Human Resource Management - e9SCHOOL

24 March 2020

Human Resource Management


Human resource management (HRM or HR) is the strategic approach to the effective management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer's strategic objectives. Human resource management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems. HR departments are responsible for overseeing employee-benefits design, employee recruitmenttraining and developmentperformance appraisal, and reward management, such as managing pay and benefit systems. HR also concerns itself with organizational change and industrial relations, or the balancing of organizational practices with requirements arising from collective bargaining and governmental laws.

Human Resource Management involves management functions like planning, organizing, directing and controlling
  • It involves procurement, development, maintenance of human resource
  • It helps to achieve individual, organizational and social objectives
  • Human Resource Management is a multidisciplinary subject. It includes the study of management, psychology, communication, economics and sociology.
  • It involves team spirit and team work.
  • It is a continuous process.

Human resource management as a department in an organisation handles all aspects of employees and has various functions like  human resource planning, Conducting Job analysisrecruitment and conducting job interviews, selection of human resources, Orienting , training, compensating,Providing benefits and incentives, appraising, retaining,Career planning, Quality of Work Life, Employee Discipline,  black out Sexual Harassments, human resource auditing, maintenance of industrial relationship, looking after welfare of employees and safety issues , communicating with all employees at all levels and maintaining awareness of and compliance with local, state and federal labor laws.

The historical rule of thumb for Human Resource staffing requirements is one full-time professional Human Resource person should be hired for every 100 employees. The actual ratio for a business can vary depending upon factors such as the degree of HR centralization, the geographic distribution of the employees served, the sophistication level of the employees, and the relative complexity of the organization.

What is the importance of Human resource?

Behind production of every product or service there is an human mind, effort and man hours (working hours). No product or service can be produced without help of human being. Human being is fundamental resource for making or construction of anything. Every organisation desire is to have skilled and competent people to make their organisation competent and best.

Among the five Ms of management, i.e., men, money, machines, materials, and methods, HRM deals about the first M, which is men. It is believed that in the five Ms, "men" is  not so easy to manage. "every man is different from other" and they are totally different from the other Ms in the sense that men possess the power to manipulate the other Ms. Whereas, the other Ms are either lifeless or abstract and as such, do not have the power to think and decide what is good for them.


Why do we call it as Human Resource Management?

Human: refers to the skilled workforce in an organization.
Resource: refers to limited availability or scarce.
Management: refers  how to optimize  and make best use of such limited or scarce resource so as to meet the organization goals and objectives.

Therefore, human resource management is meant for proper utilisation of  available skilled workforce and also to make efficient use of existing human resource in the organisation. The best example in present situation is, construction industry has been facing serious shortage of skilled workforce. It is  expected to triple in the next decade from the present 30 per cent, will negatively impact the overall productivity of the sector, warn industry experts.

Today many experts claim that machines and technology are replacing human resource and minimizing their role or effort. However, machines and technology are built by the humans only and they need to be operated or at least monitored by humans and this is the reason why companies are always in hunt  for talented, skilled and qualified professionals for continuous development of the organization.

Therefore humans are crucial assets for any organisation, although today many tasks have been handing over to the artificial intelligence but they lack judgement skills which cannot be matched with human mind.

Evolution of an employee

 Past     Future
 Work 9 to 5     Work anytime
 Work in an office Work anywhere and from anywhere
 Use company equipment Use your own modern gadgets and requirements
 Focused on inputs  Focused on outputs
 Climb the corporate ladder Create your own ladder for career
 Pre-defined work Customized work
 Hoards information           Shares information
 No voice Can become a leader
 Focused on knowledge Focused on adaptive learning



"The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining"
-British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking

It is undisputed fact that humans are being replaced by artificial intelligence which are in the form of robots. But all jobs cannot be handed over to Robots, to say in other words robots have its own limitations and all roles cannot be handled by robots.Though  British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking,Cambridge professor expressed about destruction of middle-class jobs due to raise of artificial intelligence,he still felt that natural intelligence or need for application of human mind is inevitable in certain roles.

Great Quotations on human resource
"You must treat your employees with respect and dignity because in the most automated factory in the world, you need the power of human mind. That is what brings in innovation. If you want high quality minds to work for you, then you must protect the respect and dignity. " ---Mr N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman Emeritus, Infosys Ltd .

“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.”
- John F. Kennedy (35th President of the United States).