CONTENT

HUMAN RESOURCES :(MANAGEMENT)

The personnel department of an organization, dealing with the recruitment, administration, management and training of employees.

MEANING:

Human resources is an increasingly broadening term that refers to managing "human capital," the people of an organization. The field has moved from a traditionally administrative function to a strategic one that recognizes the link between talented and engaged people and organizational success.

The field draws upon concepts developed in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and System Theory. Human resources has at least two related interpretations depending on context. The original usage derives from political economy and economics, where it was traditionally called labor, one of four factors of production although this perspective is changing as a function of new and ongoing research into more strategic approaches at national levels.

This first usage is used more in terms of 'human resources development', and can go beyond just organizations to the level of nations . The more traditional usage within corporations and businesses refers to the individuals within a firm or agency, and to the portion of the organization that deals with hiring, firing, training, and other personnel issues, typically referred to as 'human resources'.

MANAGEMENT:

Human resource management's objective, on the other hand, is to maximize the return on investment from the organization's human capital and minimize financial risk. It is the responsibility of human resource managers in a corporate context to conduct these activities in an effective, legal, fair, and consistent manner.

KEY FUNCTIONS:

Human resource management serves these key functions:

#Recruitment & Selection

#Training and Development (People or Organization)

#Performance Evaluation and Management

#Promotions/Transfer

#Redundancy

#Industrial and Employee Relations

#Record keeping of all personal data.

#Compensation, pensions, bonuses etc in liaison with Payroll

#Confidential advice to internal 'customers' in relation to problems at work

#Career development

#Competency Mapping

#Time motion study is related to HR Function

#Performance Appraisal

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT:

Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business.

The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations. In simple sense, HRM means employing people, developing their resources, utilizing, maintaining and compensating their services in tune with the job and organizational requirement.

FEATURES:

Its features include:

*Organizational management

*Personnel administration

*Manpower management

*Industrial management

But these traditional expressions are becoming less common for the theoretical discipline. Sometimes even employee and industrial relations are confusingly listed as synonyms

although these normally refer to the relationship between management and workers and the behavior of workers in companies.

The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets. The field takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively, and that the main obstacles to their endeavors are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failures of process.

HRM is seen by practitioners in the field as a more innovative view of workplace management than the traditional approach. Its techniques force the managers of an enterprise to express their goals with specificity so that they can be understood and undertaken by the workforce, and to provide the resources needed for them to successfully accomplish their assignments.

As such, HRM techniques, when properly practiced, are expressive of the goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall. HRM is also seen by many to have a key role in risk reduction within organizations.

FUNCTION:

The Human Resources Management (HRM) function includes a variety of activities, and key among them is deciding what staffing needs you have and whether to use independent contractors or hire employees to fill these needs, recruiting and training the best employees, ensuring they are high performers, dealing with performance issues, and ensuring your personnel and management practices conform to various regulations.

Activities also include managing your approach to employee benefits and compensation, employee records and personnel policies. Usually small businesses (for-profit or nonprofit) have to carry out these activities themselves because they can't yet afford part- or full-time help. However, they should always ensure that employees have -- and are aware of -- personnel policies which conform to current regulations. These policies are often in the form of employee manuals, which all employees have.

Note that some people distinguish a difference between HRM (a major management activity) and HRD (Human Resource Development, a profession). Those people might include HRM in HRD, explaining that HRD includes the broader range of activities to develop personnel inside of organizations, including, eg, career development, training, organization development, etc.

There is a long-standing argument about where HR-related functions should be organized into large organizations, eg, "should HR be in the Organization Development department or the other way around?"

The HRM function and HRD profession have undergone tremendous change over the past 20-30 years. Many years ago, large organizations looked to the "Personnel Department," mostly to manage the paperwork around hiring and paying people. More recently, organizations consider the "HR Department" as playing a major role in staffing, training and helping to manage people so that people and the organization are performing at maximum capability in a highly fulfilling manner.

CAREERS:

The sort of careers available in HRM are varied. There are generalist HRM jobs such as human resource assistant. There are careers involved with employment, recruitment and placement and these are usually conducted by interviewers, EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) specialists or college recruiters. Training and development specialism is often conducted by trainers and orientation specialists. Compensation and benefits tasks are handled by compensation analysts, salary administrators, and benefits administrators.

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT:

Defining SHRM:

o Organizational use of employees to gain or keep a competitive advantage against competitors.

o Involves aligning initiatives involving how people are managed with organizational mission and objectives.

In today's flattened, downsized & high-performing organizations, highly trained & committed employees – not machines – are often the firm's competitive key.

Perhaps the most drastic change in HR's role today is its growing involvement in developing & implementing the company's strategy.

In order to understand the modern aspect of HR i.e. SHRM, lets discuss the terms which would help us in understanding the concept:

o Core Competency can be defined as - A unique capability in the organization that creates high value and that differentiates the organization from its competition.

o Mission Statement explains purpose and reason for existence; it is usually very broad, but not more than a couple of sentences & it serves as foundation for everything organization does.

o Strategy: the company's plan of how it will balance its internal strengths & weaknesses with external opportunities & threats in order to maintain a competitive advantage, earlier this role was performed by the line managers, but now it is carried by the HR manager.

Strategies increasingly depend on strengthening organizational competitiveness & on building committed work teams, & these put HR in a central role. In the fast changing, globally competitive & quality oriented industrial environment, it's often the firm's employees – its human resources – who provide the competitive key.

And so now it is a demand of the time to involve HR in the earlier stages of development & implementing the firm's strategic plan, rather than to let HR react to it. That means now the role of HR is not just to implement the things out but also to plan out in such a manner that the employees can be strategically used to get edge over the competitors, keeping in mind the fact that this is the only resource (HUMANS), which cannot be duplicated by the competitors.

The Strategic Management Process includes:

- Determining what needs to be done to achieve corporate objectives, often over 3 - 5 years.

– Examining organization and competitive environment.

– Establishing optimal fit between organization and its environment.

– Reviewing and revising strategic plan .

THE STAGE IN THE PROCESS OF STRATEGIC RESOURCES MANAGEMENT:

Mission statement- Business definition and future plan for success.Environmental analysis- OT analysis and preparing to meet environmental pressures.

Organizational self-assessment- SW analysis and chalking road map for attaining goals.

Establishing goals and objectives- Laying concrete figures that will help in benchmarking the performance. These benchmarks will lead to the development of strategy that will decide how the company intends to meets its environmental challenges with given environmental and resource constraints in the time to come.

Benefits of a Strategic Approach to HR:

* Facilitates development of high-quality workforce through focus on types of people and skills needed.

* Facilitates cost-effective utilization of labor, particularly in service industries where labor is generally greatest cost.

* Facilitates planning and assessment of environmental uncertainty, and adaptation of organization to external forces.

* Successful SHRM efforts begin with identification of strategic needs.

* Employee participation is critical to linking strategy and HR practices.

* Strategic HR depends on systematic and analytical mindset.

* Corporate HR departments can have impact on organization's efforts to launch strategic initiatives.