Posted: 30/01/2007 01:00:53
The management of human resources plays a vital role in the healthy functioning of a company’s workforce. Through the application of measured principles, proven motivational techniques and accurate job placement and job description strategies, managing human resources effectively can actually result in visible profit margin increases for enterprises across the globe. The Human Resources Management (HRM) function includes a variety of activities, and key among them is deciding what staffing needs you have and whether to use independent contractors or hire employees to fill these needs, recruiting and training the best employees, ensuring they are high performers, dealing with performance issues, and ensuring your personnel and management practices conform to various regulations. Activities also include managing your approach to employee benefits and compensation, employee records and personnel policies. Specifically speaking, the human resources management is responsible for the oversight of every single human resources issue that can and does come up within a company among its employee base. Note that some people distinguish a difference between HRM (a major management activity) and HRD (Human Resource Development, a profession). Those people might include HRM in HRD, explaining that HRD includes the broader range of activities to develop personnel inside of organizations, including, e.g., career development, training, organization development, etc. It is also highly important to understand that any specialist or generalist in the field of human resources itself can find himself or herself playing the role of both a manager and a mediator. Not only does the manager of human resources make crucial decisions concerning job positioning, promotions, employment offers and even terminations, but he or she often can be found playing a key role in helping to resolve issues that arise between business ownership and the employee workforce. There is a long-standing argument about where HR-related functions should be organized into large organizations, eg, "should HR be in the Organization Development department or the other way around?" The HRM function and HRD profession have undergone tremendous change over the past 20-30 years. Many years ago, large organizations looked to the "Personnel Department," mostly to manage the paperwork around hiring and paying people. More recently, organizations consider the "HR Department" as playing a major role in staffing, training and helping to manage people so that people and the organization are performing at maximum capability in a highly fulfilling manner. That said, it is important for business leaders to actually develop this definition through hiring qualified generalists, specialists and/or individual professionals who can take charge of the human resources management requirements of a company by restructuring the system and opening up a wide variety of human resources functions in order to better serve both the workforce and the company ownership. In addition to the areas of focus mentioned above, the human resources management can be responsible for an incredibly extensive list of responsibilities such as services for employees, human capital planning, human capital mentoring, information on policy, salary guidelines, benefits package planning and administration, locating and recruiting talent, labor law compliance, executive employee management, practices to follow in the event of an emergency or major catastrophe, health and safety guidelines, human resources mission statements, scholarship and incentive management, telecommuting administration and much more.
|