When we analyse the evolution of "human resources" management, particularly in the last decades, we can easily identify three periods which correspond to three profiles of workers and three different ways of managing people.
Until 2000, we had a period with greater representation of the industry sector, whose sought-after profiles were more operational and in which there was a predominance of technical skills. Human resources management was essentially management of administrative processes such as hiring, absenteeism, working conditions, salary processing and performance measurement was essentially based on objective indicators.
The beginning of the 21st century (2000-20) is marked by a deindustrialisation of Western countries and a greater focus on the service sector. In Portugal there was a boom in the hotel industry and contact centres. Simultaneously, the profiles started to be more qualified and the most valued skills became behavioural. Human resources management is evolving towards talent management, with greater focus on issues such as recruitment and selection, career, motivation, conflict management and the organisational climate. Inherently, the evaluation of competencies and behavioural performances takes on a more subjective expression.
The 2020s brought us a pandemic, digitalisation, teleworking and an increasing labour shortage, mainly in the industry and logistics sectors, but also in services such as hospitality, retail or IT. The new profiles arriving to the labour market have other types of concerns and values. Today any company has to have a strong concern about attracting these people and for that it is important the purpose, the work model (hybrid or remote), the communication, the organizational culture and its sustainability and social responsibility policies. Today the challenge for managers involves the alignment of values and the engagement of these people who increasingly value the "experience", that is, management focuses on more metaphysical dimensions, it is what we can call "meta-management".
