Definition of human resource managment


Definition of human resource managment:
“Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. Human Resource Management can also be performed by line managers”.
Or
“Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training”.
Humans are an organization's greatest assets; without them, everyday business functions such as managing cash flow, making business transactions, communicating through all forms of media, and dealing with customers could not be completed. Humans and the potential they possess drive an organization. Today's organizations are continuously changing. Organizational change impacts not only the business but also its employees. In order to maximize organizational effectiveness, human potential—individuals' capabilities, time, and talents—must be managed. Human resource management works to ensure that employees are able to meet the organization's goals.
"Human resource management is responsible for how people are treated in organizations. It is responsible for bringing people into the organization, helping them perform their work, compensating them for their labors, and solving
Function1:- Staffing:
Both the job description and the job specification are useful tools for the staffing process, the first of the seven HR functions to be discussed. Someone (e.g., a department manager) or some event (e.g., an employee's leaving) within the organization usually determines a need to hire a new employee. In large organizations, an employee requisition must be submitted to the HR department that specifies the job title, the department, and the date the employee is needed. From there, the job description can be referenced for specific job related qualifications to provide more detail when advertising the position—either internally, externally, or both .
Not only must the HR department attract qualified applicants through job postings or other forms of advertising, but it also assists in screening candidates' resumes and bringing those with the proper qualifications in for an interview. The final say in selecting the candidate will probably be the line manager's, assuming all Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requirements are met. Other ongoing staffing responsibilities involve planning for new or changing positions and reviewing current job analyses and job descriptions to make sure they accurately reflect the current position.

Function 2: Recruitment and selection of employees:
An analysis of the job to be done (i.e. an analytical study of the tasks to be performed to determine their essential factors) written into a job description so that the selectors know what physical and mental characteristics applicants must possess, what qualities and attitudes are desirable and what characteristics are a decided disadvantage;
In the case of replacement staff a critical questioning of the need to recruit at all (replacement should rarely be an automatic process).
Effectively, selection is 'buying' an employee (the price being the wage or salary multiplied by probable years of service) hence bad buys can be very expensive. For that reason some firms use external expert consultants for recruitment and selection.
Equally some small organizations exist to 'head hunt', i.e. to attract staff with high reputations from existing employers to the recruiting employer. However, the 'cost' of poor selection is such that, even for the mundane day-to-day jobs, those who recruit and select should be well trained to judge the suitability of applicants.
The main sources of recruitment are:
Internal promotion and internal introductions
Careers officers (and careers masters at schools)
University appointment boards
Agencies for the unemployed
Advertising (often via agents for specialist posts) or the use of other local media (e.g. commercial radio)
Where the organization does its own printed advertising it is useful if it has some identifying logo as its trade mark for rapid attraction and it must take care not to offend the sex, race, etc. antidiscrimination legislation either directly or indirectly. The form on which the applicant is to apply, will vary according to the posts vacant and numbers to be recruited.
It is very desirable in many jobs that claim about experience and statements about qualifications are thoroughly checked and that applicants unfailingly complete a health questionnaire (the latter is not necessarily injurious to the applicant’s chance of being appointed as firms are required to employ a percentage of disabled people).
Before letters of appointment are sent any doubts about medical fitness or capacity should be resolved by requiring applicants to attend a medical examination. This is especially so where, as for example in the case of apprentices, the recruitment is for a contractual period or involves the firm in training costs.
Interviewing can be carried out by individuals (e.g. supervisor or departmental manager), by panels of interviewers or in the form of sequential interviews by different experts and can vary from a five minute 'chat' to a process of several days. Ultimately personal skills in judgment are probably the most important, but techniques to aid judgment include selection testing for:
Aptitudes (particularly useful for school leavers)
Attainments
General intelligence
In more senior posts other techniques are:
Leaderless groups
Command exercises
Group problem solving
(These are some common techniques - professional selection organizations often use other techniques to aid in selection.)
Training in interviewing and in appraising candidates is clearly essential to good recruitment. Largely the former consists of teaching interviewers how to draw out the interviewee and the latter how to rate the candidates. For consistency rating often consists of scoring candidates for experience, knowledge, physical/mental capabilities, intellectual levels, motivation, prospective potential, leadership abilities etc. (according to the needs of the post). Application of the normal curve of distribution to scoring eliminates freak judgments.
Function 3: Employee education, training and development:
In general, education is 'mind preparation' and is carried out remote from the actual work area, training is the systematic development of the attitude, knowledge, skill pattern required by a person to perform a given task or job adequately and development is 'the growth of the individual in terms of ability, understanding and awareness'.
Within an organization all three are necessary in order to:
Develop workers to undertake higher-grade tasks;
Provide the conventional training of new and young workers.
Raise efficiency and standards of performance;
Meet legislative requirements (e.g. health and safety);
Inform people (induction training, pre-retirement courses, etc.);
From time to time meet special needs arising from technical, legislative, and knowledge need changes. Meeting these needs is achieved via the 'training loop'.
The diagnosis of other than conventional needs is complex and often depends upon the intuition or personal experience of managers and needs revealed by deficiencies. Sources of inspiration include:
Common sense - it is often obvious that new machines, work systems, task requirements and changes in job content will require workers to be prepared;
Shortcomings revealed by statistics of output per head, performance indices, unit costs, etc. and behavioral failures revealed by absentee figures, lateness, sickness etc. records;
Inspiration and innovations of individual managers and supervisors;
Forecasts and predictions about staffing needs;
Inspirations prompted by the technical press, training journals, reports of the experience of others;
Designing training is far more than devising courses; it can include activities such as:
Learning from observation of trained workers;
Receiving coaching from seniors;
Discovery as the result of working party, project team membership or attendance at meetings;
Job swaps within and without the organization;
Undertaking planned reading, or follow from the use of self–teaching texts and video tapes;
So far as group training is concerned in addition to formal courses there are:
Lectures and talks by senior or specialist managers;
Discussion group (conference and meeting) activities;
Briefing by senior staffs;
Role-playing exercises and simulation of actual conditions;
Video and computer teaching activities;
Case studies (and discussion) tests, quizzes, panel 'games', group forums, observation exercises and inspection and reporting techniques.
Evaluation of the effectiveness of training is done to ensure that it is cost effective, to identify needs to modify or extend what is being provided, to reveal new needs and redefine priorities and most of all to ensure that the objectives of the training are being met.
In the case of attitude and behavioral changes sought, leadership abilities, drive and ambition fostered, etc. Achievement is a matter of the judgment of senior staffs. Exact validation might be impossible but unless on the whole the judgments are favorable the cooperation of managers in identifying needs, releasing personnel and assisting in training ventures will cease.
In making their judgments senior managers will question whether the efforts expended have produced:
More effective, efficient, flexible employees;
More effective or efficient use of machinery, equipment and work procedures;
Fewer accidents both personal and to property;
Improvements in the qualifications of staff and their ability to take on tougher roles;
Better employee loyalty to the organization with more willingness to innovate and accept change.
Function 4:- Safety and Health:
Mondy and Noe (1996) define safety as "protecting employees from injuries caused by work-related accidents" and health as keeping "employees free from physical or emotional illness”. In order to prevent injury or illness, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was created in 1970. Through workplace inspections, citations and penalties, and on-site consultations, OSHA seeks to enhance safety and health and to decrease accidents, which lead to decreased productivity and increased operating costs.
Health problems recognized in the workplace can include the effects of smoking, alcohol and drug/substance abuse, AIDS, stress, and burnout. Through employee assistance programs (EAPs), employees with emotional difficulties are given "the same consideration and assistance" as those employees with physical illnesses..
Function 5:- Compensation and Benefits HR Processes
The area of Compensation and Benefits belongs to the most specialized areas in Human Resources Management. Compensation and Benefits usually plays the role of the HR Controlling, setting the rules and procedures around the salaries, variable pay and benefits.
Compensation and Benefits is usually the function of HRM most connected with the competitors on the market and it sets the compensation policies, which are fully competitive on the job market, but the policies still meet the targets defined by the organization.
The clear definition of processes in Compensation and Benefits is very important as the processes are under the attacks from the line management every single day. There is no a day without a pressure for the salary review at the individual employees and the rules and standards must be waterproof.
(a):-competitive salary:-
The competitive salary is a goal of many managers in the organizations. They believe the competitive salary will allow them to live their own business life more easily and the management effort and daily stress will get lowered.
The competitive salary must be taken as a whole complex of:
corporate culture;
provided benefits;
market competition;
career opportunities;
Industry.
The competitive salary has also to take into the account the proportion between the base salary and variable part of the total cash. Many companies offer the competitive total cash, but their proportion between the base salary and bonus push the employees among their potential performance.
The competitive salary is a myth. The competitive salary must be taken as the mix of the corporate culture and career opportunities. When you take the best employers as they are seen by the people, they usually do not pay excellent salaries, but they offer a good mix of the corporate culture, personal recognition and career opportunities.
The competitive salary is a unique position of the organization on the job market. The competitive salary is a complete and unique mix of the correct ingredients, which makes the organization attractive to its employees and potential job candidates.
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(b):- Performance or Retention Role of Bonuses:
The bonuses should reward the performance of individual employees and to share the success of the organization with the employees. It is quite common definition of the bonuses role in the organization. In reality, the role of the bonuses in the organization is not that black or white.
The bonuses in each organization play a mix of the two main roles of bonuses. They are used as the retention tool and they reward employees for their individual performance. Generally, the organizations focused more on the retention role of bonuses push more weight on the role of the whole organization and the whole department in the individual bonus calculation.
The retention role of bonuses can be advanced more by the formula used by the bonuses. As the retention role of the bonuses is more subjective, the more retention focused the bonus scheme is, the more weight in the final decision is put on the manager. The manager can decide about the retention and the manager can make smaller differences among the employees.
The performance driven bonuses are formula driven bonuses, where the employee can see exactly, what kind of the behavior is rewarded by the organization and the role of the manager in the whole process is very limited. The bonuses can vary a lot every year and the manager has no chance to make the huge influence on the amount received.
The bonuses are told to support the individual performance, but in the real life the bonuses are flexible just in one way. Every employee expects the bonuses to grow, but the reality can quickly change. The performance driven organizations have a real bonus issue then as they have no chance to make some quick fix in the bonuses. The retention driven organization usually decide about a higher bonus budget and a stronger role of the manager in the redistribution to keep the best employees with the organization.

Function 6: Employee motivation:
To retain good staff and to encourage them to give of their best while at work requires attention to the financial and psychological and even physiological rewards offered by the organization as a continuous exercise.
Basic financial rewards and conditions of service (e.g. working hours per week) are determined externally (by national bargaining or government minimum wage legislation) in many occupations but as much as 50 per cent of the gross pay of manual workers is often the result of local negotiations and details (e.g. which particular hours shall be worked) of conditions of service are often more important than the basics. Hence there is scope for financial and other motivations to be used at local levels.
As staffing needs will vary with the productivity of the workforce, so good personnel policies are desirable. The latter can depend upon other factors (like environment, welfare, employee benefits, etc.) but unless the wage packet is accepted as 'fair and just' there will be no motivation.
Hence while the technicalities of payment and other systems may be the concern of others, the outcome of them is a matter of great concern to human resource management.
Increasingly the influence of behavioral science discoveries is becoming important not merely because of the widely-acknowledged limitations of money as a motivator, but because of the changing mix and nature of tasks (e.g. more service and professional jobs and far fewer unskilled and repetitive production jobs).
The former demand better-educated, mobile and multi-skilled employees much more likely to be influenced by things like job satisfaction, involvement, participation, etc. than the economically dependent employees of yesteryear.
Function7:- Keeping up with changing technology - human resource management:
When personnel administrators first emerged as a management specialty, there was an attempt to make the best use of whatever technology was available -- the telephone, the typewriter, the time clock and so forth -- in order to manage more effectively. That's simply part of human nature and part of the nature of management. But it wasn't a big deal because HR managers were still primarily managing people and organizational procedures and systems. Then with the growth of computerized business applications and the first HR information systems in the late 1960s, HR managers began to spend a significant amount of time establishing, maintaining and using the database. Now, there are multiple technologies for HR managers to deal with: interactive voice response, local area networks, optical character recognition, multimedia, CD-ROM, client/server, Internet/intranet and more. The "manager of technology" hat has been added to all the others HR professionals must wear.
It's not clear where all the technology growth is headed, but there's no turning back. Government regulators base their expectations on effective use of technology. So do employees, internal and external customers, and -- most important -- senior management. They are learning what is technologically possible, and if it's possible, they expect HR to deliver it. From now on, HR's work will be mostly on the technological leading edge. Competition demands it. The downsized organization demands it. Our own survival demands it
What can we expect next? Experience has taught that the seeds of the future are in the present. Forget about the breakthroughs, the stunning inventions or the dramatic discoveries for the moment. What we can count on are incremental changes, such as greater bandwidth and an expanded communication infrastructure -- with satellites, transmission towers, cables and such -- as well as more computer storage and processing power for less cost. The steady pace of development will lower cost and improve performance of all existing derivative technologies. Thus, keyboards and mice win disappear as we begin to talk to our computers and have them understand us. All employees win have as much computing power as they need wherever they are. Information of all kinds will be instantly accessible.
All of those developments are already with us. The only change is that they will become commonplace and universal. HR managers have always been managers of information from, to, for and about people. New information technologies have added -- and will continue to add -- a great deal of sophistication to that role. HR managers must increasingly be wise consumers of technology, knowledgeable about its evolving capabilities. Riding the wave is sometimes exhilarating, sometimes intimidating, but the only alternative is professional obsolescence.
Function 8:- Labor Relations :
In a mid-size company, there is normally an inner circle handling most labor relations issues requiring decisions or judgments. The HR specialist would take the lead, working with senior management from the unionized functions e.g. manufacturing. The same people would probably also be the key players for collective bargaining. Line management in unionized areas would be handling issues every day, can be excellent in spreading the company message, but can be just as active in sharing their own opinions. That is part of their credibility. They are in management, but haven’t totally crossed the line. At the executive level, apart from those directly involved, contact with the union is generally more social. There may also be a “state of the business” presentation from time to time, often just prior to negotiations, emphasizing challenges faced by the company and why the union has to be realistic. The question arises how valuable can executive involvement in labor relations be, if approached strategically? I have to admit that I was always very cautious about involving the executive team very directly. The message to the management team was more about the risk of saying the wrong things or agreeing to things, which seem innocent but have serious implications. Many of the executives were uncomfortable with the concept of unions and happy to keep their distance, although there was usually at least one outraged VP itching to give the union the straight talk: don’t you understand that if you don’t agree, you are putting the company and your jobs at risk?. I think the best approach may be to discuss strategy with each executive separately. Based on the type of individual, beliefs, functional responsibilities, discuss the do’s and don’ts, but otherwise promote normal communication with the union (when the occasion arises) and emphasize that no commitments should ever be made. The benefit of the union having some familiarity with senior management is that it would give more credibility if there is a need for an executive to meet face to face with the union or make a presentation on a particular subject. The union will normally view presentations out of the blue as company propaganda, but give more weight when the presentation is consistent with earlier communication and they have some respect for the individual presenting. The role of the President can be key and very specific based on the organization. During collective bargaining, the union like to know that the President is fully aware of what is happening and aware of the risk (strike) if certain demands are not agreed. I think that is partly so they can communicate to the union membership that the subject was taken to the highest level before any compromise was reached. Overall, my experience when executives were strategically involved (at specific points) was good and contributed to the process. The main thing I had to be careful about was not to give the impression that only unionized groups received such senior attention.
Function 9:- Human Resource Research:
In addition to recognizing workplace hazards, organizations are responsible for tracking safety- and health-related issues and reporting those statistics to the appropriate sources. The human resources department seems to be the storehouse for maintaining the history of the organization— everything from studying a department's high turnover or knowing the number of people presently employed, to generating statistics on the percentages of women, minorities, and other demographic characteristics. Data for the research can be gathered from a number of sources, including surveys/questionnaires, observations, interviews, and case studies. This research better enables organizations to predict cyclical trends and to properly recruit and select employees.





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