For the eighth time in 11 years, Fortune names Google the best

company to work for, along with Wegmans Foods and Boston

Consulting Group.

Free gourmet food, haircuts and laundry service for its employees, among
many other perks, have made internet giant Google the No. 1 place to work for
the eighth time in 11 years. The new version of Fortune's Best Companies to
Work For features 12 companies that have made the ranking every year since
the list began 20 years ago, including Publix, REI and Goldman Sachs.
Helping Google to retain its top-of-the heap ranking was its move to increase
parental leave after company executives learned that mothers were leaving at
higher rates. And Fortune says of the company culture: "Town halls held by
black Googlers and allies, support for transgender workers, and unconscious-
bias workshops (already attended by more than 70% of staff) help foster what
employees say is a 'safe and inclusive' workplace at this hive of high
performers."

Methodology

To identify the 100 Best Companies to Work For, each year Fortune partners
with Great Place to Work to conduct the most extensive employee survey in
corporate America, with feedback from more than 230,000 people. Each
company's score is based on Trust Index survey feedback from a random
sample of employees. People anonymously assess their workplace, including
the quality of their leaders, support for their personal and professional lives
and their relationships with colleagues. Survey results are compared with peer
organizations of like size and complexity and are highly reliable statistically. In
addition, Great Place to Work scores a Culture Audit management
questionnaire from each company, which reports details such as
compensation and benefits, hiring practices, recognition, training and
diversity programs.
HRM is a subset of the field of management. For those who
desire a quick review of management, please read on.
Management is the process of efficiently achieving the objectives of the organization with and through people. To
achieve its objective, management typically requires the coordination of several vital components that we call
functions. The primary functions of management that are required are:
Planning: Establishing goals
Organizing: Determining what activities need to be completed to accomplish those goals
Lead ing: Ensuring that the right people with appropriate
skills are on the job, and motivating them to levels of
high productivity
Cont rolling: Monitoring activities to ensure that goals are met

Human Resources and Company Performance

Managers and economists traditionally have seen human resource management as a
necessary expense, rather than as a source of value to their organizations. Economic
value is usually associated with capitalcash, equipment, technology, and facilities.
However, research has demonstrated that HRM practices can be valuable. 3 Decisions such as whom to hire, what to
pay, what training to offer, and how to evaluate employee performance directly affect employees motivation and
ability to provide
goods and services that customers value. Companies that attempt to increase their
competitiveness by investing in new technology and promoting quality throughout
the organization also invest in state-of-the-art staff ng, training, and compensation
practices.4
The concept of human resource management implies that employees are resources
of the employer. As a type of resource, human capital means the organizations employees, described in terms of
their training, experience, judgment, intelligence, relationships, and insightthe employee characteristics that can
add economic value to
the organization. In other words, whether it manufactures automobiles or forecasts
the weather, for an organization to succeed at what it does, it needs employees with
certain qualities, such as particular kinds of training and experience. This view means
employees in todays organizations are not interchangeable, easily replaced parts of a
system but the source of the companys success or failure. By inuencing who works for
the organization and how those people work, human resource management therefore
contributes to basic measures of an organizations performance, such as quality, proftability, and customer
satisfaction.

Human resource management is critical to the success of

organizations because human capital has certain qualities that
make it valuable. In terms of business strategy, an organization
can succeed if it has a sustainable competitive advantage (is better
than competitors at something and can hold that advantage
over a sustained period of time). Therefore, we can conclude
that organizations need the kind of resources that will give
them such an advantage. Human resources have these necessary qualities:
Human resources are valuable. High-quality employees provide a needed service as
they perform many critical functions.
Human resources are rare in the sense that a person with high levels of the needed
skills and knowledge is not common. An organization may spend months looking
for a talented and experienced manager or technician.
Human resources cannot be imitated. To imitate human resources at a highperforming competitor, you would have
to f gure out which employees are providing the advantage and how. Then you would have to recruit people who can
do
precisely the same thing and set up the systems that enable those people to imitate
your competitor.
Human resources have no good substitutes. When people are well trained and highly
motivated, they learn, develop their abilities, and care about customers. It is diffcult
to imagine another resource that can match committed and talented employees.
These qualities imply that human resources have enormous potential. An organization realizes this potential through
the ways it practices human resource
management.
Effective management of human resources can form the foundation of a highperformance work systeman
organization in which technology, organizational structure,
people, and processes work together seamlessly to give an organization an advantage in
the competitive environment. As technology changes the ways organizations manufacture,
transport, communicate, and keep track of information, human resource management
must ensure that the organization has the right kinds of people to meet the new challenges. High-performance work
systems also have been essential in making organizations
strong enough to weather the storm of the recent recession and remain prof table as the
economy slowly begins to expand again. Maintaining a high-performance work system
may include development of training programs, recruitment of people with new skill sets and establishment of
rewards for such behaviors as teamwork, exibility, and learning.

Responsibilities of Human Resource Departments

In all but the smallest organizations, a human resource department is responsible for the functions of human
resource management. On average, an organization has one or two full-time HR staff persons for every hundred
employees on the payroll.6 One way to def ne the responsibilities of HR departments is to think of HR as a business
within
the company with three product lines7:
1. Administrative services and transactionsHandling administrative tasks (for example, hiring employees and
answering questions about benefts) effciently and with
a commitment to quality. This requires expertise in the particular tasks.
2. Business partner servicesDeveloping effective HR systems that help the organization meet its goals for
attracting, keeping, and developing people with the skills it
needs. For the systems to be effective, HR people must understand the business so
it can understand what the business needs.
3. Strategic partnerContributing to the companys strategy through an understanding of its existing and needed
human resources and ways HR practices can give the
company a competitive advantage. For strategic ideas to be effective, HR people
must understand the business, its industry, and its competitors.
Another way to think of HR responsibilities is in terms of specifc activities.
Table 1.1 details the responsibilities of human resource departments. These responsibilities include the practices
introduced in Figure 1.1 plus two areas of responsibility
that support those practices: (1) establishing and administering personnel policies and
(2) ensuring compliance with labor laws.

human resource planning

Process of determining an organizations human resource needs.

Job Analysis
The process of getting detailed information about jobs.

job analysis
Provides information about jobs currently being done and the knowledge, skills, and abilities thatcindividuals need to perform the
jobs adequately
Job Design
The process of defining the way work will be performed and the tasks that a given job requires.

Recruitment

The process through which the organization seeks applicants for potential employment.

Selection
The process by which the organization attempts to identify applicants with the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, and
other characteristics that will help the organization achieve its goals.

Training

A planned effort to enable employees to learn job-related knowledge, skills, and behavior.

Development

The acquisition of knowledge, skills, and behaviors that improve an employees ability to meet changes in job requirements and
in customer demands.

Performance Management

The process of ensuring that employees activities and outputs match the organizations goals.

Compensation Administration The main objective is to develop and maintain a good salaried and wages
system which is reasonable both internally and externally.
Labour Relations - This function refers to the interaction of human resource management with
employees who are represented by a trade union. Employees comes together and forms an union to
obtain more voice in decisions affecting wage, benefits, working condition, etc,.
compensation and benefits
HRM function concerned with paying employees and administering the benefits package

Labor Relations
Field that emphasizes skills that managers and union leaders can use to minimize costly forms of conflict (such as strikes) and
seek win-win solutions to disagreements.

o Employee Relations refers simply to the direct relationship between an organization and its employees.
o
o Labour Relations refers to the direct relationship between the organization and its employees and the
relationship between the organization and the union(s) that either represent the employees or who could
potentially represent them.

Employee relations refers to the total interaction that occurs between an employer (and their representatives) and the employee
(and their representatives) in regard to the establishment of conditions of employment.