UNIT V- Human resource management

Human resource management (HRM, or simply HR) is a function in

organizations designed [by whom?] to maximize employee performance in service of an
employer's strategic objectives. HR is primarily concerned with the management
of people within organizations, focusing on policies and on systems.

BASIC FUNCTIONS OF HR MANAGER:

The major functional areas in human resource management are:

1. Planning,
2. Staffing,
3. Employee development, and
4. Employee maintenance.
These four areas and their related functions share the common objective of an adequate number
of competent employees with the skills, abilities, knowledge, and experience needed for further
organisational goals. Although each human resource function can be assigned to one of the four
areas of personnel responsibility, some functions serve a variety of purposes. For example,
performance appraisal measures serve to stimulate and guide employee development as well as
salary administration purposes. The compensation function facilitates retention of employees and
also serves to attract potential employees to the organisation. A brief description of usual human
resource functions are given below:
Human Resource Planning: In the human resource planning function, the number and type of
employees needed to accomplish organisational
goals are determined. Research is an important part of this function because planning requires
the collection and analysis of information in order to forecast human resources supplies and to

predict future human resources needs. The basic human resource planning strategy is staffing and
employee development.
Job Analysis: Job analysis is the process of describing the nature of a job and specifying the
human requirements, such as skills, and experience needed to perform it. The end product of the
job analysis process is the job description. A job description spells out work duties and activities
of employees. Job descriptions are a vital source of information to employees, managers, and
personnel people because job content has a great influence on personnel programmes and
practices.
Staffing: Staffing emphasises the recruitment and selection of the human resources for an
organisation. Human resources planning and recruiting precede the actual selection of people for
positions in an organisation. Recruiting is the personnel function that attracts qualified applicants
to fill job vacancies. In the selection function, the most qualified applicants are selected for
hiring from among those attracted to the organisation by the recruiting function. On selection,
human resource functionaries are involved in developing and administering methods that enable
managers to decide which applicants to select and which to reject for the given jobs.
Orientation: Orientation is the first step toward helping a new employee adjust himself to the
new job and the employer. It is a method to acquaint new employees with particular aspects of
their new job, including pay and benefit programmes, working hours, and company rules and
expectations.
Training and Development: The training and development function gives employees the skills
and knowledge to perform their jobs effectively. In addition to providing training for new or
inexperienced employees, organisations often provide training programmes for experienced
employees whose jobs are undergoing change. Large organisations often have development
programmes which prepare employees for higher level responsibilities within the organisation.
Training and development programmes provide useful means of assuring that employees are
capable of performing their jobs at acceptable levels.
Performance Appraisal: Performance appraisal function monitors employee performance to
ensure that it is at acceptable levels. Human resource professionals are usually responsible for
developing and administering performance appraisal systems, although the actual appraisal of
employee performance is the responsibility of supervisors and managers. Besides providing a
basis for pay, promotion, and disciplinary action, performance appraisal information is essential
for employee development since knowledge of results (feedback) is necessary to motivate and
guide performance improvements.
Career Planning: Career planning has developed partly as a result of the desire of many
employees to grow in their jobs and to advance in their career. Career planning activities include
assessing an individual employees potential for growth and advancement in the organisation.
Compensation: Human resource personnel provide a rational method for determining how much
employees should be paid for performing certain jobs. Pay is obviously related to the
maintenance of human resources. Since compensation is a major cost to many organisations, it is

a major consideration in human resource planning. Compensation affects staffing in that people
are generally attracted to organisations offering a higher level of pay in exchange for the work
performed. It is related to employee development in that it provides an important incentive in
motivating employees to higher levels of job performance and to higher paying jobs in the
organisation.
Benefits: Benefits are another form of compensation to employees other than direct pay for work
performed. As such, the human resource function of administering employee benefits shares
many characteristics of the compensation function. Benefits include both the legally required
items and those offered at employers discretion. The cost of benefits has risen to such a point
that they have become a major consideration in human resources planning. However, benefits are
primarily related to the maintenance area, since they provide for many basic employee needs.
Labour Relations: The term labour relations refers to interaction with employees who are
represented by a trade union. Unions are organisation of employees who join together to obtain
more voice in decisions affecting wages, benefits, working conditions, and other aspects of
employment. With regard to labour relations, the personnel responsibility primarily involves
negotiating with the unions regarding wages, service conditions, and resolving disputes and
grievances.
Record-keeping: The oldest and most basic personnel function is employee record-keeping.
This function involves recording, maintaining, and retrieving employee related information for a
variety of purposes. Records which must be maintained include application forms, health and
medical records, employment history (jobs held, promotions, transfers, lay-offs), seniority lists,
earnings and hours of work, absences, turnover, tardiness, and other employee data. Complete
and up-to-date employee records are essential for most personnel functions. More than ever
employees today have a great interest in their personnel records. They want to know what is in
them, why certain statements have been made, and why records may or may not have been
updated.

MANPOWER PLANNING:
Manpower Planning which is also called as Human Resource Planning consists of putting right
number of people, right kind of people at the right place, right time, doing the right things for
which they are suited for the achievement of goals of the organization. Human Resource
Planning has got an important place in the arena of industrialization. Human Resource Planning
has to be a systems approach and is carried out in a set procedure. The procedure is as follows:
1. Analysing the current manpower inventory

2. Making future manpower forecasts

3. Developing employment programmes
4. Design training programmes

Recruitment refers to the overall process of attracting, selecting

and appointing suitable candidates for jobs (either permanent or temporary)
within an organization. Recruitment can also refer to processes involved in
choosing individuals for unpaid positions, such as voluntary roles or unpaid
trainee roles. Managers, human resource generalists and recruitment
specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases
public-sector employment agencies, commercial recruitment agencies, or
specialist search consultancies are used to undertake parts of the process.
Internet-based technologies to support all aspects of recruitment have
become widespread.

SELECTION:

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT:

Employee Training and Development

The quality of employees and their development through training and education are major factors
in determining long-term profitability of a small business. If you hire and keep good employees,
it is good policy to invest in the development of their skills, so they can increase their
productivity.
Training often is considered for new employees only. This is a mistake because ongoing training
for current employees helps them adjust to rapidly changing job requirements.
Purpose of Employee Training and Development Process
Reasons for emphasizing the growth and development of personnel include

Creating a pool of readily available and adequate replacements for personnel who may
leave or move up in the organization.

Enhancing the company's ability to adopt and use advances in technology because of a
sufficiently knowledgeable staff.

Building a more efficient, effective and highly motivated team, which enhances the
company's competitive position and improves employee morale.

Ensuring adequate human resources for expansion into new programs.

Research has shown specific benefits that a small business receives from training and developing
its workers, including:

Increased productivity.

Reduced employee turnover.

Increased efficiency resulting in financial gains.

Decreased need for supervision.

WAGE AND SALARY ADMINISTRATON

The main objective of wage and salary administration is to establish and maintain an equitable
wage and salary system. This is so because only a properly developed compensation system
enables an employer to attract, obtain, retain and motivate people of required calibre and
qualification in his/her organisation. These objectives can be seen in more orderly manner from
the point of view of the organisation, its individual employees and collectively. There are
outlined and discussed subsequently:

Organisational Objectives:

The compensation system should be duly aligned with the organisational need and should also be
flexible enough to modification in response to change.
Accordingly, the objectives of system should be to:
1. Enable an organisation to have the quantity and quality of staff it requires.
2. Retain the employees in the organisation.
3. Motivate employees for good performance for further improvement in performance.
4. Maintain equity and fairness in compensation for similar jobs.
5. Achieve flexibility in the system to accommodate organisational changes as and when these
take place.
6. Make the system cost-effective.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL:
A performance appraisal (PA), also referred to as a performance review, performance
evaluation,[1] (career) development discussion,[2] or employee appraisal[3] is a method by
which the job performance of an employee is documented and evaluated. Performance appraisals
are a part of career development and consist of regular reviews of employee performance within
organizations

Halo effect

Problem: When a manager rates an employee high on all items because of one
characteristic that he or she likes.

Example: If a worker has few absence but the supervisor has a good relationship
with that employee, the supervisor might give to the employee a high rating in all
other areas of work, in order to balance the rating. Sometimes it happens due to
the emotional dependability based on the good relationship they have.

Solution: Training raters to recognize the problem and differentiating the person
with the performance they do.

Horns effect

Problem: This is the opposite to the Halo effect and Horns effect occurs when a
manager rates an employee low on all items because of one characteristic that he
or she dislikes.

Example: If a worker does a good performance and in some resting times he or

she loves telling jokes, but his or her supervisor hates jokes, the supervisor might
give to the employee a lower rating in all other areas of work, because they do not
have that conexion. Sometimes it happens when they do not have a close
relationship and manager do not like the person her/him-self.

Solution: Is the same as in the Halo Effect. Training raters to recognize the
problem and differentiating the person with the performance they do.

Problem: The tendency to rate people relative to other people rather than to the
individual performance he or her is doing.

Example: At school, if you are sat down where all the chatty people are and you
are silent but you do not pay attention and you do not do your homework, because
you are drawing; when teacher gets angry with the group, you might be excluded
of the bad behavior they have just because you are silent; but not because you are
doing a good performance. Therefore, according to the group, you are not that
chatty, but you are either doing the proper performance. However the rater will
only get the idea that your behavior is not as bad as other, thus, you will be rate
higher.

Solution: The rating should reflect the task requirement performance, not
according to other people attitude.

Contrast

Similar-to-Me / Different-from-Me

Problem: Sometimes, ratters are influenced by some of the characteristics that

people show. Depending if those characteristics are similar or different to ratters'
one, they would be evaluated differently.

Example: A manager with higher education degree might give subordinates with
higher education degree a higher appraisal than those with only bachelors
degrees.

Solution: Try to focus on the performance the employee is doing regardless the
common characteristic that you have

Problem: When the rater evaluates the performance of an employee relying only
on a small percentage of the amount of work done.

Example: An employee has to do 100 reports. Then, the manager take five of
them to check how has the work been made, and the manager finds mistakes in
those five reports. Therefore the manager will appraised the work of the employee
as a "poor" one, without having into account the other 95 reports that the manager
has not seen, that have been made correctly.

Solution: To follow the entire track of the performance, not just a little part of it.

Sampling

GRIEVANCE HANDLING:
Grievance is all about violation of the contract, practices, rules and regulations. As human beings
are different there is bound to be grievances among employees leading to conflicts at the
workplace. To avert any kind of conflicts within the organization, there is need for a proper
grievance procedure so that the employees feel that their grievances are addressed and redressed.

JOB EVALUATION:

A job evaluation is a systematic way of determining the value/worth of a job in

relation to other jobs in an organization. It tries to make a systematic comparison
between jobs to assess their relative worth for the purpose of establishing a rational
pay structure.

MERIT RATING.
1. : computation of an insurance premium for a particular risk on the basis of its
individual loss-causing characteristics see experience rating.
2. : the rating of an employee by systematic evaluation of his proficiency in a job.