Human Resource Management discipline extracted its roots from organizational psychology discipline and proved to be an important practice for managing organizations. The role of this practice has emerged to be strategic with due course of time. In an organization, HR has become an important strategic partner and the management of the same has become a challenging task for HR managers. Now a day, the role of human resource management departments has become indispensable for 21st century modern businesses. This paper particularly focuses on changing role of human resource management practices in 21st century. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of human resource managers, HR practices and its influencing factors. In addition to that, this paper also elaborates the upcoming challenges which are being faced by 21st century HR managers. The literature analysis has been conducted to present emerging issues, challenges and practices of human resource management discipline in context of 21st century.