«Human Resource Management» - Great Essay Sample

Q.1

HRM is the function within an organization engaged in recruitment, management, and direction provision for people who work in the organization. HRM performs mainly an organizational function dealing with the following issues: hiring, compensation, organization development, performance management, benefits, training, wellness, communication, employee motivation, administration, and safety. HRM also presents a comprehensive and strategic approach to manage people and the workplace environment and culture. Highly effective HRM allows employees to make their contributions to the accomplishment of the organization's objectives through diligent and effective performance of their work duties. In general, HRM is the process that aims at maximizing the utilization of available skilled workforce. Its main purpose is to use efficiently existing human resources within a company or organization.

As stated in the book written by DeCenzo, Robbins, and Verhulst (2012), globalization process contributed largely to the modern vision of HRM. Nowadays, HRM is changing direction from traditional personnel and administration roles, which are regarded as increasingly outsourced ones. HRM is currently focusing on strategic utilization of employees and employee programs that impact business in measurable ways. Strong employees are regarded as the main source of a company's competitive advantage in an environment that deals with complex and rapid changes on everyday basis. HRM has to have strategies to deal efficiently with these changes. Thus, HRM is the function that has to understand the implications of globalization process, technology changes, global economies, workforce diversity, lasting improvement initiatives, work sites decentralization, and employee involvement. These are among many other matters HRM practices have to cope with.

Q.2

HRM is the function within an organization focused primarily on "people" dimension. Thus, the major function of HRM is assistance provision to the employees of the organization. Support function means assistance provision to line employees in different HRM issues or other matters directly involved in production of the organization’s goods and services.

In order to provide the effective management of the employees, HR managers must learn to perform support function. HRM aims at achieving organizational objectives, which can be done only through acquiring employee’s services, motivating them to high levels of performance, developing their skills and ensuring that they are highly committed to the organization. The above is to be applied to any type of organization, government, business, health, and education.

In their book, DeCenzo, Robbins, and Verhulst regard hiring and keeping good people as a critical matter to the success development of every company. The authors offer the following classification of HRM that falls into four main functions: staffing, training and development, motivation, and maintenance. Thus, HRM is comprised of four major activities: hiring employees, preparing them for the jobs, stimulating employees' best performance, and keeping them within the organization.

On the first stage, staffing function is about giving the clear definition of the organization’s mission and strategy so that human resource managers can easily determine human resource needs that will support the organization's strategic plan. Once applications appear, the selection phase begins. This phase aims at finding competent employees and bringing them into the organization. Staffing function ends with the successful completion of the selection process.

Training and development function relates to the HRM activities focused on helping employees to develop proper skills and knowledge. It is important for this function to be a lasting process. The function aims at having adapted and competent employees who possess abilities needed for the efficient performance of their current jobs.

Motivation function is by far the most important and the most intricate matter of HRM. It is related with HRM activities that help employees to perform their job activities at high energy level. As human behavior is a rather complex issue, it is not always an easy task to find out what motivates different employees. It is recognized that a high level of respect between workers and management is required for motivation function implementation.

Maintenance function is realized on the last stage of HRM process. It is focused on retaining productive employees and maintaining their loyalty and commitment to the company or organization. Maintenance function exerts the need for different employee assistance programs that aim to help an employee to cope with different stressful life situations that always play a negative impact on his/her performance at work. Once all staffing, training and development, motivation, and maintenance functions of HRM are completed in a proper way, the organization, employees, and HRM team are all more likely to enjoy efficient and friendly working environment.

Q.3

Organization's corporate strategic plan and employment planning conducted by HRM team are two critically linked processes of a high importance within an organization. Thus, the organizational mission serves as the guidance for organizational strategy. HRM professionals carefully analyze the tasks and then come up with the ways to reorganize those tasks into jobs. The next phase is to find out the number of employees needed to occupy those job positions and the skills they need to possess to perform the jobs. In case the supply of workers surpasses the number necessary, HR professionals will have to reduce the number of employees. In case the supply of workers is less than needed, HR professionals will have to recruit more workers in order to fulfill the mission of organization’s strategic plan.

Employment planning is to be engaged within the strategic planning process to ensure that appropriate personnel are available to meet the requirements. This planning aims at determining what HRM demands exist for workers. DeCenzo, Robbins, and Verhulst give a nice illustrating of this type of planning. If a company sets a goal to expand its international divisions over the next five years, such action will require skilled employees to be able to cope with the task. In such case, HRM professional will need to come up with methods and solution for the organization's employees to meet the set task. If development of a proper employment strategy is neglected, the organization has the risk of failure.