In my opinion the most significant challenge to conventional HRM is a growing need for organisations to adjust to a world that is increasingly volatile and/or is being greatly influenced by technological changes, especially different forms of robotics. This fundamentally changes the needs that organisations have for people and their experience of working. If you are interested in this topic you could find my 2020 book in your university library which deals with this topic. The book is called ‘Exploiting Agility for Advantage’. You can message me if I can assist further.

The emerging challenge in HRM include is measuring performance and contribution of employees. In the past one's qualifications played a major role in the recruitment process. It still does. But there other factors including skills and competences that employees bring to the organization outside the formal training. An employee might have got certain skills from informal and non formal education. Besides the values of an employee are equally important .

Working out what can be automated without impacting on the quality of customer experience, whilst retaining the old (and new) skills required where human interaction and influencing remains core business.

A really interesting area - good luck with your work.

I totally agree with Mr. David Louis Frances about the developing needs of organizations. Employee needs, especially, are developing and changing, too. More employees nowadays care about the environment and want to actualize their values at workplace. Green behaviors, Green HR, and Green leadership - some food for thought?

I believe Strategic Human Resource Management is an interesting area that you can conduct a quantitative research in.

‘Employee engagement‘ - without that no organisation can progress, prosper or even survive long-term.

In the field of human resources, perhaps issues related to layoffs during the Covid-19 pandemic could be raised.

Hi Shanika, great question! The obvious emerging one is "workers' experience under turbulence". We need to understand better how employees experience both internal and external turbulence and how it may affect their behaviour at work. At the same time, we need to explore the role of HR during crises. The majority of previous research has been conducted in rather stable contexts, so we need to know more about what's the case when disruptive circumstances are in place (e.g. recessions, natural disasters, political turmoil).

HR metrics and analytics is of great interest

Adjustments made in HR policies and practices in responding to Covid-19 pandemic.

As this will be your first piece of serious academic research using quantitive methods you should begin by finding say five excellent and highly regarded previous studies using quantitative methods in HR areas and ask questions like ‘how was the unit of analysis determined?’ How was statistical validity ensured?’ ‘How was interpretation of data undertaken?’ Once you understand the strengths and weaknesses of quantative methods you will be better able to select your research question.