Lesson-6

Introduction:

In this we mainly learn how and why did HRM come into the existence. It evolved from
personnel management. Human resources were considered most important and vital part of
the economy this resource has to be taken care of.

Objectives:

Learning Objective this Unit

By the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

Give concise definition for HRM functions.

1. Clearly articulate the difference between HRM and
Personnel philosophy and functions.
2. Describe the various instruments/functions of HRM.
3. Know the processes resulting from the instruments
and the final outcomes.

MS 22B - Eddie Corbin, Lecturer 2

Human Resources Management (HRM):

Definition: David. A. Decenzo & Stephen p. Robbins: A process consisting four functions-
acquisition, development, motivation and maintenance of human resources. Institute of
personnel management, London, UK: “ Personnel Management is that part of management
concerned with the people at work and with their relationship into an effective organisation;
the men and women who make up an enterprise and having regard for the well-being of the
individual and of working groups, to enable them to make their best contribution to its
success.”
Edward Flippos-personnel management is the planning; organising, directing and controlling
of the procurement, development, compensation, integration, maintenance and separation of
human resources to the objectives are accomplished.
HRD organization and Responsibilities:
Departmentation: Responsibility can be broadly classified under the following three
categories.
Personnel administration-Keeping records, staffing etc.
Industrial relations-employee assistance, motivation, grievance, redressals, T&D etc.
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Labour Relations- Collective bargaining, Union-management, wages, agreement etc.,

Departments are formed by grouping major activities together so as to bring by functional

specialisation and delegation of authority. Hence some more groups are framed out of the
above, broad classification and separate departments of organisation, no of employees and
their specialization and nature and type business.

Types of Organisation structure: There are three types of Organisation Structures, namely,
centralised, decentralized and matrix. Each has its own merits and demerits. There is nothing
like the ‘best form’ of an organisation or ‘ideal structure’, what is the important is to develop
an ‘effective’ organization structure which is the flexible enough to incorporate necessary
modifications in the futures the situation demands. Centralization is economic and ensures
unity of direction control and org grow in size.
Decentralisation, on the other hand, is excellent from which accelerate manpower
development. It promotes delegation of authority and quick decision making processes
especially where organization is quite big in terms of multiple units and multi-products and
dispersed widely in geographic locations. In decentralized organisation, the philosophy is to
push decision-making as far down as possible.
This will assist the organisation in two ways:
Increases initiative and motivation, which in turn result empowerment.
Abilities of fast response, which improve competitive advantages.

Matrix type of organisations is an attempt to desire advantages of the both centralisation and
decentralisation and at the same time improve the team building of both line and staff
managers. Her both line and staff managers report to the head of department (HOD)
administratively.

Now as we all know the Human Resource Management involves basically procurement
function .it treats human being as a resource. HRM views man not only as economic person
but looks at from social and political point of view also. The Indian economy during last 40
years had been controlled by the economic policy of the government. The policy was
influenced by political, economical reasons and also the idea of industries growing to meet
the market demands. There were governmental restrictions on licensing, foreign exchange,
import, and encouragement to public sector. These restrictions impaired the growth of
economy results, balance of payments. And hence it impaired the decline the India’s credit
worthiness in the international market. This resulted in liberalization of government’s
economic policy. As a result MRTP and FERA were removed and as a result liberalization of
government’s economic policy came into existence. It had its effect on monetary, fiscal,
control on inflation, controlling subsidies, restructuring public sector and exit policy.
IMPACT OF THE CHANGED POLICY: it changed the direction of the country from
socialistic pattern to market economy. Therefore we saw lots of multinationals entering our
country. Ability to maintain high quality to maximize productivity has become the need of
the hour. These will directly depend on the quality and commitment of the human resources.
IMPACT ON HUMAN RESOURCES: The new economic policy has an adverse impact on
employment, particularly so because of recessionary conditions and import policy. The
employers are cutting down the employment

Of employees so as to maintain competitive in the global market. Socially in the society this
has led to VRS schemes and Golden shake hands policy.
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NATURE AND SCOPE.

HRM is concerned with people. Every organization is made up of people and thus
acquiring their services, developing skills, motivating them to high levels of performance and
ensuring that they continued to maintain their commitment to the organization for achieving
organizational goals. This principle is applicable for every organization – Whether it is a
profit or non profit, private or public. The organization which are able to acquire develop,
stimulate and retain outstanding workers will be both effective and efficient. Survival of an
organization requires competent managers and workers co-ordinating their efforts towards a
common goal.

HRM consist of four functions – acquisition, motivation and maintenance – of HR. These
can be described as getting people, preparing them activating them and retaining them.

The acquisition begins with planning. Relative to the human resource requirements,
organization should know where it is getting and how they are going to get it. This include
recruitment, selection and socialization of employees.

The development function means, give training to employees, management development

(knowledge acquisition etc) and career development.

Motivation function begins with the recognition that individuals are unique and
should use motivational techniques satisfy human needs. With in motivation function, job
satisfaction, performance appraisal, behavioural & structural techniques for stimulating work
performance etc.

The final function is maintenance it concerned with providing those working

conditions that employees believe are important factor to maintain commitment to
organization.

Dear students, hope the first lesson gave you a fair idea of what the field of HRM holds for
us. Today let us know a little bit more about the same. You all keep hearing about personnel
management. You must be wondering what’s the difference between personnel management
and HRM and what is HRD?? So in this lesson we are going to tackle the same question:

Elements of HR functions
Importance of HR functions
Personnel functions
HRM versus Personnel functions
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HRD instruments
Processes, and finally
Outcomes!!!

Objectives of Human resource management:-

What are the objectives of the human resource management?

A very good question indeed it makes us all to think and analyze. All of us have our
individual goals and objectives in the life. Similarly HRM does believes in having its goals.
Now any one of you can tell me what would be the goals?

We will analyze them one by one

1. The first and foremost objective of human resource management is to have a highly
commited, eligible, talented, and happy workers.

2. Development of employees:- An employee does not come alone into the organization.
What does he bring? He brings with himself abilities, attitude, behavior, personality etc..
Individual has the objective of enhancing his personal growth. He seeks the organization
for realization of his personal growth. Organization needs employees for fulfillment of
organization objectives. There is an element of mutuality of interests here. Individual and
organization need each other for fulfillment of their objectives.

There is a need for encouragement of employees in an organization to develop and grow.

If sufficient is given for growth it will leads to the efficient working, proper maintenance,
motivation and retention of work force.

If the personal growth of employees are hindered absenteeism, turnover will increase and
performance and satisfaction will come down. Hence HRM aims and strives for the
development of the employees.

3.Growth and development of the organization:-

HRM objective is to bring about the overall development and growth of the organization.
The HRM department serves all the department of the organization. Behavior analysis of
employee is focused at individual, group, and organizational levels. Integration of
individuals and groups is done in an organization structure is maintained. Overall the
objective of organizational development is kept at the forefront.

The development of HR function and climate:-

The objective of HRM is to develop an effective HR function for development and
maintenance of human functions. HRM also has the objective of maintaining an excellent
HR culture.

What do you understand by culture? Culture is our philosophies, faith and beliefs. By organization
culture we mean the philosophies, practices and the codes of practices which are prevalent in the
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organization. A culture with innovative ideas and opportunities for humans to develop and grow will pave
way for all round development of humans and organization. The objective of HRM is to develop HR
function is according to the organizational needs and see that good culture is estabilished in the
organization.

1. Objectives for the welfare of the society:- Our society as you know very well consists of all our
systems and their beliefs. Every organization faces the societal impact.

2. HRM seeks to do maximum good to the society and also tries to minimize the effects of the so-
called social events.

Why do we need the social objectives?

These social objectives are planned and needed to satisfy the ethical and social needs of the society.
HRM has the societal objective of doing good to society, complying with legal formalities and building
good industrial relations.

Functions of HRM

After the analysis of HRM objectives from the last lesson, it is simple to state the functions of
HRM. The functions are performed to realize the objectives of the HRM. Now let us analyze
the functions of the HRM to get an greater understanding.

HRM as you know by now involves the embracing the dimension of people. It involves
selection, motivation, and retention of the employees.

The functions are a mixture of behavior analysis, policy formulations and maintenance of
good interpersonal relations. In this lesson, we are going to focus on all of these functions:
the staffing, personnel management, or (as it's usually called today) human resource (HR)
management function. These include:

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 Conducting job analyses (determining the nature of each employee's job)
Planning labor needs and recruiting job candidates
Selecting job candidates
Orienting and training new employees
Managing Wages and Salaries (how to compensate employees) Providing
incentives and benefits
Appraising performance
Communicating (interviewing, counseling, disciplining)
Training and developing
Building employee commitment
Equal opportunity and affirmative action
Employee health and safety
Grievances and labor relations

Thus if we view it closer we find that human resources management is responsible for the
following:

1.Promotion of organisational needs: This is a very crucial function of HRM. The

organization needs people humanassets.People appreciate day by day with experience and
are extremely valuable assets in an organization.

HRM functions in this regard refer to planning of human resources, recruitment, placement,
motivation, training, assessments, appraisals etc., so that there is an effective contribution
from them to the organization.

2.Development of employees:

What does an employee brings with himself? He does not come alone.He does bring his
abilities,attitudes,personality,behaviour with himself.An individual aims for development

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and personal growth in the work sphere. Now what does an organization must do to develop
and encourage personal growth? Let us discuss in detail.

Firstly, the organization through its HR Department identifies the mechanisms for
Growth.This mechanism is known as assessment centre and is very popular
procedure.Evaluation of employees is done for manpower purposes and decisions are made
.A Variety of techniques are used.The behaviour observation leads to assessment and
identification of strengths and weaknesses.

Apart from functions of Potential discovery , Training and Development of personnel

Assessment centres also lead to increase in information about organization and review of
policies.

3.Relationship maintenance function: HRM functions include maintenance of effective

interpersonal relations.In this context the functions of legal compliance,maitenance and
Industrial relations are done by HRM.

4.Empowerment: What do you understand by the term Empowerment? It is the provision of

greater freedom and discretion to employees.When employees are given freedom they work
effectively as a team and strive for the development and growth of the organization.The
function of empowerment leads to the prosperity of the organization.

5.HRMs crucial function also includes Good and effective communication of policies.
Communication when streamlined effectively leads to excellent networkbuilding and growth.

6.Equality: Employees need to be treated with fairness and equality.HRMs function of equal
policies and justice make sure that the employees are protected fully.Equality leads to well
trained and wellmotivated employees.

7.Functions relating to job:What is a job? It is quite simple to define.It is the duty which one
is expected to do.An employee works well when the job matches with his expectations
,abilities and talents.Job Satisfaction is vital for all!!!

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Usually, by Creating Job enlargement, Job enrichment and Job rotation, jobs are made
interesting.
Job enlargement of HRM leads to increase in the jobs at the same level.
Job rotation ,as you all know,is giving people different jobs and training them.In this way
people become multi skilled.
Job enrichment leads to enriching the job with more responsibilities.Human needs are
many.But the most essential need is the need of self actualization.This need motivates him to
work higher and achieve high goals inlife.Jobenrichment is done to create involvement
,interest and also satisfy the self actualization motive of the employee.

Job enrichment can be done by enriching the job in relation to variety of skills, Significance
of tasks, Development of autonomy and access to Interpersonal relation.

With the changes in the economies and work force the functions of HRM are ever increasing.
HRM is coping up with economic reforms, diversified work culture, competition and societal
changes. Its role is becoming important day by day.

WHAT ARE THE HRM ACTIVITIES?

Organizational, work, and job design
Planning
Recruitment and selection
Training and development
Performance management
Compensation
Occupational health and safety
Employee and labour relations

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