ZORANA ĐAKOVIĆ

We are simultaneously seeing the Government of Serbia implement active measures to entice labour from other countries to our market. Are we prepared institutionally and organisationally to adapt to such labour market changes? Outsourcing labour from underdeveloped countries is gaining momentum when it comes to difficult and high-risk jobs. We are clearly not prepared systemically for some of the challenges that brings, as there are numerous examples of illegal actions that have remained without an epilogue. The standout examples among them include foreign workers employed in Serbia who have reported physical violence, the confiscating of their travel documents and inhumane working conditions. And I daresay there is still no adequate legal regulation for that. It would be bad if the reason for that is a lack of will to sanction such examples.

What kind of expectations do employees have of employers in Serbia today, and vice versa; and how much have they changed since the emergence of the work from home phenomenon? The pandemic caused the mass expansion of certain pre-existing labour models, such as remote work. Employees expect the organisation they work for to provide them with greater flexibility in choosing the way they work, while the employer is interested in organising work in ways that have the lowest costs. One possible way to make savings, in terms of both time and money (due to spatial requirements), is working from home, which is the desired working model for some employees, while it was a necessary evil for others. One solution is a hybrid approach to organising work, with agreement reached on which tasks can be performed remotely and which require the worker to be present on the organisation’s premises.

HR, which has experienced significant changes with the advance of technology, represents one of the first areas subjected to the application of artificial intelligence. What are the advantages

Employer-employee negotiations on working conditions are reserved for the category of employees with vocations that are in higher demand and who possess skills that are in short supply on the labour market

and disadvantages of applying AI in this area? The automating of certain HR activities saves time and eases routine decision making, thereby reducing employees’ workload. For now, the application of software solutions is most commonplace in the field of candidate selection and in monitoring employee performance. One idea is that the development of artificial intelligence will enable greater impartiality during candidate selection and the equal treatment of all employees and job candidates. However, there are examples of “programmed” bias in artificial intelligence, such as the case of a software solution for selecting job candidates that prioritised men and thus created a gender imbalance in the structure of the workforce. Furthermore, the electronic monitoring of employees, which digitalisation has advanced to the level of monitoring the work of employees via computer, can be ethically problematic and raises a series of issues related to workplace privacy, as well as its direct effects on performance.

To what extent do these kinds of changes impact on the importance of protecting employees’ personal data as part of Human Resource Management and how widespread is awareness of compliance with the Personal Data Protection Act in the HRM approach in Serbia? The issue of protecting personal records has always been important. Given that employee data are now mainly stored in digital form, a new regulatory framework has been applied in our country and around the world since 2018 that places new requirements on employers and HR employees that should prevent data from being accessible to unauthorised individuals. The topic most commonly only arises when some abuse or misapplication occurs, and the fact that it is a new regulation makes it necessary to familiarise the professional public with it systematically. With the aim of familiarising future HR managers with this law and training them in its application, among other things, a course related to the management of personal data protection has been included in the Master’s degree programme in Human Resources Management at the Faculty of Organisational Sciences.