An interaction with Michael Custers, Vice President, Global Marketing, Northgate Arinso brings out the 3 Major HRO predictions for 2012.

2012 Prediction One: Multi-country payroll is set for significant growth

The next 12 months will see a return of very tough economic times in the Eurozone and the US. As a result, investors are increasingly looking towards emerging economies with less exposure to Western currencies and banks and lower government debt. Developing countries such as Brasil, India, Turkey, and Indonesia have strong business environments, and a highly skilled pool of human capital which means that they are attracting global companies to spur foreign direct investment.

For the HR industry, the knock on effect is that increasing numbers of multi-national companies are looking to grow offices in emerging economies as well as consolidating their other global business under a streamlined payroll and HR system. Juggling different localrequirements, compliance rules, and legislation is incredibly challenging - and time intensive - without a central, global HR & payroll system.

Over the past three years, the various multi-country payroll models have matured with both the integrated and aggregator models demonstrating a high quality, high efficiency service delivery level. At NGA, we have both these services via euHReka and agoHRa and we anticipate that there will be an increasing trend in terms of companies taking up multi-country HR and payroll in 2012.

2012 Prediction Two: HR will genuinely go self-service & mobile

One billion people access the internet through a PC, compared to 4.5B going online via a mobile. Mobile is the future for business, and in order to support a more mobile workforce, HR must embrace employee self-service. We believe that 'self service' take up is becoming so widespread that the concept will disappear as all regular HR transactions will be done this way. It's like calling a cash machine 'self service': you simply don't think about it that way anymore. This is underpinned by the fact that in the last 24 months every HR project NGA delivered included a significant self service component.

However, the move to self service and mobile will present HRDs with some major challenges along the way. According to Gartner, by 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50% of laptop shipments and Windows 8 will likely be in third place behind Android and Apple. This, combined with the consumerization of IT will lead to employees and managers
accessing HR information at all times, on both home and office device. This blurring of the lines between personal and professional device access may present significant challenges in terms of uniform access and security. Therefore the key question for HR in 2012 is how you can allow mobile fully into the organization without compromising uniform access
and security?

2012 Prediction three:  The rise of the HR 'specialist' and the fall of
the 'generalist'

The rise of self-service is reducing the need for generalists across the industry meaning that 2012 is likely to see the eradication of the middle man in HR. Pure HR transactions will be increasingly automated, for instance via a Global HR & Payroll system. Self service will make it easier to enforce HR policies through technology and as companies will be able to do this at a local and global level, fewer business partners are needed to deal with any exceptions. However, it is not a bleak outlook for the HR industry. HR specialists who provide expertise within areas such as talent management, leadership development or analytics will grow their roles and provide serious business value.

This creates a future vision for HR whereby a service center and underlying processing engine will handle a maximum of HR transactions, and an HR expert group that has a number of specialists will assist line managers with programs when they need support, for instance, with regards to union negotiations, recruitment, analytics and leadership training.