HRM is defined as the effective management of people in an organisation or

company so that they may contribute to the company's or organization's business

success.. HRM systems and policies are designed to maximize employee
performance to achieve strategic objectives.
Human Resource Management is defined by Edwin Flippo as “planning, organizing,
directing, controlling of procurement, development, compensation, integration,
maintenance and separation of human resources to the end that individual,
organizational and social objectives are achieved.

 Managerial Proces

Human resource management is a vital part of management that includes planning,

organising, staffing, directing, and controlling human resources to achieve
organisational success. It is a managerial process that effectively utilises human
resources to attain organisational goals and objectives.

 Both Art and Science

Human resource management is a mixture of both art and science. It is an art as it

deals with qualitative attributes like creativity, knowledge, skills, and talent of the
personnel. In simple words, HRM is the art of getting things done by others
effectively. HRM is a science as it requires different scientific techniques for activities
like recruitment, selection, training, and appraisal of employees.

 Pervasive Force

Human resource management, being an inherent part of an organisation, is

pervasive in nature. It means that HRM is present in different functional areas of
management, like finance, marketing, and production, in all commercial and non-
commercial enterprises. Everyone in the organisation, from the top to the lowest
level, must perform HRM functions regularly.

 Improve Employee Relations

“In order to build a rewarding employee experience, you need to understand what
matters most to your people.” – Julie Bevacqua.

Human resource management is concerned with building healthy relationships

between employees at various organisational levels. Every individual has different
needs, goals, and expectations. HRM deals with these individual factors and
motivates employees to reach their maximum potential. Moreover, it creates an
organisational culture that fosters learning and growth.

 People-Centred

The nature of human resource management is people-centred and relevant in all

types of organisations. It is concerned with every employee from the top to the
bottom level. HRM value people both as individuals and as a group. Furthermore, it
encourages people to develop their full potential and fulfil individual and
organisational goals.

 Development-Oriented

The development of the workforce in an organisation is crucial to the nature of

human resource management. HR managers use various tools to help employees
understand their strengths and unleash their potential. Regular training programs
can benefit employees by improving their skills. Also, monetary and non-monetary
reinforcement can help people stay motivated to perform better.

 Action Oriented

While human resource management does follow the rules and policies, its main
focus is on action and results rather than rules. A human resource manager stresses
the importance of providing effective solutions for employee problems, tensions, or
controversies.

 Forward-Looking

Sustaining in the competitive business environment requires organisations to plan

long-term strategies. HRM is a future-oriented approach that evaluates the human
resource requirements and ensures the availability of required personnel in the right
place at the right time. With the forward-looking nature of human resource
management, managers prepare employees by motivation, training, and
development to face current and future challenges in the changing business
environment.

 Continuous Process

Human resource management is not a ‘one-time’ function. Rather, it is a never-

ending process that must be performed continuously to achieve organisational
objectives effectively. It involves a series of tasks, beginning with identifying the
human resource requirement and continuing with recruitment, training, performance
evaluation, and appraisal.

 Basis of Other Functional Areas

HRM is the basis of all other functional areas of management, such as finance,
production, and marketing. The effectiveness of each of these departments depends
on the effectiveness of their human resource management.

 Interdisciplinary Function

Human resource management is multidisciplinary in nature. HR managers utilise

knowledge and inputs from various disciplines to manage the workforce effectively.
The five major disciplines in HRM include management, communication, psychology,
sociology, and economics. In order to effectively manage human resources, one
must understand the contribution of all these disciplines to HRM.

Scope of Human Resource

Management
1. Human resources planning

Human Resource Planning refers to a process by which the company

tries to find the number of jobs vacancy in which a particular
department and The number of staff required with the necessary
qualification and experience.
2. Job analysis design

Another important area of Human Resource Management

is job analysis. Job analysis gives detailed information about the job
description and employee specifications in the company.

3 Recruitment and selection

Based on information collected from job analysis the company

prepares advertisements and publishes them in the newspapers,
Employment sites, etc. This is recruitment. A number of applications are
gathered after the advertisement is
published, interviews are conducted and the right employee is selected
for the right post and right time thus recruitment and selection are yet
another important areas of Human Resource Management.

4. Orientation and induction

Once the employees have been selected an induction or orientation

program is conducted. The employees are informed about companies’
backgrounds, products, different subsidiaries’ organizational culture and
values, and work ethics and introduced to the new employee to other
employees.

5. Training and development

Every employee goes into a training program which helps him to put up a
better performance on the job. The training program is also conducted
for existing staff that have a lot of experience. This is called refresher
training. Training and development is one area where the company
spends a huge amount.
6. Performance appraisal

Once the employee has put on the job performance appraisal is

conducted that is the Human Resources department checks the
performance of the employee. Which helps appraise future
promotions, incentives, increments in salary, etc

7. Compensation planning and remuneration

There are various rules regarding compensation and other benefits. It

is the job of the Human Resources department to look into remuneration
and compensation planning.

Objectives of Human Resource

Management

 Societal Objectives

While limiting the negative effects of such requirements upon the organisation
to utilise its resources for society’s advantages in ethical ways can lead to
limitation, it is important to be socially and morally accountable for the demands
and difficulties of society.

 Functional Objectives

Organisations should meet requirements in order to keep department

contributions at a suitable level. When human resource management seems to
be either more or less competent to meet the expectations of the company,
resources are squandered.
  Organisational Objectives

Human Resource Management should be understood as a tool to help the

business achieve its main goals rather than as an end in and of itself, which is
the function of an HR manager in fostering organisational performance.

 Personal Objectives

Helping employees achieve their own objectives, at least to the extent that doing
so will improve their contribution to the company, is another role of human
resource management. Employees need to be inspired, retained and nurtured in
their own goals.

 Organisational Goals

This is where human resource management begins. Fulfilling organisational

goals is one of the main purposes. Employing human resources to meet
organisational needs and objectives is crucial for efficient human resource
management.

Workforce management and employee needs, including hiring and training,

payroll administration, and retirement, are all part of an organisation’s
objectives. Human resource management involves effective planning and
implementation in order to achieve corporate objectives. Human resource
management is insufficient without predetermined objectives, missions, and
resource allocations. Reaching human resource management goals is not
challenging if you know your resources and strategy.

 Work Culture

Employees and the workplace culture come first when managing human
resource management successfully and achieving goals. Workplace culture is
crucial in determining Human Resource Management and company
performance.

An HR manager must be engaged when advocating for policies to promote a

better workplace culture. You can benefit from automated processes like
acknowledging reimbursement requests and approving leave. Empowerment of
employees and a quick line of operations contribute to a healthy work
environment. Building a positive work culture starts with cultivating and
sustaining positive, open relationships across teams and team members. More
than half of your work may be resolved by implementing the appropriate
solutions, such as personnel management software.

Small efforts, like efficient onboarding procedures, can create a positive

perception of the workplace.

 Training and Development

Two crucial and fundamental factors are employee effectiveness and

performance for a company to achieve its fundamental goals in human resource
management. Employees feel secure and organised with sufficient training and
future prospects. The training methods have a significant impact on effective
employment. Giving staff opportunities is a fantastic method for ensuring
workforce management.

Planning, organising, training courses, and evaluating each on-board can be

challenging while dealing with employees as part of human resource
management. Solutions such as training management software may provide you
with auto-reminders, a simple calendar, reporting, and monitoring capabilities to
alleviate the agony. The HR manager may make sure that the company has
efficient training procedures.

 Empowering Employees

Another key objective of human resource management is the empowerment of

employees. Nothing can work more effectively in terms of employee
engagement than giving them more control. It can also save HR labour by
equipping them with resources like the ESS (employee self-service) site for
human resource management.

Employees can self-apply for approvals using the site and monitor them via their
mobile devices. You no longer need to knock on HR’s door for small inquiries. HR
interaction becomes trivial for many reasons, including leave requests, payslip
generation, PF account checks, remaining vacation time, future holidays,
manager information, etc.

 Retention

One of the main goals and objectives of HR managers is employee retention,

along with offering leadership qualities and chances. Human Resource
Management needs to keep employees happy and engaged as a key priority.
The largest difficulty, or goal, facing HR professionals is keeping employees on
board for a long time beyond the recruiting, onboarding, and training phases.
Employees frequently depart the company within two months of joining it. It can
result from a poor management system or a difficult hiring procedure.

The experience of the workforce must be carefully considered. Maintaining a low

employee turnover rate may be achieved by keeping your current workforce.
The HR manager in human resource management must discover the top
business retention advice if they want to maintain it steady.

IMPORTANCE OF HRM

1. QUALITY OF WORK-LIFE

Quality of work life is the total quality of an employee's work environment in an

organization. It tells about the employee's impression about its physical and
psychological wellbeing at an organization.

The HR Management needs to make conscious efforts to maintain the quality

of work-life as undoubtedly it is directly proportional to the employees'
productivity. This can be done by managing and reducing workplace stress,
providing financial reimbursements, recognition, freedom, and belongingness.

2. TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

The training and development department of an organization must put in

continued efforts to boost its employees' performance. Investing in training
and development not only increases the employee's potential and motivation
but contributes to the overall growth of the organization.

“Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well
enough so they don’t want to.”
– Sir Richard Branson
New employees must be welcomed with orientation and training sessions to
equip them with the workflow of the organization. All the employees must be
given the training to boost their job skills and development sessions to work
on life skills like communication, decision making, and leadership.
3. EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION AND RETENTION

The essential task of Human Resource Management is to build a sense of

belongingness in the employees of the organization. It is also important to
motivate each and every person to work up to their full potential. This can be
done either by recognizing and applauding the employees for their work.

An employee getting recognition increases meaning and purpose in their job,

thereby motivating them to work better the next time. Another method is to
provide them with regular monetary benefits like rewards, compensations,
fringe benefits. This not only helps in retaining employees but also achieving
the organization's goals effectively.

4 BUILDING A HEALTHY WORK CULTURE

Healthy work culture is important for the employee as well as the organization.
It should be the place when the employees must feel valued, safe and
comfortable. It is needed to bring the best out of the employees.

HR makes sure that there is clean and transparent work culture, leading to
employees achieving individual goals in particular and the organization's goals
at large. The more the employees are happy and motivated, the more
productive they are.

5. WAGES AND SALARIES

HR is needed to prepare an extensive and realistic compensation structure

with respect to the job's worth, wages offered by other similar organizations for
employees with similar skills. It may be in the form of direct financial payment
like wages, salaries, incentives, bonuses or indirect like health benefits, paid
insurance or vacation packages, etc.

6. CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Conflict can destroy a team which hasn't spent time learning to deal
with it.
- Thomas Isgar
Conflicts are bound to arise when a group of people are working together,
whether it is a small group or a big team. Conflicts are inevitable and must be
resolved quickly as they may hamper the smooth functioning of the
organization. HR management is needed to resolve such conflicts
systematically with an unbiased approach.

What Is Personnel Management?

Personnel management is hiring and developing employees’ skills, experience
and commitment to make their contribution more valuable to the organisation.
It includes activities such as job design, performance appraisal, training, etc.

It is important to note that personnel management is a relatively old concept

that predates the human resources management (HRM) approach. In personnel
management, employees are seen as a resource that can be used to achieve
organisational goals. It is in contrast to HRM, which views employees as
individuals with their own needs and aspirations.

The Society for Human Resource Management defines personnel management

as the process of shaping the skills, experience and value they bring to a
company to achieve its goals.

What Are the Functions of Personnel Management?

Personnel management is a process of managing people in organisations to
optimally utilise them for accomplishing organisational goals. It helps to ensure
that the right people are hired for the right jobs and are given the necessary
training to complete their tasks effectively. Personnel management also involves
developing policies and procedures related to employee benefits, salaries, and
job descriptions.

Here are some of the functions involved in personnel management:

 Workforce Planning: This involves forecasting future staffing needs and

determining the best way to meet those needs. It looks after both the
quantitative and qualitative aspects of workforce planning.
 Recruitment and Selection: Finding and hiring the best candidates for vacant
positions to come under recruitment and selection. The selection process
includes screening applications, conducting interviews, and administering tests.
  Performance Management: It involves setting goals and objectives for
employees, assessing their performance, providing feedback, and taking
corrective action when necessary.
 Training and Development: It is all about providing employees with the skills
and knowledge they need to do their jobs effectively. It includes both formal and
informal training methods. Employees learn about the organisation’s culture,
values, and goals during training and development.
 Employee Relations: This involves maintaining good relationships between
employees and management via dealing with issues such as conflict resolution,
grievance procedures, and disciplinary action.

Roles And Responsibilities of a Personnel Manager

A personnel manager is responsible for recruiting and selecting employees and
their training and development. They also oversee employee benefits and
relations and monitor compliance with employment law.

Here are the common responsibilities looked over by a personnel manager:

 Develop Employee Training Programs: A personnel manager will develop

programs to improve employee productivity and skills. They work closely with
department managers to identify training needs and create and implement
programs that address them.
 Select New Employees: When a company has an open position, it is the
responsibility of the personnel manager to conduct interviews and choose the
most qualified candidate for the job.
 Monitor Employee Performance: Part of a personnel manager’s job is to
ensure that employees meet their expectations. They may do this through
regular check-ins, annual performance reviews, or other methods.
 Assistance To Top Management: A personnel manager is often responsible for
providing information and analysis to top management on various topics, such
as employee morale, retention rates, and training effectiveness. They may also
be asked to develop plans to improve these areas.
 Act As a Mediator: When conflict arises between employees, the personnel
manager often steps in to mediate. They will listen to both sides of the story and
help resolve a fair resolution for all parties involved.
Significant Differences Between Personnel
Management and Human Resource Management

Let’s discuss the difference between personnel management and human

resource management against some vital parameters:

Scope: Personnel management is limited to managing the employees of an

organisation. On the other hand, HRM includes all aspects related to managing
an organisation’s human resources. It is important to note that personnel
management and human resource management are interrelated.

Objective: Personnel management aims to ensure that the organisation has the
right number of people with adequate skills and knowledge to do the job.
The objective of human resource management is to ensure that the organisation
has a pool of competent and skilled employees to meet the future needs of the
organisation.

Function: Personnel management is responsible for performing employee

benefits activities such as training and development of employees. On the other
hand, HRM is responsible for all aspects of employee management, such as
recruitment, selection, administration, compensation and benefits, employee
relations, and so on.

Nature: Personnel management is reactive. It means that it responds to the

issues and problems related to employees after they have arisen. Meanwhile,
human resource management is proactive. It means that it takes measures to
prevent employee issues and problems from occurring.
Importance: Personnel management is critical To ensure all the employees are
aligned with common organisational goals and that their skills and experience
meet the company’s demands. Human resource management takes
responsibility for overall employees and makes sure their tenure in the company
is most fruitful for both employees and the organisation.

Productivity: Personnel management is not concerned with the productivity of

employees. In contrast, human resource management is concerned with
employees’ productivity. An HR manager will always try to find ways to increase
employees’ productivity, whereas a personnel manager will not be involved in it.

Decision Making: Personnel management is not involved in an organisation’s

decision-making process as their job ends with developing and fine-tuning the
right skills. On the contrary, human resource management is involved in an
organisation’s decision-making process at the administration level.

Planning: Personnel management does not plan for future activities. Whereas
human resource management always keeps a contingency plan and a future
strategy for the organisation to help meet its future goals and dodge any
discrepancies.

Time frame: When it comes to personnel management, the time frame is short-
term. Personnel management aims to meet the organisation’s immediate needs,
and human resource management is a long-term and ongoing process.

Definitions of Human Resource

Planning
Human Resource Planning is the planning of Human Resources. It is also called
manpower planning/ personnel planning/ employment planning. It is only after
Human Resource Planning that the Human Resource department can initiate
the recruitment and selection process. Therefore Human Resource Planning is a sub-
system of organisational planning.

Manpower planning is the process by which a firm ensures that it has the right number of
people and the right kind of people, at the right places, at the right time, doing things for
which they are economically mast useful”. – Edwin B. Geisler
1. It is future oriented: Human Resource Planning is forward-looking. It involves forecasting the
manpower needs for a future period so that adequate and timely provisions may be made to
meet the needs.
2. It is a continuous process: Human Resource Planning is a continuous process because the
demand and supply of Human Resource keeps fluctuating throughout the year. Human
Resource Planning has to be reviewed according to the needs of the organisation and
changing environment.
3. Integral part of Corporate Planning: Manpower planning is an integral part of corporate
planning because without a corporate plan there can be no manpower planning.
4. Optimum utilization of resources: The basic purpose of Human Resource Planning is to make
optimum utilization of organisation’s current and future human resources.
5. Both Qualitative and Quantitative aspect: Human Resource Planning considers both the
qualitative and quantitative aspects of Human Resource Management, ‘Quantitative’
meaning the right number of people and ‘Qualitative’ implying the right quality of
manpower required in the organisation.
6. Long term and Short term: Human Resource Planning is both Long-term and short-term in
nature. Just like planning which is long-term and short-term depending on the need of the
hour, Human Resource Planning keeps long-term goals and short-term goals in view while
predicting and forecasting the demand and supply of Human Resource.
7. Involves study of manpower requirement: Human Resource Planning involves the study of
manpower availability and the manpower requirement in the organisation.

Objectives of Human Resource

Planning
1. Achieve Goal: Human Resource Planning helps in achieving individual, Organizational &
National goals. Since Human resource planning is linked with career planning, it can able to
achieve individual goal while achieving organisational and national goal.
2. Estimates future organizational structure and Manpower Requirements: Human Resource
Planning is related with number of Personnel required for the future, job-family, age
distribution of employees, qualification & desired experience, salary range etc and thereby
determines future organisation structure.
3. Human Resource Audit: Human resource planning process is comprised of estimating the
future needs and determining the present supply of Manpower Resources. Manpower supply
analysis is done through skills inventory. This helps in preventing over staffing as well as
under-staffing.
4. Job Analysis: The process of studying and collecting information relating to operations and
responsibilities of a specific job is called Job analysis. Job analysis is comprised of job
description and job specification. Job description describes the duties and responsibilities of
a particular job in an organized factual way. Job specification specifies minimum acceptable
human qualities necessary to perform a particular job properly.
 Importance of Human Resource
Planning
After the need for HRP, it is apt to discuss the importance of it. A few are
mentioned below.

 It gives the company the right kind of workforce at the right time frame
and in right figures.
 In striking a balance between demand-for and supply-of resources,
HRP helps in the optimum usage of resources and also in reducing the
labor cost.
 Cautiously forecasting the future helps to supervise manpower in a
better way, thus pitfalls can be avoided.
 It helps the organization to develop a succession plan for all its
employees. In this way, it creates a way for internal promotions.
 It compels the organization to evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of
personnel thereby making the management to take remedial measures.
 The organization as a whole is benefited when it comes to increase in
productivity, profit, skills, etc., thus giving an edge over its competitors.
A) Quantitative Considerations:
These Include:
(i) The Economic Considerations relating to determination of
\

economic situation and in the light of that future sales and

production estimates are made. These estimates affect manpower
requirements.

(ii) Expansion programmes in future also affect future manpower

requirements.

(iii) Availability of existing manpower resources of different kinds

should be kept in mind. This is helpful in forecasting future
manpower requirements.

(iv) Rate of labour turnover is an important instrument with the

help of which estimates with regard to future manpower
requirements can be made. It provides required information
statistically i.e. how many employees have left and joined the
organisation during a specific period of time. Labour turnover rates
are calculated by applying separation method, replacement
approach and flux method. In the light of labour turnover rate
future manpower requirements can be estimated,

(v) Resignations and retirements, promotion, demotion, separation,

transfers, dismissals and lay off etc. are other important
considerations to be borne in mind before initiating the process of
human resources planning.

(vi) Changes in the management thinking, philosophy and plans etc.

also affect manpower plans. Technological changes and
diversifications etc. bring about changes in the skills and
performance of workers.

(B) Qualitative Considerations:

These Cover:
(i) Work-load analysis. It is a technical aspect of manpower
planning. It includes and studies auditing of human resources,
study of work standards and demand analysis etc.

(ii) Auditing of Employees Involves Preparation of Skill Inventory.

Skill inventory covers data regarding skill and work priorities
pertaining to work of different categories of workers. Big
organisations prepare organisational charts and other employee
information cards for this purpose.
(iii) Study of work standards is necessary for the quality of workers
required. It is indispensable for preparing job analysis which
includes job specifications and job descriptions.
There are two components of Job Analysis, i.e.:

1. Job Description and

2. Job Specification.

1. Job Description:
Job description contains the main characteristics of the job and it
is a written statement of the purpose, duties and responsibilities
of a particular job. This information is needed to find out the
qualifications and qualities required by a person to perform the
job efficiently.

According to M.W. Cumming, “A job description is a broad

statement of the purpose, scope, duties and responsibilities of a
particular job”.

Contents of Job Description:

Job description document is descriptive in its nature and

contains a record of job contents-

a. Job Introduction – Job title, location, division, department,

section, plant, office, job significant number etc.

b. Job Summary – Functions of the job holder, reporting to whom

and organisational relationship etc.

c. Duties and Responsibilities – Provide limits of main duties and

responsibilities.

d. Relation to other job – Number of employees supervised.

e. Supervision given and received – Position of the job in the job

hierarchy.
f. Working conditions.

g. Other information such as accident hazards.

2. Job Specification:
Job specification states the minimum requirement of
qualifications and qualities required for a person to perform the
job. Job specification tells us what qualities are needed in the
prospective job holder. It states the required educational
qualification, experience, knowledge, skills and attitude, etc., to
perform the job successfully.

According to Edwin Flippo, “A job specification is a statement of

the minimum acceptable human qualities necessary to perform a
job properly”.

Job specification states the physical, personal, psychological and

demographic features required for the job.

(a) Physical characteristics – Weight, height, eyesight, physique,

health.

(b) Personal characteristics – Personal appearance, pleasing

manners, leadership qualities, initiative and drive etc.

(c) Psychological characteristics – Judgement, soundness of

mind, capacity to make analysis, etc.

(d) Demographic factors – Age, gender, education, experience,

language

Job Analysis – Contents

Job analysis helps to collect the following information
about the job:

(i) Job identification i.e., title and nature of job.

(ii) Tasks and operations involved in the job.

(iii) Characteristics of the job like location, physical setting, and
supervision required etc.

(iv) Type of tasks and duties involved in the job.

(v) Method of doing the job like lifting, handling, cleaning,

assembling etc.

(vi) Materials and equipment required to perform the job.

(vii) Type of the persons required to perform the job in relation to

abilities, skill, knowledge etc.

(viii) Relationship of one job with that of another job etc.