Evolution of Human Resource Management
Essay Question: How Human Resource Management has developed in the past few years to become an integral part of our organizations? Major Field of Study: Human Resource Management. Human Resource Management has developed in the past few years to become an integral part of our organization. According to Armstrong, Michael (2006), “The terms “Human Resource Management” (HRM) and “human resources” (HR) have largely replaced the term “personnel management” (PM) as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations.
In simple words PM means 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. Torrington and hall (1987 p. 49) define PM as “a series of activities which: first enable working people and their employing organizations to agree about the objectives and nature of their working relationship and, secondly, ensures that the agreement is fulfilled” and Miller (1987 p. 52) 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”. The early debate about HRM was conducted largely because of the absence of any data about actual practice. In recent years though much more information, both from large-scale surveys and from detailed case studies has become available.
The growing body of research that seeks to examine the impact of HRM policies and practices on organizational outcome has come to a common solution saying that when individuals effectively implement these policies and practices, they provide significant economic benefit to the company. In order to learn the skills to practice good HRM in the workforce, it is integrated with many known courses of today’s date. Let’s take an example about one of the key functions of HRM, namely staffing.
A person with a high level of understanding in HRM may be able to hire, recruit and train the best employees. Ensure they are high performers and deal with performance issues better, and most importantly is able to approach management in such a way that motivate an individual person to contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. Some other functions of HRM include learning about managing your approach to employee benefits and compensation, employee records and personnel policies. “_An organization is nothing without human resources.
It is a lot of factories, expensive equipment and some impressive bank balances” (Low & Mourel, 1986). _The number of organizations around the world recognizing HRM as an integral part of their success is increasing every day. One of the main reasons for this is because when employers are hiring managers, one of the qualities they look for is if the employee has a high skill level in HRM. HRM is management, but management is more than HRM. Management normally includes marketing, budgetary control, production, operations control, finance and development.
Because the purpose of HRM is to improve the productive contribution of people, it is intimately related to these aspects of management. All managers are involved in managing people and the management of an organization’s human resource. And because of this HRM is becoming an area which is regularly researched and developed further. Having done a course on HRM or even as a part of a course is becoming a necessary skill. Whether or not HRM is a profession has been questioned a lot (Jenks, July-Aug. ).
What is not in question is that HR managers should be professional in terms of their qualifications and performance (Chruden and Sherman, 1984). The debate about HRM was conducted in the early days about the lack of research material on the subject is quickly turning into a thing of the past. More and more institutions are offering a course about HRM, and more and more people are learning from it. In order to be a good manager the HRM skills are required more in today’s date. Hardly a week goes by without the publication of another book on HRM.
There are numerous handbooks, textbooks, encyclopedias, research and casebooks about HRM Businesses are getting globalised which means that as a manager of a department you may have communicate and manage people from lots of different cultures. Your duties may involve promotion, downsizing and performance reviews. You will have to do these with people from many different cultures, and to do these tasks you will require a higher understanding of HRM, which all in turn will lead to the organizations progress and profit. References Armstrong, Michael (2006).
A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (10th ed. ) J. M. Jenks, ‘Let’s stop professionalizing’, Personnel Journal, vol 37, no. 3 July-Aug H. J. Chruden and J. W. Sherman, Managing Human Resources, 7th edition, 1984, p. 13 Peter S. Low, Mark P. Mourell, Stephen P. Robbins, Managing Human Resources, , 1986, p. 2, chapter 1 Bachelor Of International Hospitality Management (2009), Retrieved September 1, 2009, from http://www. aut. ac. nz/study-at-aut/study-areas/hospitality–tourism/qualifications/undergraduate-courses/bachelor-of-international-hospitality-management-human-resources
