Human Resource Management (HRM)
"People are our most valuable asset" has
become a cliché these days, but it will be very hard to find an
organization that will disagree with this statement. In this blog post,
we will look at some of the aspects of Human Resource Management (HRM). A
complete coverage of all aspects of Human Resource Management is,
however, beyond the scope of this blog post.
According to Wikipedia, Human Resource Management (HRM) is the strategic
and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most
valued assets - the people working in the organization, who individually
and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the
business. Wikipedia goes on to explain that Human Resource Management
involves employing people, developing their capacities, utilizing,
maintaining, and compensating their services in tune with the job and
organizational requirement.
The rate of change in business scenarios in recent times has increased
largely and in order to be successful, organizations need to absorb and
manage change at a fast rate than in the past. This implies that
organizations faced with the need to respond to changing business
scenarios should implement a successful business strategy and the
organization should be staffed with the right people capable of
implementing the business strategy. Hence, recruitment becomes a
priority for any organization and is often considered a key human
resource management activity. Finding the right kind of people to be
bought ‘on board’ is often an expensive activity and the job market for
qualified candidates is very competitive. Further, new employees can
sometimes disrupt the activities of existing employees and new employees
take time to synchronize with the work culture, product knowledge, and
process knowledge of the organization. Briefly, the recruitment function
of Human Resource Management can be described as the process of
ensuring that at all times the business is correctly staffed by the
right number of people with the skills relevant to the business needs.
The recruitment function ensures that the right numbers of the right
kind of people are bought into the organization at the appropriate time.
Once the employees join the company, the focus is to retain them and
keep them motivated to perform at their best, in tune with the business
needs of the organization. As discussed above, recruitment is often an
expensive process in terms of time, cost, and effort and hence it is
very important to retain the recruited employees. For retaining good
employees and to motivate them to perform well, careful and continuous
attention need to be paid to the tangible and intangible rewards offered
by the organization. Basic rewards and conditions of work like number
of hours to be put in per week may be decided by regulations prevailing
in a country. In general, it can be said that about half of the rewards
and terms of conditions are negotiated by the human resources department
and the employee and hence varies from organization to organization.
Good personnel policies, which guarantee good work environment and
employee benefits, are crucial in motivating and retaining employees. It
is important to keep in mind the limitations of money as a motivator
and the importance of factors like job satisfaction, avenues for
professional growth, involvement, etc., while planning for activities
aimed to improve employee motivation. It is an acknowledged fact that
the influence of behavioral science discoveries is becoming important in
employee motivation. Hence, it is essential that Human Resources
department acts as a source of information for the application of the
findings of behavioral science in educating managers about the new
perspectives of job design, work organization [Job design and work
organization is the specification of the contents, method, and
relationships of jobs to satisfy technological and organizational
requirements as well as the personal needs of job holders] and employee
autonomy.
An organization should continuously evaluate the performance of its
employees for three reasons:
(a) to improve organizational performance by improving the performance
of individual contributors
(b) to identify potential candidates for promotion to higher levels in
the organization or for transfer to other positions where better use of
employee skills can be made
(c) to provide a basis for linking rewards to performance
A human resource department supports the employee evaluation process in
several ways such as:
(a) designing and establishing an evaluation system suited to the
organization
(b) define targets for achievement
(c) explaining how to quantify objectives
(d) introducing self assessment
(e) eliminating complexity and duplication
(f) providing training related to employee evaluation system
(g) monitoring the evaluation system
Another key function of human resources department is employee
education, training, and development. Employee education can be defined
as preparing the employee for training, training involves the systematic
development of attitude, knowledge, skill pattern required by a person
to perform a given job adequately, and employee development is the
growth of the individual in terms of ability, understanding, and
awareness.
Employee education, training, and development are needed in an
organization in order to:
(a) develop employees to undertake higher job positions in terms of
responsibilities
(b) provide training for new employees
(c) raise efficiency and standards of performance
(d) meet legal requirements
(e) as a means to inform employees
Evaluation of the effectiveness of training is done to ensure that it is
cost effective, to identify needs to modify what is being provided, to
reveal new training needs, and to redefine priorities and most of all to
ensure that the objectives of the training are being met.
This brings us to the end of this blog post on Human Resource Management
(HRM). Thank you for your interest.