, so objectives and solutions will differ - be it towards making an engineer's skills relevant or upskilling a rural talent pool to address talent shortages for large rural projects. However, in both cases, HR will need to be more sensitive to social environments to build credibility and trust. The social contract of business will require HR leaders to increasingly take on sensitive and strategic roles that require addressing societal needs," says Kartik Varma, managing consultant, people and change consulting, PwC India.

Jack of all, mastering a few

Raghavendra K, VP and head, HRD, Infosys BPO believes, "From a pure HR functional perspective, there will be more  generalists who will be available in the market. However, there will be a growing scarcity of domain experts in sub-functions such as leadership training, organisation development, etc. Hence the expectation is to have more specialists. To make this happen, organisations would need to work on plans to build domain expertise and subject matter experts who are able to speak on their domain. This will ensure the views of the HR professional are well-received and respected by business managers and leaders."

Another area, which will become a critical requirement is the area of HR analytics. "Today, HR is making contributions to the bottom-line through expense reduction, talent management, etc. Going forward, this trend will gather greater momentum and contribute in many innovative ways. HR will no longer be just about hiring and retaining, but will be more focused towards the growth of business, increasing performance of the employees and at the same time, controlling the cost - something we call ‘business aligned HR'," explains Ravi Shankar, senior VP, HR, HCL Technologies.

Plan a recovery

"As a result of unreasonable attrition points during recovery/boom, HR needs to design retention programmes in 2012 so that in the next recovery, companies don't lose out more people. It will become necessary to build more robust employee engagement programmes during the uncertain period as recruitment, on-boarding and exit management activities will reduce,"opines Kamal Karanth, managing director, Kelly Services India.

Conservative rewards

"The current uncertain economic and political environment looks set to continue into 2012. In planning for rewards, several sectors will approach fixed and variable pay conservatively. Increments may not be aggressive and the bulk of variable pay plans could be aimed at select critical employees. This could be particularly true for financial services or industries importing bulk of their raw materials," says Varma.

2012 has a lot in store, these being just a few changes the industry is expecting. One must be prepared to take on the many challenges and opportunities awaiting.

- Tanya Thomas