Management Studies: Human Resource Management

Showing posts with label Human Resource Management. Show all posts

Human Relation Approach in Management

The study of human relations in management or administration is the study of worker’s relation with their job, leader and organization. George Elton Mayo (December 26, 1880 – September 7, 1949) was an Australian who spend most of his working life at Harvard University, eventually becoming prof. of industrial research in the Graduate School of Business Administration. In this post, he was responsible for the initiation and direction of many research projects, the most famous being the five year investigation of the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago.

According to the investigation;

First, Employees is the starting point until the employee is brought into the work environment, nothing happens.
Second, the work environment is the central focus. The work environment is made up of the job, a worker has the leader who supervises the worker and other factors in the organization.

(Job) some important factors of the job include the amount of independence, responsibility, initiative, challenge, boredom and interest it provides.

(Leader) The influence of the leader in the work environment is determined primarily by the way he or she behaves in the area of supervision, communication, decision making, conflict resolution and other managerial responsibilities.

(Organization) Some organizational factors that affect the work environment are co-workers, reward and punishment system, policies and procedures, rules and regulations, responsibility structures, planning and production standard.

(Goal) Organizational goal attainment achieved by employees within the work environment. In case of private enterprise, the main goal would be “to earn a profit” in the public sector, government, education, health and delivery of goods and services.

The Hawthorne experiment which took place over five year period and covered three phases:

The relay assembly test room
Interviewing program
Bank wiring observation

1. Relay Assembly Test Room

In the Relay assembly test room, two groups of female operators consisting of six were selected and located in two separate rooms, each group performing the same task. They prove 5 hypothesis:

Proper illumination increases productivity. This hypothesis was rejected because the illumination reduced to moon light, the output increased.
The rest periods and shorter working days has provided relief and fatigues. Since output still increase after all of these privileges were withdrawn.
The third hypothesis relating to relief from monotony to increase production was not conclusive because monotony had nothing to the state of mind.
Instead of group incentive plan, an individual piece rate plan was introduced. The fourth hypothesis was also rejected since it was not wage but something else that lead to greater output.
The change in supervisory techniques had improved both the attitude and output.

The girls were allowed to talk freely with everyone and supervisors also took personal interest. A better social situation develops. Supervisor was not regarded as a boss but senior colleague.

The second important factor was the modified managerial practices. Now the workers were consulted and advised about the change to bring. Their views were considered sympathetically. This process allowed the worker to feel free. They were in a position to established new interpersonal contacts with their fellow workers and supervisors.

2. Interviewing Program

In the second phase, Harvard group started a special study of human attitudes and sentiments. To understand human attitudes and sentiments Harvard group after interviewing about 21,126 workers who were asked to express freely and frankly their likes and dislikes on the programs and policies of the management, working conditions, and how they are treated by their boss etc. This study succeeded in identifying following three aspects.

Workers appreciated the method of collecting information of the problems of the company from them. They thought they had valuable comments and they felt that they had an equal status with the management. They also developed a feeling that the work environment were changed to the better, although no such a change took a place.
There was a change in the attitudes of supervisors because they realized that the methods of supervision was wrong and was closely observed by the research team and the subordinates were allowed to comment freely about their supervisors.
The research learn also realized that they had acquired new skills in understanding and dealing with their fellow beings. It was felt in the sense of proper appreciation of the feeling and sentiments of the workers. It was difficult to understand their real problems.

3. Banking Wiring Observation

The third phase of Hawthorne study involves observation of 14 male operators in the bank wiring observation room for a period of six months and recorded the effects of the group behavior, group norms and group economic incentives upon output. The conclusion of the bank wiring observation was that the attitudes of the members of the group towards the company’s financial incentive scheme was one of indifference. The group was highly integrated (loyal) with its own social structure and code of behavior which clashed with that of management. The following code of conduct was maintained for their group solidarity (to build strong).

Don’t be a rate buster – by producing too much
Don’t be a chiller – by doing too little work.
Don’t be squealer – by telling on your associates to supervise.
Don’t be unfriendly, aloof or officious in relation with other in the group.

Comparison between Human Relation Approach and Traditional Approach on various aspects of organization.

Human Relation Approach

Traditional or Classical Approach

1. The business organization is a social system as well as the technical economic system. This social system defines individual roles and establishes norm, which can be different with those of the formal organization.
2. The individual is not only motivated by economic incentives, but is motivated by diverse social and psychological factors.
3. The formal work group becomes dominant unit of consideration. The group had an important role in determining the attitude and performance of the individual workers.
4. The human relativist emphasis democratic rather than authoritarian pattern.
5. Workers satisfaction would lead productivity.
6. Human relationist believe in three-way communication system, which allows the exchange of ideas, views and information. Hence, participation becomes an important approach of the human relation movement.
7. Management requires effective social skills as well as technical skills.

1. They concentrate on economy and efficiency only.
2. They neglected the human factor.
3. It views organization as techno-economic system.
4. Employees are motivated only by economic incentives and not by diverse social and psychological factor.
5. It does not consider the existence of informal group within organization.
6. They exercise close and detail supervision and do not allow subordinates to initiates their own pace of work. They believe in authoritarian leadership pattern.
7. They do not pay considerable attention towards workers satisfaction.
8. They pay considerable attention towards chain of command up and down communication, span of control and close supervision.
9. They believe possible relationship among production, satisfaction and economic incentives.
10. They do not pay attention on social skill. They consider on only technical skill.

Criticism of Human Relation Approach

Loren Baritz and other criticized Mayosts a anti-union and pro-management. He was criticized for not understanding the role of union in a free society. It was argued that mayo never tried to integrate (loyal) unions into his thinking.
Critics like Carey pointed out that this type of research was worthless, since a sample of 5 or 6 could not be taken as a reliable sample to make a generalization.
Peter F. Druker criticized human relationist for their lack of awareness of economic dimensions. He felt that the Harvard group neglected the nature of work and instead focused on interpersonal relations.
Daniel Sell and others have pointed out that a conflict free state and worker convenient (satisfaction) would lead to success of the company was not tenable (which can exist), because some tensions and conflicts were inevitable (unavoidable) in every human situations therefore the critics stated that the team displayed a lack of total awareness of larger social and technological systems.

Conclusion of Human Relation Approach

The contribution of Mayo to the administrative organization has been a great innovation of the modern times. For the first time, he made an attempt to understand the problems of the workers from an angle different other than traditional approach. The contribution of Mayo is immensely useful not only in the industrial sector but also in the administrative system of state, particularly in the case of bureaucracy. Taken as a hole the significance of Hawthorne investigation was in discovering “informal organization” which is now realize exist in all organization.” The importance of group affection the behavior of workers at large was brilliantly analyzed through these experiments.

You may also like:

Value Chain, Primary Activities and Support Activities of the System Approach

Value chain

The value chain is a tool proposed by Michael E. Porter (1985) for identifying methods of creating more customer value. According to him, value chain is a set of inter-linked value-creating activities performed by an organization. These activities begin with inputs, go through processing and continue up to outputs marketed to customers. The value chain identifies two types of activities that can create value and cost in a business. They are shown in following figure:

Value Chain Analysis

Primary Activities

They consist of following five activities:

Inbound logistics: It is the activity of bringing materials into the business. It consists of receiving and storing raw materials; material handling, stock control, material, transport etc.
Operations: It is the activity of converting raw materials into finished products; manufacturing, packaging, assembling, testing etc.
Outbound logistics: It consists of order processing and physical distribution; collect, store and distributes products to customers.
Marketing and sales: It consists of pricing, promotion and selling products to satisfy customer needs.
Service: It consists of installation, repairs, spares and training. These activities help to enhance and maintain value of product.

Support Activities

The support activities of the value chain are as follows:

Procurement: It involves all the activities related to processes for purchasing inputs.
Technology development: It involves all the activities related to acquiring new technologies and research and development for innovation.
Human resource management: It involves all the activities related to acquisition, development, utilization and maintenance of human resources.
Infrastructure: It involves all the activities related to infrastructure building, such as strategic planning, quality control, accounting, finance, information management, organization design etc.

The value chain analysis identifies separate activities performed to produce, market, deliver and support a product. The firm’s task is to examine its costs and performance in each value-creating activity and to look for ways to improve it. The firm should estimate its competitors’ costs and performances as benchmarks against which to compare its own costs and performance.

You may also like:

Meaning of Value Chain Activities
Force Lead to Organizational Change
The Dispute between Monetarism and Keynesianism

Value of Written Job Requirement

Job requirements are the demand of the jobs to be performed by the job incumbents. Job description and job specification constitute written job requirement in an organization. Written job requirements are used as criteria for the evaluation of individual jobs. These requirements play an important role in the process of preparing job description, job specification, job evaluation, and job design. For an organization, written job requirements are valued criteria for making HRM policy. Job requirements are an important input for conducting the following human resource management activities.

Developing a compensation package based on job evaluation.
Welfare safety and health schemes for employed retention.
Grievance handling
Preparation of human resource, inventory, development of human resource information systems, formulation of human resource plan. Job requirement provide a deeper understanding of the behavioral requirements of jobs. It plays an important role in the defense of employment practices. However, for some jobs it is difficult to describe their job requirements. Especially for top level executive managers who are performing multi-skilled jobs, it is difficult to describe their job requirements. For them, a broad scope of the job will be provided so that they can work according in different areas under different working conditions and challenges.

HRM System in an Organization

Human resource management deals with people dimension in organization. If focuses on management of human abilities.

To understand what human resource management is, first we should review what manager do most experts agree that there are five basic functions manager perform: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. In total, these management process functions represent the management process. Some of the specific activities involved in each function include;

Planning: Establishing goals and standards; developing rules and procedures; developing plans and forecasting predicting or projecting some future occurrence.
Organizing: Giving each subordinate a specific task; established departments; delegating authority to subordinates; establishing channel or authority and communication; coordinating the work of subordinates.
Staffing: Deciding what type of people should be hired; recruiting prospective employees; selecting employees; setting performance standard; counseling to employees; training and development of employees.
Leading: Getting order to get the job done; maintaining morale; motivating to subordinates.
Controlling: Setting standards such as sales quotas, quality standards, or production levels; checking to see how actual performance compares with these standard; taking corrective action as needed.

Human resource management refers to the practices and policies you need to carry out the people or personnel aspects of your management job. These includes:

Conducting job analysis (determining the nature of each employee’s job)
Planning labor needs and recruiting job candidates
Orientating and training new employee
Managing wages and salaries (i.e. how to compensate employees)
Providing incentives and benefits
Performance Appraisal
Communicating (interviewing, counseling, disciplining)
Training and development
Building employee commitment
And a manager should know that about

Equal opportunity and affirmative action
Employee health and safety
Grievances and labor relations

Why are these concepts and techniques important to all managers?
Perhaps, it is easy answer by listing some of the personnel mistakes you doesn’t want to make managing. For example, you don’t want:

To hire the wrong person for the job
To experience high turnover
To find your people not doing their best
To waste time with unless interviews
To have you company taken to court because of your discriminatory actions
To commit any unfair labour practices
To have your company cited under federal occupational safety for unsafe practices
To have some of your employees think their salaries are unfair and inequitable relative to others in the organization.
To allow a lack of training to undermine your department’s effectiveness.

Line Manager’s Human Resource Management Responsibilities
According to one expert, “the direct handling of people are and always has been an integral part of every line manager’s responsibility, from president down to the lowest level supervision.” For example, one major company outlines its line supervisor’s responsibilities for effective human resource management under the following general headings.

Placing the right person on the right job
Starting new employees in the organization (orientation)
Training employees for job that are new to them
Improving job performance of each person
Gaining creative cooperation and developing smooth working condition
Interpreting the company’s policies and procedures.
Controlling labour cost
Developing the abilities to each person
Creating and maintaining departmental moral.
Protecting employee’s health and physical condition

In small organizations, line managers may carry out all these personnel duties unassisted. But as the organization grows, they need the assistance, specialized knowledge, and advice of a separate human resource staff.

Rising Interest of HRM

Today, environment is changing rapidly. Changes have made the role of HRM more crucial in changing environment. To achieve organizational goal requires committed and competent manpower. They are the outcome of effective and efficient human resource management. Since 1990s, the interest in human resource management has been rising. Specially, the following factors responsible for the rising interest in HRM are:

Work Force Diversity: Diversity means different. In the context of HRM, different regards in the sense of sex, color, age, culture, religion and language etc. today composition of work force has been quite diversified. The involvement of people from different culture, need, race, religion, sex, age are increasing day by day. All over Europe, western countries and including Nepal, environment of women in organization are sharply increasing. Different people have different need and interest. They have different perception, experience learning habits, personality etc. to understand the need of different people, to manage different people, to develop the feeling of team work, HRM plays the vital role through its activities. It is a most significant task done by HRM which other management cannot perform.
Technological change: Technology is changing rapidly. With scientific movement, new technologies were developed. Human resource in organization need to require new competencies to cope with the rapid technology change, which helps in increasing productivity. To increase productivity, an efficient utilization of technology skillful manpower is required. The need is growing for computer and information technologies are considered as friendly human resources. This all necessities have increased the interest in HRM.
Globalization: There’s no doubt that the world of work as we know, it is rapidly changing. Even as little as fifteen years ago, the time was calmer than they are today. Globalization has led to operations in several countries. The human resources in organizations have also assumed global dimensions. Globalization of markets and manufacturing has vastly increased international competition. In global competition, some firms are doing well others are failed. HRM policies and practices need to be adapted to varying socio cultural forces to carryout hot country operation. This has led to rising interest in HRM.
Increasing competitions: Today most of organizations are facing both internal and external competition. As part of an organization then, HRM must be prepared to deal with the effects of the changing world of work. For them, this means understanding the implications of globalization, technological changes, work force diversity, changing skill requirement continuous improvement initiatives, the contingent work force, decentralized work sites, and employee involvement.
Changes in nature of works: Technological and globalization trend has changed the nature of jobs and work. Technological changes including fax machine, internet, and personal computers have allowed companies to reallocate operations to location with lower wage.
Others: There are other changes also shaping human resource management. Many laws are passed to limit manager’s action and to protect the interest of workforce. Equal employment opportunity, mandated health benefit, union management relation law etc. manager has to deal frequently with the help of HRM. Due to this, the interest of almost all managers is increasing in HRM.

Strategic Roles of Human Resource Management

Strategic human resource management is to ensure that human resource management is fully integrated into strategic planning, that HRM policies cohere both across policy areas and cross hierarchies and that HRM policies are accepted and used by line managers as part of their every day work. Strategic management is that set of managerial decisions and actions that determine the long-term performance of a corporation. It includes environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation and evaluation and control.

Fred R. David has listed the following benefits that strategic HRM brings for an organization.

Allows identification, prioritization and exploitation of opportunities.
Provides an objective view of management problems.
Represents a framework for improved coordination and control of activities.
Minimizes the effects of adverse conditions and change.
Allows major decisions to better support established objectives.
Allows more effective allocation of time and resources of time and resources to identified opportunities.
Allows fewer resources and lesser time to be devoted to correcting erroneous or adhoc decisions.
Creates a framework for internal communication among personnel.
Helps to integrate the behaviors of individuals into a total effort.
Provides a basis for the classification of individual responsibilities.
Give encouragement to forward thinking.
Provides a co-operative, integrated and enthusiastic approach to tackling problems and opportunities.
Encourages a favorable attitude towards change.
Gives a degree of discipline and formality to the management of a business.

Strategic Role Played by

Strategies are the long-term plan of every organization. Each and every business firm is moved with strategies to achieve their goals. Strategic human resource management is concerned with the development and implementations of people strategies which are integrated are integrated with organizational strategies to attain long-term goals. Generally, business manager have three strategic decisions

Corporate strategy
Business strategy
Functional strategy

Strategy helps in balancing two sets of forces i.e. internal environment and external environment. However following factors are considered to be strategic role of HRM.

Development of quality management: It can be developed by assisting with the introduction of total quality management approaches through education and training processes and involving people in quality improvement programmes.
Development of Reward policies: Using the reward management system to define performance expectations to reward people according to their contribution.
Development of Employee relation policies: Developing a cooperative climate of employee relations, which allows direct communication to employees but, where appropriate, recognized the role union play in a pluralist organization.
Development of cultural management policies: Influencing behavior and thereby, attitudes through researching, performance management, development and reward strategies, and helping to get the mission and values of the organization designed understood, accepted and acted upon.
Performance management strategy: Introducing system, which clarify objectives at all levels in the organization and measure performance against those objectives, in order to agree improvement and development plan.

Objectives of Human Resource Management (HRM)

The primary objective of any organization is to maximize profits and wealth attribution to the owners of the firm. The main objective of human resource management is to manage the workers and employees in an enterprise in the best manner. Following are the important objectives of human resource management in an organization:

1. To increase the welfare of human resource: personnel management is to increase the welfare of workers and employees engaged in an enterprise. Best working conditions should be provided and many other welfare programmes must be launched so that employees may get the facilities of health and recreation.

2. To establish harmonious relations between labour and capital: The objective of personnel management is to establish harmonious and friendly relations between labour and capital in the enterprise. The philosophy of modern management is that the contribution of labour is not less important than that of the capital. “Managers realize that they cannot make the best of capital without co-operation of the labour. Therefore, it stresses upon the development of trust and faith between employees and employers.

3. To arrange effective communication with employees: Another very important of personnel management/ Human Resource Management is to maintain effective communication with employees so that the orders and directions of management may be passed to the employees and the problems and grievances of workers may also be communicated to the management.

4. To develop the employees: The objective of human resource management is the development of employees working in an enterprise. Employees are provided the facilities of training and education so that the efficiency and ability of the employees may be increased.

5. Other objectives: Other objectives of human resource management/ personnel management are:

To arrange for the sufficient number of efficient, capable and expressed employees in all the departments and at all the levels of management.
To motivate the employees so that the productivity of enterprise may be increased
To increase the moral of employee
To provide the best working conditions to the employees so that they may complete their work in most efficient manner.
To integrate HR policies with business plans and reinforce and an appropriate culture or as necessary, reshape an inappropriate culture.

Major Roles of HRM

Human resource management is a vital function of management in organizational settings. HRM performs the following roles in an organization.
1. Line Function Role: HR managers perform the line authority role within the human resource management department. They have right to make decision to direct the work of subordinates. And given order to their own department.

2. Staff Function Role: HR managers perform the staff authority role by assisting and advising line managers on HRM matters. HR managers are generally staff managers. They assist and advise line managers in acquisition, development, utilization and maintenance of human resources. They also administer various benefits and services for employees. They also assist line managers to comply with legal provision related to human resources in the organization.

3. Functional Control Role: HR managers perform the functional control role by coordinating all activities related to human resources management. They ensure that human resources objectives, policies, procedures, programmes and laws are being consistently carried out by line managers throughout the organization.

4. Strategies Role: HR managers are concerned with the development and implementation of people strategies to attain organizational goals. Such strategies are integrated with overall organizational strategies.

Responsibilities of HRM

According to the expert, “The direct handling of people is and always has been an integral part of every line manager’s responsibility, from president down to the lowest level supervision.” For example, one major company outlines its line supervisors’ responsibilities for effective human resource management under the following general headings.

Placing the right person on the right job.
Starting new employees in the organization (orientation).
Training employees for job that are new to learn
Improving job performance of each person.
Gaining creative cooperation and developing smooth working condition.
Interpreting the company’s policies and procedures.
Controlling labor cost.
Developmental moral
Protecting employee’s health and physical condition.

In small organizations, line managers may carry out all these personnel duties unassisted. But as the organization grows, they need the assistance specialized knowledge, and advice of a separate human resource staff.

Development of HRM Concept

The development of human resources management concept is as follows:
1. Industrial revolution stage: Industrial revolution brought the three major developments

The development of machinery
The linkage of human power to machine
The establishment of factories.

Due to the industrial revolution, people specialized in their job. Workers organized themselves into trade unions to achieve better conditions of employment. Labor laws were enacted to protect the interest of worker. Collective bargaining between labor and management was used to settle industrial disputes.

Robert Owen reduced working hours and built houses and schools for workers. After industrial revolution, problems related to human resources led towards taking care of employees. It can be considered as the first stage of human resources development.

2. Scientific management movement stage: This stage aimed at improving worker efficiency through proper selection, training and compensation. F.W. Taylor suggested the following tips

Individuals who are selected for the jobs should be physically and mentally ready to demand of jobs.
Employees should not be called upon to work at the time that would be detrimental to their health.
Education and development of the workers, properly trained and developed workers produced best.
Incentive system to “earn more be performing more” properly paid workers.
Specialization through division of work to achieve efficiency.

3. Industrial psychology: An employee having positive attitude can faster industrial efficiency. Efficiency can be increased by testing intelligence test of the employee. Thus to increase the efficiency, human psychology should be studied through different test and should developed a good interest, and positive attitude on the work in them.

4. The human relation movement stage: This stage focuses people element in personnel management. Hawthorne studies serve as the beginning of human relation movement. It advocates the following personnel management aspects.

Participative management and teamwork.
Importance of social setting and group dynamics in employee productivity.
Need for improved communication among managers and employees.

5. The period of labor legislation: To control, direct and motivate the labor, there should be strong need of some kinds of legislation. The civil right act was passed in 1964. Discrimination law, pension laws, health and safety laws, federal regulatory agencies and their interpretive, guidelines, and cowed ruling affected virtually every aspect of employment.

6. Organizational development movement stage: The organization development (OD) movement of the 1960s and 1970s was closely associated with the concept of behavioral science. The OD approach concentrates on overall organizational effectiveness, especially with regard to process how people behave in situation where they are constantly interacting with one another. Team development and management of change were often important features of an OD programme. Particular attention was paid to the analysis of group process and OD consultants evolved methods of analyzing organization behavior, especially within and between group, and of solving conflict problems.

Distinction between Personnel Management and HR Management

HRM is developed from personnel management. They are similar in some ways but different in may ways. Many people feel that HRM offered nothing new and is just a meaningless and transatlantic level, which has been attached to personnel management. Effective personnel managers have always practiced HRM.

The following points highlights the difference between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management.

Personnel Management	Human Resource Management
1. It tries to develop individual employee.	1. HRM develops individual's employee through team effort.
2. It is a traditional approach to administration of people.	2. It is a modern system to management of human energy and physical strength.
3. It is concerned with individual satisfaction only.	3. It is concerned with whole team satisfaction.
4. PM dealing is related in negotiating administration and collect agreement.	4. HRM dealing is concerned in wider notion of work i.e. it emphasizes employee participation in decision making.
5. Personnel management used to assist line manager to implement the corporate strategy.	5. HR manager are the line manager who directly contribute to profit.
6. The outcomes of PM is individual satisfaction.	6. The outcomes of HRM is increased productivity, profit and organizational effectiveness.
7. PM has simple rising towards management.	7. HRM has broad vision toward management.
8. PM considers people as variable cost.	8. HRM requires people as social capital and valuable asset.

Concept and Factors Contributed for the Development of HRM

Concept of HRM

Human resource management is concerned with people dimension in organization. It focuses on management of human energy and capabilities to improve productivity. People possessing physical strength and energy alone are not human resource. People become human resource only when they contribute their competencies. Competencies are the combination of knowledge, skill, attitude, experience etc. As we know management is the art of getting things done through other people. Managers perform the function of planning, organizing, staffing, coordinating, directing etc. The staffing function is concerned with human resource management.

According to Decenzo and Robbins, “Human resource management is a process consisting of four functions acquisition, development, motivation and maintenance.”

According to Paul G. Hastings, “Human resource management is that aspect of management having as its goal the effective utilization of the labour resources of an organization.”
Similarly, Oliver Sheldon defines, “Human resource management is a part of the management process, which is primarily concerned with human constituents of an organization.”

Hence, in conclusion human resource management is very crucial for the success of any organization. Human beings are a resource to an organization but it is the living resource which cannot be equated with the other resources which are unanimated. Human resources add to the value while other resources add to the cost. All the firms buy the same material and machines but it is the people in the organization who built it and makes differences in the ultimate product. The human being never reaches an ultimate value throughout his lifetime at work which other resources reach to an ultimate value it starts producing. Thus, the management of human resource is very complicated and challenging task for those who are interested with the successful running of an organization and this implies considerable knowledge by various aspects of human resource management. The human resource management function or personnel function should be lightening rod attracting the tension and human conflict, which are inevitable in an organization and community.

Factors contributed for the Development of HRM

The phrase “human resource management” is not new. It was used as long as 40 years ago, but at that time, it was interchangeable with personnel management. The development of HRM has gone through different stages. Many factors have contributed for the development of human resource management. They are follows:

1. Industrial revolution stage: Industrial revolution brought the three major developments.

The development of machinery
The linkage of human power to machine
The establishment of factories.

Due to the industrial revolution, people specialized in their job. Workers organized themselves into trade unions to achieve better conditions of employment. Labour laws were enacted to protect the interest of worker. Collective bargaining between labour and management was used to settle industrial disputes. Robert Owen reduced working hours and built house and schools for workers. After industrial revolution, problems related to human resources led towards taking care of employees. It can be considered as the first stage of human resources development.

2. Scientific management movement stages: This stage aimed at improving worker efficiency through proper selection, training and compensation. F. W. Taylor suggested the following tips:

Individuals who are selected for the jobs should be physically and mentally to the demand of jobs.
Employees should not be called upon to work at the time that would be detrimental to their health.
Education and development of the workers, properly trained and developed workers produced best.
Incentive system to “earn more be performing more” properly paid workers.
Specialization through division of work to achieve efficiency.

Participative management and teamwork
Importance of social setting and group dynamics in employee productivity.
Need for improved communication among managers and employees.

5. The period of labour legislation: To control, direct and motivate the labour, there should be strong need of some kinds of legislation. The civil right act was passed in 1964. Discrimination law, pension laws, health and safety laws, federal regulatory agencies. And their interpretive guidelines and cowed ruling affected virtually every aspect of employment.

6. Organizational development movement stage: The organization development (OD) movement of the 1960s and 1970s was closely associated with the concept of behavioral science. The OD approach concentrates on overall organizational effectiveness, especially with regard to process how people behave in situation where they are constantly interacting with one another. Team development and management of change were often important features of an OD programme. Particular attention was paid to the analysis of group processes and OD consultants evolved methods of analyzing organization behavior, especially within and between group and of solving conflict problems.

In particular, Schein (1969) developed methodologies for process consulting. This involves helping clients to generate information, which they can understand about their projects and problems, and creating conditions for them to won the solutions to their problems by gaining internal commitment to their choice.

Functions of HRM (Human Resource Management)

1. The staffing function: Although recruiting is frequently perceived as the initial step in the staffing function, there are a number of prerequisites. Specifically, when a company plans strategically, it determines its goals and objectives for a given period of time. These goals and objectives often result is structural changes being made in organization. Once an application has come in, it is time to begin the selection phase. Selection too has a dual focus. It attempts to think out the large set of applications that arrived during the recruiting phase and to select an applicant who will be successful on the job. To achieve this goal, many companies use a variety of steps to assess the applicants. The candidate who successfully completed all steps is typically offered the job, but that is only half of equation. HRM must also ensure that the good prospects accept the job offer, if made accordingly; HRM must communicate a variety of information to the applicant, such as the organization culture, what are expected of employees and any other information that pertinent to the candidates decision making process.

Once the selection process is completed, the staffing function has come to an end. The goals, then of the staffing function are to locate competent employees and get them into organization when this goal has been reached, it is time for HRM to begin focusing its attention on the employee’s training and development.

2. The training and development function: Whenever HRM embarks on the hiring process, it attempts to search and secure a candidate whom we labeled as the “best” possible candidate. And while HRM professionals pride themselves on being able to determine those who are qualified versus those who are not, the fact remains that few, if any, new employees can truly come into an organization and immediately becomes fully functioning, 100% performers. First employees need to adapt to their new surrounding, socialization is a means of bringing about. This adoption while it may begin informally in the late stages of the hiring process. During this time, the focus is to orient the new employee to the rules, regulations and goals of the organization, department, and work unit. Thus, as the employee becomes more comfortable with his or her surrounding, more intense training can occur.

Reflection over the past few decades tell us that, depending on the job, employees often take a number of months to adjust to their new organization and jobs. Does that imply that HRM has not hired properly or the staffing function goals were not met? On the contrary, it indicates and peculiarities involved in each organization’s positions result in jobs being tailored to adequately meet organizational needs.

Accordingly, HRM plays an important to note that employee and career development is more employees centered.

At the conclusion of the training and development function, HRM attempts to reach the goals of having competent, adapted employees who possess the up-to-date skill, knowledge, and abilities needed to perform their current jobs are more successfully.

3. The motivation function: The motivation function is one of the most important yet probably the least understood aspect of the HRM process. Why?
Simply because human behavior is complex trying to figure out what motivates various employees has been a concern of behavioral science. First of all, one must begin to think of motivation as a multifaceted process-one that has individual, managerial and organizational implications. Motivation is not just what the employee exhibits, but also a collection of environment issues surrounding the job. It has been proposed that one’s performance in an organization is a function of two factors ability and willingness to do the jobs. Thus, from a performance perspective, employees need to have the appropriate skills and abilities to adequately do the job.

Motivating employees also requires a level of respect between “management” and “workers”. This respect can be seen as involving employees in decisions that affect them listening to employees and implementing their suggestions where appropriate. The next step is to understand the implications of motivational theories. Some motivational theories are well known by most practicing managers. Performance standards for each employee must also be set managers must be sure that the performance evaluation system is designed to provide feedback to employees regarding their past performance while simultaneously addressing any performance weaknesses the employee may have. A link should be established between employee compensation and performance.

Throughout the activities required in the motivation function, the efforts all focus on one primary goal: to have those competent and adapted employees, with up-to-date skills, knowledge, and abilities, exerting high energy levels. Once that are achieved, it is time turn the HRM focus to the maintenance function.

4. The maintenance function: This is the last phase of the HRM process. The objectives of this phase are to put into place activities that will help retain productive employees. HRM must work to ensure that the working environment is safe and healthy: caring for employees’ well being has a major effect on their commitment. HRM must also realize that nay problem an employee focus in his or her personal life will ultimately be brought into workplace. Employee assistance programs, such as programs that help individuals deal with stressful life situations, are needed. Such programs provide many benefits to the organization while simultaneously helping the affected employee. In addition to protecting employees’ welfare, it is necessary for HRM to operate appropriate communication programs in the organization. Including in such programs is the ability for employees to know what is occurring around them and vent frustrations. Employee relations programs should be designed to ensure that employees are kept well informed through email, net, bulletin boards, town hall meeting, or teleconferencing and to foster an environment where employee voices are heard. If time and effort are expended in this phase, HRM may be able to achieve its ultimate goal of having competent employees, who have adapted to the organization’s culture, with up-to-date skills, knowledge and abilities, who exert high energy level, who are now willing to maintain their commitment and loyalty to the company. This process is difficult to implement and maintain, but the rewards should be such that the effort placed in such endeavours are warranted.

Pages