Human Resource Management

Introduction

The organisation to build an excellent team of working professionals to ensure their proper productivity requires effective human resource management. This is because a proper HRM helps the organisation to add value to their employees to motivate them to work passionately for the better performance of the organisation. In this report, definition regarding HRM is provided along with a brief history of HRM and the role of the HRM director to help the organisation understand the importance of HRM. Moreover, the major activities to be performed by the HRM department are informed with reasons to help the organisation understand the way to effectively manage their employees.

Definition of HRM

The HRM is involved in the process of recruitment and selection, induction, appraisals, deciding benefits and compensation, motivating and training of employees along with other activities (Albrecht et al. 2015). Thus, the HRM is designed to work as an art of developing, procuring and maintaining competent workforce for achieving goals of the organisation in an efficient and effective manner. As commented by Jackson et al. (2014), HRM is the function performed within the organisation, which facilitates most effective use of employees to achieve individual as well as organisational goals. This is because they have effective knowledge regarding the way to plan, attract, develop and retain potential employees to make them work strategically to meet the determined goals.

Recent history of development of HRM

The recent history of development of HRM informs that wide changes are encountered due to globalisation, tremendous technological breakthrough and emergence of high competition in business. As mentioned by Rotich (2015), the HRM currently focuses on talent acquisition and retention of employees in the organisations through various strategies. This is because the talented employees act as key source of creating productivity in the organisation by using their updated skills and knowledge learned over the years. In the past, the HRM does not focus much on retaining talented employees because they feel all of them can be replaced (Latkovikj et al. 2016). However, with the rising competition, the HRM have understood the importance of retaining talented employees because they act as key source of information and knowledge which the organisation require to be in the advantageous position in the industry.

The recent development in the HRM has led the HR managers to put emphasis on employee monitoring and evaluation methods such as performance evaluation and appraisals, formation of balanced scorecard and others (Boxall, 2018). This is because the HRM is currently more concerned to understand needs and demands of the employees they require to fulfil and factors to be focussed in training of employees for proper productivity in the organisation. As asserted by Kaufman (2015), currently HRM are developing to focus on e-recruitment, formation of virtual teams and using different media to form connection with the employees. The major concept of using media within the HRM has recently surfaced because it helps the HR department to invest less time and easily remain in direct contact with the employees to make them work with efficiency. Moreover, the HRM has currently focussed more intensively on employee development and management by offering them recognition; appraisal, career opportunity and motivation without any form of discrimination to make the employees feel valued (Berman, 2015). This is because the HRM have understood that potential employees can be retained within the organisation if they are offered proper value for their work effort.

In the recent era, the government against employee exploitation has developed many policies and strict rules. It has led the HRM to focus on developing employee management policies in the organisation that allows the employees to have proper payroll and effective work-life balance (Richman, 2015). This is because without developing their policies accordingly by the HRM it would result them to experience legal issues and constraints that are going to create a negative image of the organisation and demotivation of the employees to work. In the recent era of globalisation, the other concept, which has surfaced for the HRM, is to maintain effective workplace diversity so that conflicts among the employees can be barred (Brewster et al. 2017). This is required so that employees from different culture and ethnicity can work collaboratively for meeting the goals of the organisations without hindrance.

Role of the HRM Director

The role of the HRM Director is immense as the person is responsible for controlling and directing proper human resource management in the organisation. As commented by Al Shobaki et al. (2016), HRM Director has the role to attract and identify potential talents for the company by using proper resources. Thus, the Director requires implementing every possible engines and media to find the suitable talent for the organisation to increase their productivity. The other role of the HRM Director is to arrange proper training program for the employees where their needs are fulfilled and skills are updated by an efficient trainer (Fay et al. 2015). The type of training such as on-job or off-job training to be offered to which employee is to be finalised by the HRM director. The HRM Director also has the role to monitor and evaluate employees with the help of the HR department to develop guidance and direction for compensating and benefiting specialist employees (Glaister et al. 2018). In order to execute this, the role of the HRM Director is to develop strategic plans to align performance of the employees with the compensation structure so that no employees are discriminated on any grounds while receiving benefits.

The HRM Director has the role to preserve employee-employer relationship through proper employee relation strategies for ensuring lack of conflict and non-collaboration at work. Moreover, they have the role to ensure that employees work within a safe work environment, which is to be determined by them through workplace investigations. This is because a safe working place makes the employees to concentrate at work without fear of any causality or harm (Bamber et al. 2017). Moreover, the HRM Director has the role to resolve employee complaints effectively. They also have the role to ensure risk mitigation activities are legally performed in the organisation (Glaister et al. 2018). Further, the role includes analysing statistical reports and data for identifying employee problems and development of suggestion for the organisation to improve their employment policies and practices. According to the given scenario, the being an HR Director of the firm, the Board of Directors is to arrange resources in such a way so that the roles can be effectively fulfilled for successful HR management.

Major activities of HRM department:

According to Boon and Verhoest (2018), Human Resource management is key aspect in achieving the business goals. There are different HR disciplines with particular functions. In each discipline, HRM deals with important functions for improving their marketing strategies as well as strengthen the employee engagement. There are important reasons behind doing all these HRM functions, which are associated with increasing the employee performance as well as strengthening the level of correspondence among them.

Selection and recruitment:

As stated by Garaus et al. (2016) recruitment is referred as the process of screening, captivating and selecting the eligible and highly qualified candidates who are able to meet the job criteria for particular organisation. Recruitment and selected is one of eth important function of HRM which not only deals with selecting the qualified as well as smart candidates but also encourage the unqualified candidates for preparing themselves for being appointed by the reputed organisation. Here the HR management team needs to execute an effective staffing plan, which will assist them to understand what are the job criteria and the type of candidates who suit these criteria. As opined by Pawlik and Neumann (2015) for staffing and selected process, HRM needs to focus on forecasting the company’s annual budget that will assist them to assess the long-term and short-term goals of this company.

Moreover, the HR manager would conduct the interviews for the candidates after short-listing their CV. According to Altarawneh (2016) HRM is not only associated with conducting interviews for hiring employees but also they are associated with providing proper training and advice to the employees for making them compatible to the company needs. HR managers would also conduct the team building training to the newly appointed employee to let them learn about how to work in team with marinating perfect coordination with one another. HR managers will also provide training to all the employers in terms of developing their ability in order to manage the strong relationships among them. An efficient HRM department will also conduct diversity training to let the employee aware of money handling and privacy maintaining policies of the organisation (Mat et al. 2015).

Orientation:

Providing through orientation to the newly appointed employees is important for enhancing their compatibility to meet the company's goals (Eriksson et al. 2014). Conducting employee orientation program is one of eth major task of HRM, which assist the appointed candidate to develop their knowledge and understanding regarding the company’s goals. Through conducting these programs, HRM can asset eth employs n order to understand job criteria, client demands and long terms as well as short-term goals. Therefore, through this orientation process, HRM can provide the important opportunities to all newly appointed employees to develop their professional efficient to fit into the company’s needs.

According to Banks and Kepes (2015), Through conducting employee orientation program, HRM assist the can help eh employees to know the assigned duties, exact job descriptions, responsibilities of their designation, job role and the relations with their lower staffs as well as higher officials. Therefore, this HRM function is important for making clarification of employee regarding their responsibilities thereby assisting them to make voluntary participation n meeting the company’s needs.

Health and safety of staffs:

Under the guidelines of Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) (HSWA), HRM needs to prioritise the maintaining of good health and wellbeing of an employee in the organisation (Boon and Verhoest, 2018). Moreover, the HR management team will also assist employees to know their duties in maintaining health and safety within the company as well as outside. As opined by Mat et al. (2015), the HR manager needs to be well versed in all guidelines and rules of HSWA, which they will apply in their work to provide proper protection of health and wellbeing of all the staffs. HR manager needs to assure the protection of whistleblowers and review the protocol and practice of different operations that are going in the workplace. HR managers need to assure positive as well as motivating environment within the workplace to make the staffs safe from any physical, mental and psychological abuse.

Record keeping of employee:

When the new candidates are appointed in the company, it is the crucial responsibility if HRM team to make as well as maintain files for each newly appointed employee for keeping all information regarding their professional details (Eriksson et al. 2014). HRM department needs to put the job id, employee’s designation, their payroll, basic salary and their job roles in these files.

The file continues to grow over the times and HR managers, as well as the entire HRM department, need ensure the confidentiality of each file. HRM maintain this record to keep the records of entering professional as well s personal details of each employee. Therefore, if any complaint or discussion occurs about particular employee, it will be enlisted into the file.

Legal management and regulatory compliance:

His is one of the most important functions of the Human Resource Management team, which assist company to make proper protection from any lawsuit. According to Banks and Kepes (2015), files that the HR team maintains are considered as the legal foundation of the legislative protection for the company. If any staffs are proved to be responsible for causing harassing or discriminative or abusive behaviour, company can make the lawful termination of this employee by following the legislative guidelines. On the other hand, if any employee expertise the unlawful termination, she or he can relate the lawsuit for unfair job termination.

According to Pawlik and Neumann (2015), HRM department needs to train the staffs to understand their legal duties and legislative boundaries within the company. In this aspect, HR managers can conduct training or meeting to let the staffs know about company's legal policies, confidentiality, Anti Money Laundering laws and Equality Act to encourage their voluntary participation in maintaining legislative framework within company.

Training and development:

This Human Resource Management function is crucial to conduct the training program for newly appointed as well as exited staffs of the company (Garaus et al. 2016). Through this training program, the HR manager assists new staffs to know about company's policies, job roles and long-term as well as short-term objectives of the company. As stated by Boon and Verhoest (2018) Human Resource Management department needs to conduct the training program in such a manner that will improve the current as well as future performance of employee. HR managers need to educate the employee through developing their professional skill, technical knowledge and self-confidence. Moreover, HRM will also develop the self-assessment program for the employee that will assist them to understand and weakness.

Conclusion:

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that human resource management is associated with developing the professional efficiency of employee in order to improve the organisational production as well as to develop the overall organisational framework. Finally, this report concludes that there are different crucial functions of the HRM department such as candidate selection, orientation, managing legal process, training, and maintaining health and safety. From the entire discussion, it can be concluded that, Human Resource Management is important aspect of organisation that not only select the eligible candidate for the company but also improves the administrative framework to deal with any sudden difficulties.

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References

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