Human resource management is a concept that has triggered a lot of attention from both practitioners and academics alike since its setting in, in the mid 1980s, to replace the expression ‘personnel management’. It is defined as a strategic as well as a coherent approach toward the management of an organization’s people, who are working there personally or as a group in the quest of achieving an organization’s objectives. This concept of Human Resource Management has further been split into two major categories; the hard and the soft Human Resource Management.
The hard Human Resource Management’s emphasis is on the calculating quantitative and the strategic business aspects of the management of the human component of an organization in a rational way. It also concentrates on the management in ways which are business oriented. That is in a way that will gain the added value from such people and thus the competitive edge to the company.
Soft Human Resource Management’s, on the other hand, stress is on advanced functionalities of an organization’s Human Resource Management. It includes functions like conflict management, organizational development, leadership development and relationship building among others that constitute these advanced Human Resource Management functions. (Armstrong, M. 2000)
This theoretical discipline’s basis is on the assumption that workers in an organization are persons with different needs and goals as well. As such they should be thought of as advanced resources in an organization other than the usual basic resources. Human Resource Management takes an apt view of employees as individuals who are highly willing to contribute toward an enterprise’s productivity and better performance.
Its technique requires that the management should take time and express clearly their goals to the workers in an accurate and understandable way. They should as well provide these employees with the required resources for a successful accomplishment of these goals. Strategically, proponents of Human Resource Management have found this approach as a way of reducing risk in any given organization.
This study is going to answer the question, “What is human resource management and should it be an important part of an organizational strategy?” in a detailed and comprehensive manner.
Initially, the basic premise of the term Human Resource Management is the fact that people cannot be considered in the same category as machines or other general material resources. A widely applied scheme to describe this expression is developed by Ulrich Dave and it defines the Human Resource Management function in four fields. These four fields include Administration, change agent, employee champion and strategic business partner.
Most Human Resource functions however, do not go beyond the administrative and the employee champion roles as of recent. Further it has been a hard question to answer, by the various Human Resource Organizations, on how their undertakings add value to their companies or business firms. This has however; has gained Human Resource professionals’ and scholars focus in their bid to develop models to measure how Human Resources’s create value for their companies.
Putting knowledge and understanding of the concept aside, a critical analysis is also of great importance in this study. To tackle the issue, Postmodernism (which is the genre of literature and art in reaction against the practices and principles of established modernism function), is an important factor as regards academic theory and more so the critical theory. Most authors contend that the concept of HRM is an attempt to rid of the modernist traditions, which stress on personnel (people as machines), to embrace the postmodernist view of Human Resource Management (people as individuals). Cynics bring across the idea that one should acknowledge the fact that people are formidable beings and thus, it is only through several discourses that one can understand the world. A critical theory also recognizes the fact that this subject about humans in the workplace is a complex subject and thus a unitary perspective is a too simplistic approach. This factor leaves most critics suggesting that the various Human Resource models are overly simplistic on their explanations concerning Human Resource Management issue. (Hendry, C. 1995)
Human Resource Management is not only vital but it is also a basic determinant of an organizational success. It is therefore advisable that the various processes forming the Human Resource Management be evaluated under the business practice. These processes are supposed to work in a synergetic way toward the achievement of organizational goals. Most of the processes are an obligation of the Human Resource department while some can be outsourced or done by other management functions of the organization. These processes may include recruitment, work force planning, skills management, induction and orientation, compensation, payroll, time management, performance appraisal and employee benefits.(Redman, T and Wilkinson, A. 2001)
Of the aforementioned processes, strategic workforce planning is a very major process. This is since it involves both the analysis and the forecasting of the talent needs of the company for the execution of their business strategies successfully. It is a proactive (rather than a reactive) activity and it enables an organization to spot, develop and sustain a workforce with skills it needs to successfully achieve the business strategy and at the same time being able to balance the lifestyle and career goals of its workforce. It is an increasingly being used in recent practices since it ensures a reduction on a company’s labor costs and also overall operational costs whilst making informed business decisions. Through strategic workforce planning a company is able to determine the people it needs and also spot the people that will be there to meet these needs. Various types of the strategic workforce planning include segmentation method, modeling method and workforce analytics method.
Recruitment on the other hand is an expression referring to the steps of sourcing, screening and picking successful individuals for a job at a given firm. Most generalist administrators can undertake a number of the recruitment process components, but this is not always the case. In mega organizations there is often the retaining of professionals for the recruitment job or even outsourcing of recruitment agencies. Sourcing usually involves advertising (or other informative methods) to candidates on the availability of a vacancy. Screening and picking potential workers involves usage of interviews and tests on the other hand to determine those who will be left for training.
Induction and orientation is the acceptance of the successful candidates into the system and then the introduction to the system’s way of functioning to these candidates.
Skills management is based on the employees’ productivity. The more skilled are promoted or placed in the positions befitting them, in pursuance of the output maximization from the employee whilst ensuring his/her personal development.
The training and development process is concerned with the activity in the firm aimed at improving individuals’ performances and also groups’. It can be referred to by many names including human resource development, employee development or even learning and development for employees. The process is inclusive of three major activities; the training, the education and the development. Training is focused on and also evaluated on an individual’s current position held, education’s focus is on the potential position and individual may hold in future and is also an employee is evaluated on those jobs, and development is focused on the functions that the firm employing the individual may partake in the future. Development is very hard to evaluate, though.
Compensation of employees services to the organization are usually in the form of salary or wages. A salary means a kind of periodic payment to an employee (for example, per month salary). Some organizations quote their salaries on yearly basis especially in the US in the process of recruitment advertisements. A salary is usually specified in the contract of employment signed between the employee and the employer at the initial stages of the recruitment process. A wage on the other hand is the compensation to a worker in exchange for their labor output.
Payroll is the sum of a company’s financial records with regards to salaries, bonuses, wages and deductions. Its maintenance is an obligation of the Human Resource department. This function is usually very crucial since it involves dealing with a company’s finances and it also has an implication on the amounts paid by the company as taxes. (Loosemore, M. et al. 2003)
Time management describes the means by which individuals use their time effectively and also those resources closely related to time, in their bid to maximize gains from them. It simply means being at the right place at the right time and also undertaking the most appropriate task.
The various benefits to employees include benefits in kind, fringe benefits, perks, which are usually non-wage compensations and sometimes non-monetary compensations usually provided to workers besides their normal compensations. A situation, where a worker swaps wages for a benefit, it is referred to as ‘salary sacrifice’. In most nations, these employee benefits are taxable to some extent. The purpose for the various employee benefits is to raise their (employees) economic security.
Lastly, performance appraisal which is also sometimes referred to as employee appraisal is the way in which an employee’s job performance is evaluated. The evaluation may include among others, the quantity, quality, time and cost aspects of the job. This function of performance appraisal is seen as part of career development for an employee. Various organizations usually organize regular reviews of their workers’ performance. The main aim of employee appraisal is to give a feedback on the employee’s performance to various employees and also identify needs for training. This ensures that training is put in to account in the organization’s planning process. A common method used to perform this task is the use of scalar or numerical rating system. Managers, under this system are asked to rate individuals with prospect to the number of attributes presented. (Armstrong, M. 2000)
The integration of Human Resource Management into the strategic management determines an organization’s ability to combine Human Resource Management with its strategic plans and ensuring that the aspects of Human Resource Management unite in an orderly and aesthetical manner to provide for the managements ability to make decisions. Therefore, the policies of Human Resource should be integrated with various strategic business plans and used to strengthen an appropriate firm’s organizational culture. Human Resource Management gives the firm a competitive edge if at all the tapping of workers involves a mutually consistence process and policies.
To ensure human resource development, an organization can systematically enhance the business as being a learning organization and through these employees will get opportunities to learn and develop their capabilities. This will provide for the growth of their careers that makes them more employable. Another factor, which is of importance, is the development of the management, which ensures that manager’s capacities are increased such that they can make significant contributions to the firm. Closely related to the two aforementioned Human Resource Management functions is the career management which develops the careers of those individuals with high potential.
There are also careers to be found in Human Resource Management. Some of generalist jobs may include such jobs as Human Resource Assistant. Other careers are involved with recruitment, placement and employment and are usually conducted by specialists, interviewers and college recruiters. Specialization in training and development is usually conducted by orientation specialists and trainers also. Benefits and compensations are usually done by compensation analysts, benefits administrators and salary administrators. (Armstrong, M. 2000)
Finally, it is true that there’s no universal model of Human Resource Management. Further, it has been discussed that Human Resource Management is just a component of Personnel management but not a replacement. Yet still Human Resource Management doesn’t fit in all companies systems. Therefore a holistic outlook of Human Resource Management is that it should be a way in which management can ensure the best management of people to meet the various interests of the organization. This therefore fits well when the outlook is on the whole organization’s strategic management. The Human Resource Management is an issue to be carefully considered in any scenario of business since it is an outstanding kind of resource management. Human Resource Managers not only have to ensure that they hire the best but also have to ensure that they retain the best. At some point there may involve firing and recruitment of additional workers in some sections of the organization. As easy as the issue of firing may seem, it is totally a breathtaking issue to the ones involved. For instance constant recruitments may portray some weakness in the management of this vital resource and also a lot of employee turnover may cost the company a great deal of money. Retention of some workers on the other hand may bring so me redundancy in the running of the organization and this may end up depriving the organization a reasonable position among competing firms.
Firms which manage carefully their Human Resources do have their reputations preceding them besides the building of a strong base. To manage Human Resources, though, has to be a thing of the firm. Outsiders may come in during the initial stages like recruitment but from the induction and orientation stage, no one else other than the organizations Human Resource department can do an outstanding job. This continues to various levels like development of employees and training, supervision of work and the compensation of employees among other issues. Therefore this is an issue to be looked in to as part of strategic business planning.
Reference:
Armstrong, M. 2000. Strategic Human Resource Management: A Guide to Action. Kogan Page Publishers.
Hendry, C. 1995. Human Resource Management: A Strategic Approach to Employment. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Loosemore, M. et al. 2003. Human Resource Management in Construction Projects: Strategic and Operational Approaches. Taylor & Francis.
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