Now that the fourth quarter of 2015 is in full swing, it’s not too soon to look ahead at what’s in store for the HR world come January 2016, which will be upon us before long. While it’s premature for an official year-in-review column, it’s certainly been an eventful 2015 so far.

The unemployment rate dropped to 5.1% while hiring returned to pre-Recession levels for the first time. President Obama took executive action to raise the minimum wage for certain federal contract employees, hoping the move would encourage lawmakers on Capitol Hill to do likewise on a national level.

At the end of its term, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal exchange-subsidies provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), ensuring that the program’s roll-out would continue without disruption without the need to find alternative solutions. And a billionaire New York businessman calling for mass illegal-immigrant deportation has been leading a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates since June.

A performanceicreate.com blog from this past summer unapologetically offered up some regulatory changes that could rock the HR world in 201. They include:

• Marriage equality: The Supreme Court’s other blockbuster decision last term legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states will create all matter of qualifying events and changes in the processing of health benefits for gay employees who choose to wed. No doubt there will be many couples tying the knot in the New Year.
• Transgender identity: Former Olympic athlete and reality TV personality Bruce Jenner’s well-publicized and scrutinized evolution from male to female made headlines for months in 2015. Jenner’s transition as a public figure could well embolden transgender employees to come forward throughout corporate America. HR departments will need to consider issues surrounding accommodation, EEOC and state legal requirements, and be prepared to handle discrimination allegations and questions.
• ACA compliance. As mentioned above, the High Court’s upholding of the ACA means that companies must continue to be fully compliant with the health-care law. Among other requirements, employers in many cases need to track their employees’ hours and eligibility in 2015, and report both to the government in 2016. Benefits personnel should be prepared to defend their organizations against penalty assessment. The next “big event” of the Act will likely be the imposition in 2018 of the Excise, or “Cadillac,” Tax of up to 40% on certain high-end care plans. It’s a controversial provision and may be altered by Congress prior to its enactment, but it’s not too early to assess firms’ potential liability.
• New overtime regulations. In addition to the minimum-wage hike mentioned above, President Obama instituted a new regulation requiring that employers pay overtime to salaried employees earning up to $50,400. This is likely to become the law of the land next year, and staffing and compensation professionals should be assessing employee salaries and hours now.

Looking at talent-acquisition trends

With the unemployment rate approaching a level of “full employment,” meeting corporate recruitment requirements became a notable challenge this year. Under increasing pressure to match “round” job-skill pegs into “round” job holes, staffing professionals are adapting their thinking in anticipation of what many feel will be an even more competitive arena in 2016.

Some revisions to long-held hiring practices include greater flexibility in terms of transferability of skill sets; considering younger job candidates who will need time to grow into their positions, especially given the changing age demographics in the U.S.; and increasing levels of on-the-job training, especially in areas where technological innovation creates obsolescence much more rapidly than ever before.

Recruiters are also trying to anticipate staffing needs much earlier, and are looking at non-traditional recruitment venues other than college campuses. For hiring managers more preoccupied with their near-term requirements, a recent SHRM.org article listed a number of jobs expected to be much in demand, and difficult to fill, going forward for a variety of reasons, including talent shortages, age-related retirements, as well as outsize demand.

They include the following:

• Data scientist: the relatively new, yet burgeoning, field of data science related to data analysis is expected to need 4.4 million new hires among about 6,000 companies.
• Electrical engineer: this profession boasts roughly 17 job openings per electrical engineering candidate.
• General and operations manager: the Bureau of Labor Standards (BLS) predicts growth in demand of 12.4%, or 613,000 positions that will need to be filled by 2022.
• Home health aide: the aging population will likely boost hiring in this field by 48%, according to the BLS, translating to nearly 600,000 openings. However, the relatively low median salary is seen as something of a deterrent.
• Information security analyst: at least 2.7 million cloud-computing professionals, including information security analysts, are expected to be needed throughout North America by the start of 2016, according to Microsoft projections.

And there are additional in-demand professions on top of those, especially in other aspects of health care, computer science as well as digital marketing.

Remember when marketing managers were a drug on the market? Of course, there are no guarantees that the U.S. economy will continue to grow next year – even at the relatively tepid rate since the economic downturn officially ended. That said, 2016 is shaping up to be a hectic one in HR circles, for the above and other reasons. Fasten your seatbelts.