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Introduction

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 words,
HRM means employing people, developing their capacities, 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.

Human Resource Management(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 organisations.[5]

Synonyms such as personnel management are often used in a more restricted sense
to describe activities that are necessary in the recruiting of a workforce, providing
its members with payroll and benefits, and administrating their work-life needs. So
if we move to actual definitions, Torrington and Hall (1987) define personnel
management as being:

“a series of activities which: first enable working people and their employing
organisations to agree about the objectives and nature of their working
relationship and, secondly, ensures that the agreement is fulfilled" (p. 49).

While Miller (1987) suggests that HRM relates to:

".......those decisions and actions which concern the management of employees at


all levels in the business and which are related to the implementation of strategies
directed towards creating and sustaining competitive advantage" (p. 352).
Academic theory
The goal of human resource management is to help an organization to meet
strategic goals by attracting, and maintaining employees and also to manage them
effectively. The key word here perhaps is "fit", i.e. a HRM approach seeks to
ensure a fit between the management of an organisation's employees, and the
overall strategic direction of the company (Miller, 1989).

The basic premise of the academic theory of HRM is that humans are not
machines, therefore we need to have an interdisciplinary examination of people in
the workplace. Fields such as psychology, industrial relations, industrial
engineering, sociology, economics, and critical theories: postmodernism, post-
structuralism play a major role. Many colleges and universities offer bachelor and
master degrees in Human Resources Management or in Human Resources and
Industrial Relations.

One widely used scheme to describe the role of HRM, developed by Dave Ulrich,
defines 4 fields for the HRM function:

• Strategic business partner

• Change management

• Employee champion

• Administration

However, many HR functions these days struggle to get beyond the roles of
administration and employee champion, and are seen as reactive rather than
strategically proactive partners for the top management. In addition, HR
organisations also have difficulty in proving how their activities and processes add
value to the company. Only in recent years have HR scholars and professionals
focused on developing models that can measure the value added by HR.
Business practice
Human resources management involves several processes. Together they are
supposed to achieve the above mentioned goal. These processes can be performed
in an HR department, but some tasks can also be outsourced or performed by line-
managers or other departments. When effectively integrated they provide
significant economic benefit to the company.

• Workforce planning

• Recruitment (sometimes separated into attraction and selection)

• Induction, Orientation and Onboarding

• Skills management

• Training and development

• Personnel administration

• Compensation in wage or salary

• Time management

• Travel management (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)

• Payroll (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM)

• Employee benefits administration

• Personnel cost planning

• Performance appraisal

• Labor relations
HRM Strategy
An HRM strategy pertains to the means as to how to implement the specific
functions of HRM. An organisation’s HR function may possess recruitment and
selection policies, disciplinary procedures, reward/recognition policies, an HR
plan, or learning and development policies; however all of these functional areas of
HRM need to be aligned and correlated, in order to correspond with the overall
business strategy. An HRM strategy thus is an overall plan, concerning the
implementation of specific HRM functional areas.

An HRM strategy typically consists of the following factors:

• "Best fit" and "best practice" - meaning that there is correlation between the
HRM strategy and the overall corporate strategy. As HRM as a field seeks to
manage human resources in order to achieve properly organisational goals,
an organisation's HRM strategy seeks to accomplish such management by
applying a firm's personnel needs with the goals/objectives of the
organisation. As an example, a firm selling cars could have a corporate
strategy of increasing car sales by 10% over a five year period. Accordingly,
the HRM strategy would seek to facilitate how exactly to manage personnel
in order to achieve the 10% figure. Specific HRM functions, such as
recruitment and selection, reward/recognition, an HR plan, or learning and
development policies, would be tailored to achieve the corporate objectives.

• Close co-operation (at least in theory) between HR and the top/senior


management, in the development of the corporate strategy. Theoretically, a
senior HR representative should be present when an organisation's corporate
objectives are devised. This is so, since it is a firm's personnel who actually
construct a good, or provide a service. The personnel's proper management
is vital in the firm being successful, or even existing as a going concern.
Thus, HR can be seen as one of the critical departments within the functional
area of an organization.

• Continual monitoring of the strategy, via employee feedback, surveys, etc.

The implementation of an HR strategy is not always required, and may depend on


a number of factors, namely the size of the firm, the organisational culture within
the firm or the industry that the firm operates in and also the people in the firm.

An HRM strategy can be divided, in general, into two facets - the people strategy
and the HR functional strategy. The people strategy pertains to the point listed in
the first paragraph, namely the careful correlation of HRM policies/actions to
attain the goals laid down in the corporate strategy. The HR functional strategy
relates to the policies employed within the HR functional area itself, regarding the
management of persons internal to it, to ensure its own departmental goals are met.

Ethical Issues in Human Resource Management


A large area of human relations management is concerned with various
ethical issues, both on the part of upper–level management in its business decisions
and lower–level management in the treatment of individual employees.
Philosophic decisions on the relocation of areas of production or entire plants can
have a major impact on the company but also can be devastating to individual
employees and the communities in which they live. Management decisions must be
made honestly taking all factors into consideration, including social responsibility
as well as stockholder concerns. On a lower level, supervisors must, if they are to
retain any sprit de corps within their unit of the organization, treat those they
supervise fairly in matters of promotion and compensation.

Initially it is appropriate to define the term “ethics” as used in this


paper. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “ethics” as: (1) A set of
principles of right conduct. A theory or a system of moral values. (2) The study of
the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a
person; moral philosophy. (3) The rules or standards governing the conduct of a
person or the members of a profession.

In secular human resource management, generally ethics is treated as being


relative, i.e. whether an action is moral or immoral, or right or wrong depends on
the prevailing view of the particular individual human resource manager. Such
view is certainly molded by the culture. A human resource manager may well
consider decisions to be ethical if all consequences are considered in the light of
business needs balanced with consequences to all concerned, including the
employees.

In making decisions the human resource manager should consider


alternative solutions to the needs of the business as well as the effects the decisions
will have on the lives of the employees. Frequently a human resource manager will
be given instructions from higher level management to take action which will be
oppressive to the employees and the manager must either present argument to
higher management for alternate solutions which will have less impact on the
employee morale or determine the best method for implementing the instructions
which have been given.

Business ought to conform to the best ethical practices, not just for a
religious reason or for principles of human dignity, but also to keep from violating
federal laws. Though the laws may not be known, they would not be violated if the
business were operated by ethical principles. Experience has shown that in the long
term business profits will be greater for businesses that practice good ethical
behavior than those which do not.

One of the most challenging aspects of human relations management is to maintain


objectivity in hiring, promotion, and compensation. For example, a male
supervisor must refrain from promoting or increasing the compensation of an
attractive woman who pays undue attention to him, but who consistently is late in
arriving for her job and whose work is second rate.

It is both reasonable and logical to assume that compensation should track


performance and that ethical considerations would not be a factor in performance
analysis. Sometimes it is difficult for a supervisor, who rationally accepts this
premise, to follow it, and sometimes it is difficult to persuade an employee of its
rationality. The supervisor who either recommends or has the authority to adjust
compensation may be persuaded by other factors to downplay the performance of
an employee’s production. Likewise, an employee who will be negatively
impacted by measuring employee output may have a hard time understanding why
lower production should produce lower income when the hours spent on the job are
the same as others with higher production and higher income.

Employee evaluation generally will consist of multiple factors including


such items as punctuality, attitude, appropriate apparel, personal grooming
(particularly in a position where clients are involved), language, neatness,
congeniality, and performance output, among other things. The evaluation process
will be considerably different between service and production personnel and
between general employees and professional employees. The ethical challenge
arises when, after all the factors have been considered, the decision is made on a
factor or factors other than those by which all the employees have been evaluated.

The attitude of a business towards its employee's acts is a litmus test for its ethical
character. The relationship between the business and its employees is based on the
employment contract. In this chapter we discussed various ethical issues in
personnel management activities like: hiring, remuneration and retrenchment.
An ethical organization follows the principle of ethical selection for hiring
prospective employees.
According to this principle an organization should hire a person who is expected to
contribute the maximum towards enhancing long-term owner value. According to
the principle of ethical selection factors like age, gender, religion and nationality
are irrelevant for hiring a person

An engaged workforce can lead to increased production, innovation and good word
f mouth advertising for the company as an employer.

Creating a Safe and Healthy Workplace


In most jurisdictions there are minimum standards which must be met in relation to
employee health and safety. It is also possible to go further than the bare minimum
and create a workplace health promotion program. Implementing a workplace
health promotion program is also an opportunity to improve employee engagement
and value human capital. Employees can nominate or be selected to participate in
the design and implementation of the project and be the project’s champion in the
workplace.

From a corporate social responsibility perspective, the implementation of a


workplace health promotion program can be seen as the company playing its part
in addressing important societal problems such as obesity and environmental
pollution.

Skills Development
Another method of employee engagement is to implement a skills development
program for all employees. Skills development programs can include both internal
and external training opportunities, mentoring programs and corporate
volunteering programs.
Ethical Human Resource Management - The Corporate
Social Responsiblity Benefits
The benefits for business of adopting ethical human resource management
practices and viewing employees as human capital to be developed and to provide
a unique advantage in the marketplace can be utilised as part of a corporate social
responsibility strategy. Effective corporate social responsibility requires that along
with minimising harm to the environment, a company needs to be aware of the
social impacts of its operations and ensure that they are not harming human
stakeholders.

Engaged employees are motivated employees who may provide an opportunity for
increased production output or innovative production methods, are less likely to
leave the company voluntarily and may spread word of mouth advertising about
how good the company is to work for. Employee engagement surveys provide an
opportunity to discover employee thoughts about the company, which if positive,
can be expressed to external stakeholders through a corporate social responsibility
report.

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