Functions of HRM

• Human resource management (HRM)

  Facilitates the most effective use of people to achieve organizational and personal goals
• Terms used to describe the unit, department, or group concerned about people

  • Personnel
  • Human resource management
  • Industrial relations
  • Employee development
  • Personnel department
• Activities of Human Resource Management (HRM)

  • Labor laws compliance
  • Job analysis
  • Human resource planning
  • Employee recruitment, selection, motivation, and orientation
  • Performance evaluation and compensation
  • Training and development
  • Labor relations
  • Safety, health, and wellness
• HRM unit


  • It is action-oriented
  • It is people-oriented
  • It is globally oriented
  • It is future-oriented
• The history of HRM can be traced to


  England
• Development of the field of HRM

  1. Masons, carpenters, leather workers, and other craftspeople organized themselves into guilds

  2. Working conditions, social patterns, and the division of labor were significantly altered during the Industrial Revolution

  3. Scientific management, welfare work, and industrial psychology merged during the era of the world wars
• Scientific management


  An effort to deal with inefficiencies in labor and management primarily through work methods, time and motion study, and specialization
• Industrial psychology


  The application of psychological principles toward increasing the ability of workers to perform efficiently and effectively
• Frederick W. Taylor


  The father of scientific management, who studied worker efficiency and attempted to discover the one best and fastest way to do a job
• Frederick W. Taylor summarized scientific management as: (1) science, not rules of thumb; (2) harmony, not discord; (3) cooperation, not individualism; and (4) maximum output, not restricted output
• Industrial psychology


  Focused on the worker, individual differences, and the maximum well being of the worker
• Hugo Munsterberg


  Initiated the field of industrial psychology in 1913 with his book Psychology and Industrial Efficiency
• Creation of personnel departments

  1. To deal with drastic changes in technology

  2. The growth of organizations

  3. The rise of unions

  4. Government concern and intervention concerning working people
• Around the 1920s, more and more organizations took note of, and did something about, employee—management conflict
• Early personnel administrators

  Were called welfare secretaries, and their job was to bridge the gap between management and operator (worker)
• Human relations movement


  Incorporated human factors into work, and began as a result of studies conducted at the Hawthorne facility of Western Electric in Chicago between 1924 and 1933
• Until the 1960s, the personnel function was concerned only with blue-collar or operating employees, and was viewed as a record-keeping unit
• Peter Drucker stated that the job of personnel was "partly a file clerk's job, partly a housekeeping job, partly a social worker's job, and partly firefighting, heading off union trouble"
• Policy

  A general guide that expresses limits within which action should occur
• Policies

  • Are developed from past problem areas or for potential problem areas
  • Free managers from having to make decisions in areas in which they have less competence or on matters with which they do not wish to become involved
  • Ensure some consistency in behavior and allow managers to concentrate on decisions in which they have the most experience and knowledge
• Procedures or rules


  Specific directions to action
• In large organizations, procedures are collected and put into manuals, usually called standard operating procedures (SOPs)
• Organizations must be careful to have consistent decision making that flows from a well-developed, but not excessive, set of policies and procedures
• Procedures should be developed only for the most vital areas
• Job analysis


  A purposeful, systematic process for collecting information on the important work-related aspects of a job
• Job description


  The principal product of a job analysis, representing a written summary of the job as an identifiable organizational unit
• Job specification


  A written explanation of the knowledge, skills, abilities, traits, and other characteristics (KSAOs) necessary for effective performance on a given job
• Tasks


  Coordinated and aggregated series of work elements used to produce an output (e.g., a unit of production or service to a client)
• Position


  Consists of the responsibilities and duties performed by an individual, with as many positions in an organization as there are employees
• Job


  A group of positions that are similar in their duties, such as computer programmer or compensation specialist
• Job family


  A group of two or more jobs that have similar duties
• The job analysis process

  1. Examine the total organization and the fit of each job

  2. Determine how job analysis information will be used

  3. Select jobs to be analyzed

  4. Collect data on the characteristics of the job, the required behaviors, and the characteristics an employee needs to perform the job

  5. Develop a job description

  6. Prepare a job specification
• The data collected in job analysis is used as the foundation for virtually every other HRM activity: recruitment, selection, training, performance evaluation, compensation, and job design and redesign
• Job analysis provides the information necessary for organizing work in ways that allow employees to be both productive and satisfied
• There is no longer even a choice about whether job analysis should be conducted - the question has become how to conduct a legally defensible job analysis
• Job analysis is critical to assessments of discrimination under most employment-related laws and is linked to these laws through Supreme Court rulings
• If a job analysis is to be viewed favorable by the courts, it must yield a thorough, clear job description, assess the frequency and importance of job behaviors, allow for an accurate assessment of the KSAOs required by the job, and clearly determine which KSAOs are important for each job duty
• Areas where job analysis is used extensively

  • Recruitment and selection
  • Training and career development
  • Compensation
  • Strategic planning
  • Personpower planning
• Peter Principle


  The idea that organizations tend to promote good employees until they reach the level at which they are not competent, promoting employees until they eventually reach their highest level of incompetence
• Choices for who should conduct the job analysis

  • Hire a temporary analyst from outside
  • Employ a full-time job analyst
  • Use supervisors, job incumbents, or some combination of these