First few Article Sentences
“Never in the field of human endeavor was so much owed by so many to so few,” was directed to the Royal Air Force as they fought in the skies over the English Channel during WWII. Winston Churchill did not have human resource professionals in mind when he said it. But the quote did pop to mind as I read through another study suggesting an erosion of the HR to employee ratio. This study shows an average of 1 HR professional full-time equivalent (FTE) per 100 employees in 2000 shrinking to 1 per 300 today. While such averages don’t reflect every industry and certainly don’t tell the whole story, there is little to debate that the profession of managing employees in the United States has experienced dramatic change in recent years. Globalization, technology and outsourcing are the driving forces that define what I call the “New World” of Human Resources.