Human Resources have two opposite and, at the same time, undivided aspects. It is considered to be and independent science, and also a very practical and broadly applicable disciple. Every enterprise no matter how small or big has a human resources department Some of the responsibilities or human resources, and the reason of their importance to every company, are hiring, dismissing, taking care of the employees through payroll, benefits, and not to forget staying up to date with labour and tax laws. In order to understand the importance of human resources and how human resources management developed we need to know how it all started.
At the beginning of the 20th century when the union movement was growing strong, solutions to tackle the unions’ problem had to be found. In order to persuade the employees that unionising was quite unnecessary personnel departments were created. In the following decades, their initial purpose to keep employees as far as possible from unions was outgrown. Completely new areas emerged and came under responsibilities of personnel departments. So not only the matter of wages, working hours and terms and conditions of employment is under the jurisdiction of personnel departments, but also testing and training employees and performance assessment. Thanks to the conclusions of two Harvard professors Mayo and Roethlisberger, that the social factors have great impact on satisfaction and productivity of employees, many researches were conducted which lead to the popularity and feeling of necessity of Human Resources .
What is known, today, as human resources management was developed during 1960 and 1970. (Wright et. al. 1994. Perspectives on Human Resources Management .pp. 336-352)
The process of managing...
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...es who are working today will be able to keep up with technological and business changes, unless there are addition trainings provided by their companies. If we consider frequent and not entirely predictable changes on the markets and the economy in general, there must be no question of the existence and valuable importance of Human Resources Management.
References
Lengnick-Hall, Mark and Cynthia.2011.Human Resource Management in the Knowledge economy. BK Inc. San Francisco
Price, Alan. (2011).Human Resource Management. Cengage Learning EMEA
Douglas M. McCabe and David Lewin. (Spring 1992).Employee Voice: A Human Resource Management Perspectiv.University of California Press
Philip M. Rosenzweig and Nitin Nohria,Journal of International Business Studies (1994)Influences on Human Resource Management Practices in Multinational Corporations.Palgrave Macmillan Journals
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2014). Fundamentals of human resource management (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
In conclusion, Human Resources department plays a significant role in the organization providing a wide range of valuable services to employees in various functional areas such as recruiting and training people, developing public relations, performance appraisals, maintaining workplace atmosphere, employee relations, benefits administration and much more. More than likely, HR essentially contributes to organization’s strategies and objectives through promotion of leadership activities, building friendly workplace environment and ensuring an efficient management of talented employees overall. As a strategic asset of a company, HR improves the human capital utilization and establishes the competitive workforce based on business and market demand.
Mathis, R. L., & Jackson, J. H. (2010). Human resource management (13th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomas/South-western
Noe, Raymond A., et al. Human Resource Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2010. Print.
The importance of Human Resource management is associated with the beginning of mankind. As the knowledge of survival had begun including safety, health, hunting and gathering, tribal leaders passed on the knowledge to their youth. However more advanced HRM functions were developed as early as 1000 B.C and 2000 B.C. Since the modern management theory took over, the working environment was transformed into a more friendly and safe work place. The workers were termed as most valuable resources. While some companies took the human side of employment seriously, there were others who did not find it mandatory. Hence they faced huge labor unions and factory shut downs (Henning, 2001).
Human Resource Management is defined as the management of activities undertaken to attract, develop, motivate, and maintain a high performing work force in an organization. There are a lot of myths about the HR department, for example people just view HR as a “hiring department” and believe it has no major role in growth of an organization. Traditionally, HR function has been viewed as primarily administrative which was focused on the level of the individual employee, the individual job, and the individual practice (Becker, Huselid, and Ulrich 2001), with the assumption that improvements in individual employee performance would undoubtedly enhance performance of the organization. But in the 1990s, an emphasis on strategy and the importance of HR systems emerged with HR emerging today as a strategic paradigm in which individual HR functions, such as recruitment, selection, training, compensation, and performance appraisal, are aligned with each other and also with the overall strategy of the organization (Khatri et al, 2006).For making a successful transformation the HR department has to shed its traditional administrative, compliance, and service role and adopt a new strategic role concerned with developing the organization and the capabilities of its managers (Beer, 1997). Competition, globalization, and continuously changing market and technology are the principal reasons for the transformation of human resource management today (Beer, 1997). According to Beer (1997) following areas are needed to be improved in higher levels for a strategic approach towards Human Resource Management.
Whether an organization consists of five or 25,000 employees, human resources management is vital to the success of the organization. HR is important to all managers because it provides managers with the resources – the employees – necessary to produce the work for the managers and the organization. Beyond this role, HR is capable of becoming a strong strategic partner when it comes to “establishing the overall direction and objectives of key areas of human resource management in order to ensure that they not only are consistent with but also support the achievement of business goals.” (Massey, 1994, p. 27)
Noe, Raymond A., John R. Hollenbeck, Barry Gerhart, and Patrick M. Wright. Human Resource Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2010. Print.
Ulrich, D., Younger, J., and Brockbank, W. 2008. “The twenty-first century HR organization.” Human Resource Management, 47, pp.829-850.
In an effort to gain a working understanding of the Human Resources field, I chose to interview the Director of Human Resources for an organization in Miami, Florida. What I learned goes far beyond any classroom or textbook instruction. It is clear; the field of Human Resources will never be static, as society, technology, and legal environments change, so will the field of Human Resources.
Byars, L. L. (1997). Human Resource Management. Chicago, IL: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Mills, D. Q. (1994).
Tracey, W. R. (1994). Human resources management & development handbook. Amacom books. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
However you define the activities of management, and whatever the organisational processes are, an essential part of the process of management is that proper attention be given to the Human Resource function. The human element provides a major part in the overall success of the organisation. Therefore there must be an effective human resource function. In the past, most organisations viewed Human Resource Management (HRM) as an element function, that is an activity that is supportive of the task functions and does not normally have any accountability for the performance of a specific end task. Because of the emphasis on analysis and precision there is a tendency for strategists to concentrate on economic data and ignore the way in which human elements and values can influence the implementation of a strategy. 'Economic analysis of strategy fails to recognise the complex role which people play in the evolution of strategy - strategy is also a product of what people want an organisation to do or what they feel the organisation should be like.?(1).
Fisher, C., Schoefeldt, L., & Shaw, J. (1996). Human resource management. (3rd Edition). Princeton, NJ: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Human Resource Management (HRM) is fundamentally another name for personnel management. It is the process of making sure the employees are as creative as they can be. HRM is a way of grouping the range of activities associated with managing people that are variously categorised under employee relations, industrial/labour relations, personnel management and organisational behaviour. Many academic departments where research and teaching in all these areas take place have adopted the title department of human resources management. HRM is a coordinated approach to managing people that seeks to integrate the various personnel activates so that they are compatible with each other. Therefore the key areas of employee resourcing, employee development, employee reward and employee involvement are considered to be interrelated. Policy-making and procedures in one of these areas will have an impact on other areas, therefore human resources management is an approach that takes a holistic view and considers how various areas can be integrated.