Introduction
Human resource management has been used for the last fifteen years. Before that, human resource management was known as personnel administration. Personnel administration is the main aspects of evaluating, training, hiring, and compensating the employees of a company. One of the main reasons that human resource management was implemented into organizations was to help to increase competitive pressures of the business organizations in the United States. The competitive pressures came from globalization and rapid changes in technology. All of these pressures enhanced the concern when firms engaged in strategic planning.
Therefore, human resource management is all of the activities done by an organization to make sure that the utilization of the employees is effective toward the goals of the organization, individuals, and groups of people inside of the organization. The main function of human resource management is to focus on the people inside of the organization. All of the practices that help the organization to deal with everyone in the organization during the employment cycle is human resource management. The employment cycle includes hiring, staffing, and firing the people of the organization. The cycle allows the organization to figure out what jobs are going to be available to hire people and make sure that all of the employees are qualified for the position.
Industrial Welfare
The first form of human resource management is industrial welfare. The factories act of 1833 stated that the factory inspectors should only be males. In 1878, legislation passed a law to regulate the amount of hours of work for children and women to a 60 hour work week. During this period of time was when the trade unions begin to be formed. The first trade union conference was held in 1868, which started the collective bargaining. Therefore, the number of industrial welfare workers had significantly grown in 1913. Later on that year, the welfare workers association was formed but now it is called the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Recruitment and Selection
Mary Wood started to get girls more engaged during World War I. The World War I helped to increased human resource management because of government initiatives encouraged the best use of people. It became compulsory to have a welfare worker in explosive factories and that encouraged munitions factories to be use them too. The armed forces did a lot of work in this field by focusing on the ability to take tests and IQ’s with some research in the human factors at work. The national institute of psychologists was established in 1921 and the institute published all of the results of the studies in a variety of different tests, techniques in interviewing, and methods of training employees.
Acquisition of Other Personnel Activities
During World War II, the focus was more on the recruitment and selection on the employees. Later on, management wanted to improve morale and motivation, discipline, health and safety, joint consultation, and the policies in wage. Therefore, the personnel department of the company needs to be well equipped with staff that is trained effectively.
Industrial Relations
During the war, the consultation between the workface and management spread. When this happened, the human resource management had to become more responsible for the organization and the administration. A company needed specialists to deal with industrial relations. The human resource manager would be the spokesperson for the organization when the organization had to discuss trade unions. The industrial relations become very important in the 1970’s because of the heated climate during this time. The human resources manager had the power to negotiate any deals about salary and other money issues within the organization.
Legislation
The employment legislation increased in the 1970’s. The human resource management took control of the specialist advisor role inside of the company. When this happened, it helped to make sure that the managers were not able to violate any laws. Therefore, the cases would not end up in any tribunals of the industry.
Flexibility and Diversity
There was a major trend in the 1990’s where employees were looking for more flexible working hours for their employees to increase the number of temporary contracts and part-time workers. The trend allow the patterns of work to become more diverse since the traditional recruitment practices were found to be useless. There was a big growth in the Internet in 2000, so the Internet helped to create more e-commerce jobs while the traditional jobs were lost. Therefore, there was an increase of employees who chose to work from home. Human resource management will need to change their roles so that they can come up with ways to deal with issues that might happen with new developments.
Information Technology
The main systems where information technology is going to help human resource management are online sort-listing of applicants, systems for e-recruitment, employment data, developing training strategies online, payroll systems, psychometric training, references, recruitment administration, and pre-employment checks. Information technology helps the managers to outsource the tasks that they do on a regular basis so that they will have more time to solve their more complex tasks. It also helps to make sure that a large amount of information is available for the decision making within the organization.
Development and Implementation of Human Resource Management
All firms are going to have a human resources department that can develop and implement the practices of the human resource management. The responsibility of implementing these practices is done by the human resource professionals and line managers. In order for the human resource management practices to be implemented effectively, the line managers and human resource professionals will need to work together. Whether or not, the performance appraisal system of the system is successful will depend on if the parties are able to do their jobs correctly. The human resource professionals are going to develop the system, while the managers will be doing the evaluations on the actual performance.
Depending on the company, the roles of the human resource professionals and line managers will vary. But in most cases the human resource professionals are going to have four main areas of responsibility. These four areas include developing the human resource management methods, establishing the human resource management policies and procedures, monitoring the human resource management practices, and assisting the management on the matters related to human resource management. The human resource professionals will decide what procedures need to be followed when the human resource management practices.
The human resource professionals will develop certain methods to implement in the firm’s human resource management practices. The responsibility of the human resource management department is to make sure that the firm has the ability to properly implement the human resource management practices. Therefore, the human resource professionals will need to evaluate and monitor the practices to ensure that the performance appraisals are completely done. The human resource professionals can assist with providing the managers with training programs on how to interview a potential employee, how to appraise an employee’s job performance, and how an employee should be disciplined.
The line managers are going to deal with the day to day tasks of the organization. The main responsibility of the line managers will be implementing the human resource management practices and to provide the human resource professionals input in order for them to develop effective human resource management practices. There are seven main procedures and methods that the human resource professionals carry out. The first procedure is interviewing job applicants. The second procedure is providing coaching and on the job training. The third procedure is providing and communicating job performance ratings. The fourth procedure is recommending increases in salary. The fifth procedure is carrying out disciplinary procedures. The sixth procedure is investigating accidents. The seventh procedure is settling grievance issues.
The development of these human resource management procedures and methods require a lot of information from the line managers. The human resource professionals often look for job information from the managers and will ask the managers to review the final product. The human resource professionals will determine the training needs of the organization, managers will suggest what training is needed for the organization who exactly needs that training.
Traditional human resource management specialty areas
There are seven traditional specialty areas of human resource management. The first area is training and development. Human resource management conducts the training needs analysis, designs the training programs, and develops the planning programs. The second area is the compensation and benefits. Human resource management will develop job descriptions, facilitate the processes of job evaluation, conducts salary surveys, develops a structure for pay, designs pay based on performance and how to improve the performance of the employees, and administers benefits to employees. The third area is employee relations. Human resource management will help to resolve any issues with employee relations, develop the strategies for union avoidance, assist in negotiations for collective bargaining, and oversee the grievance procedures.
The fourth area is employment and recruiting. The human resource management team will assist in the human resource management planning processes, develop human resource information systems, develops job descriptions, oversees recruiting, develop job postings, conduct interviews for potential employees, reference checks, selection procedures, and approves decision for employee. The fifth area is safety, health, and wellness. The human resource management develops strategies for accident prevention, develops policies for safety and health, implements and promotes the wellness programs, and develops policies for AIDS and substance abuse policies.
The sixth area is EEO or affirmative action. The human resource management team develops the affirmative action programs, resolves EEO disputes, monitors the practices of the organization with compliance of EEO, and develops policies to make sure that everything is in compliance with EEO like policies for sexual harassment. The seventh area is human resource management research. The human resource management will conduct research studies, program evaluations, and other types of studies needed for the organization.
There are four new human resource management specialty areas. The first area is work and family programs. The team will develop the work and family programs, identify child care providers, administer a private care facility, and promotes the work and family programs inside of the organization. The second area is cross-cultural training. The team will translate the business practices and cultures of other nations of the business people in the United States. The trainers will also relocate families of employees and help the family to adjust to the new culture.
The third area is managed care. Employees might have to assume some of the costs of their health care because the high costs of healthcare to an organization. The managed care managers can help to ensure that the employees are going to get the best options for their healthcare policy. The fourth area is managing diversity. The team will develop practices and policies to know how the all of the workers of the company should be treated.
Different approaches to human resource management
According to Dessler, human resource is the strategy that organizations use to acquire, use, improve, and preserve the organization human resources (Dessler, 2004). Most of the time, when an organization is trying to management the employee, the human aspect is going to be left out of the equation. In order to create a high turnover of staff, some of the employees will be unsatisfied with their job so their job performance is not going to be good. Therefore, it is very important that the employees are managed in a way that will allow them to provide excellent quality of work.
Basically, human resource is learning how to make business strategies work effectively. It is very important to place an emphasis on how to match and develop an appropriate human resource management system. The system can be used when a group of employees who work in the industry of tourism, hospitality, or leisure need to be managed. According to Kleiman, human resource management is the concept that used the soft and hard approach (Kleiman, 2000). There are three main approaches that can used in human resource management: soft approach, hard approach, and the Harvard model.
The soft approach to human resource management is the idea that the employees are going to respond better than the organization recognizes the needs of the individual and addresses all of those needs. Most of the time, the company will still be able to focus on the objectives of the business while meeting the employee’s needs. According to Noe, the way that a company can be successful is through having a deep empathy for other people by figuring out the best way to employees to connect with each other in the workplace and motivate the employees as a result (Noe, 2006). All of the soft human resource management techniques can be balanced out by the hard human resource management (Simon, 1960).
The hard approach to human resource management is the employees of the organization is the human resources of the organization. Therefore, if the employees are a resource like the rest of the business resources, then the employees will need to work as cheap as possible. According to Kleiman, the model of human resource management is more concerned with the performance of the workers (Kleiman, 2000). The main goal of the hard human resource management is to promote the strategy for human resource and align that strategy with the business strategy. The company might have to outsource, be flexible, manage their performance, downsize, and operate against some of the interests of the employees.
The Harvard model by Lado and Wilson sees all of the employees as a resource to the company, but there are human when the managers are responsible for making decisions about employee relation and the organization (Lado, 1994). The employment relation is when the business is blended with social expectations and it recognizes the role of social outcomes play. The Harvard model covers four human resource management policy areas of human resource flows, work system, employee influence, and reward system. The policy areas are going to lead to the four C’s: commitment of employees, competence of employees, cost effectiveness of human resource management, and congruence of organization and employee goals.
Conclusion
It is very costly for the organization not to correct the staff. In order to plan the staff levels, the organization will need to assess all of the needs of the organization compared to the present resources and the future resources. The main goal of the human resource management system is to increase the involvement of the business throughout the organization. It requires a lot of information, classification, and statistical analysis of personnel management. The future demands of the organization will influence the forecast of the human resource manager.
References
Dessler, Gary. (2004). Human Resource Management. 10th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Pearson/Prentice-Hall.
Kleiman, Lawrence S. (2000). Human Resource Management: A Managerial Tool for Competitive
Advantage. Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing.
Lado, A.A., and M.C. Wilson. (1994). "Human Resource Systems and Sustained Competitive
Advantage: A Competency-Based Perspective." Academy of Management Review 19, no. 4: 699–727.
Noe, Raymond A. (2006). Human Resource Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage. 5th
ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
SHRM Online. Society for Human Resource Management. Retrieved on October 9th, 2014, from
http://www.shrm.org.
Simon, H.A. (1960).The New Science of Management Decision, New York, NY: Harper and Row.
