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and Research curriculum and learning contents subscriptions
are available to International Universities,
Colleges, Management Development and Training Centres and their
Students and Staff throughout the world.
Human Resources has at least
two meanings depending on context. The original usage derives
from political
economy and
economics,
where it was traditionally called labour,
one of three factors
of production. The more common usage within corporations and businesses refers
to the individuals within the firm, and to the portion of
the firm's organization that deals with hiring, firing, training,
and other personnel issues. The courses introduced here will
address the latter definition.
The former has been dealt with in the economics related modules
which can be found in the Economic
Centre and introduced
in this
article.
Human Resource Management (HRM) is both an academic theory and a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practical techniques of managing a workforce. The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets. The field takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively, and that the main obstacles to their endeavors are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failures of process.
HRM is seen by practitioners in the field as a more innovative view of workplace management than the traditional approach. Its techniques force the managers of an enterprise to express their goals with specificity so that they can be understood and undertaken by the workforce, and to provide the resources needed for them to successfully accomplish their assignments. As such, HRM techniques, when properly practiced, are expressive of the goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall.
The field also encompasses the sometimes arcane details of what is traditionally referred to as personnel management. Personnel management as a term describes those activities that are necessary in the recruiting of a workforce, providing its members with payroll and benefits, and administrating their work-life needs. In many locales, these activities can require a considerable amount of regulatory knowledge and effort, and many enterprises can benefit from the recruitment and development of personnel with these specific skills.
The term Equal Opportunity Employment was created by President Lyndon Baines Johnson when he signed Executive Order 11246 which was created to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of race, sex, creed, religion, color, or national origin.
The Execuitve Order also required contractors to implement affirmative action plans to increase the participation of minorities and women in the workplace. Pursuant to federal regulations, affirmative action plans must consist of an equal opportunity policy statement, an analysis of the current work force, identification of problem areas, the establishment of goals and timetables for increasing employment opportunities, specific action-oriented programs to address problem areas, support for community action programs, and the establishment of an internal audit and reporting system.
The general purpose of job analysis is always to understand the requirements of a job. However, there is generally a specific purpose that has a profound effect on the job analysis.
In the fields of Human Resources (HR) and Industrial Psychology, job analysis is often used to gather information for use in personnel selection, training, classification, and/or compensation.
The field of vocational rehabilitation uses job analysis to determine the physical requirements of a job to determine whether an individual who has suffered some diminished capacity is capable of performing the job with, or without, some accommodation.
Professionals developing certificationexams use job analysis (often called something slightly different, such as "task analysis") to determine the elements of the domain which must be sampled in order to create a content valid exam. When a job analysis is conducted for the purpose of valuing the job (i.e., determining the appropriate compensation for incumbents) this is called "job evaluation."
Recruitment refers to the process of finding possible candidates for a job or function, undertaken by recruiters. It may be undertaken by an employment agency or a member of staff at the business or organization looking for recruits. Advertising is commonly part of the recruiting process, and can occur through several means: through newspapers, using newspaper dedicated to job advertisement, through professional publication, using advertisements placed in windows, through a job center, through campus interviews, etc.
Suitability for a job is typically assessed by looking for skills, e.g. communication skills, typing skills, computer skills. Evidence for skills required for a job may be provided in the form of qualifications (educational or professional), experience in a job requiring the relevant skills or the testimony of references. Employment agencies may also give computerized tests to assess an individual's "off-hand" knowledge of software packages or typing skills. At a more basic level written tests may be given to assess numeracy and literacy. A candidate may also be assessed on the basis of an interview. Sometimes candidates will be requested to provide a résumé (also known as a CV) or to complete an application form to provide this evidence.
In some countries, such as the United States, a great deal of care is legally mandated to ensure that all candidates are dealt with equitably.
The follow-up process may be referred to as part of the recruitment process: inveigling the selected candidate or candidates to take up the target job or function. This applies particularly in filling positions in the military or in expanding the human resource base of a cult.
Head-hunting is a frequently used name when referring to third party recruiters, but there are significant differences. In general, a company would employ a head-hunter when the normal recruitment efforts have failed to provide a viable candidate for the job. Head-hunters are generally more aggressive than in-house recruiters and will use, advanced sales techniques such as initially posing as clients to gather names of employees and their positions, personal visits to the candidates office and will purchase expensives lists of names and job titles. They also prepare a candidate for the interview, negotiate salary, and conduct closure to the search. In general, in house recruiters will do their best to attract candidates for specific jobs while head-hunters will actively seek them out, utilizing large databases, internet strategies, purchasing company directories or lists of candidates, networking, and often cold calling. Many companies go to great efforts to make it difficult for head-hunters to locate their employees.
Third party recruitment firms are usually distinguished by the method in which they bill a company. Outside recruitment agencies charge a placement fee when the candidate they recruited has accepted a job with the company that has agreed to pay the fee. fees of these agencies generally range from a straight contingency fee to a fully retained service which is similar to placing an attorney on retainer. All recruitment agencies are defined by the placement of a candidate to a particular job within a company.
Personnel Selection is the process used to identify and hire individuals or groups of individuals to fill vacancies within an organization. Often based on an initial job analysis, the ultimate goal of personnel selection is to ensure an adequate return on investment--in other words, to make sure the productivity of the new hire warrants the costs spent on recruiting and training that hire.
Several screening methods exist that may be used in personnel selection. Examples include the use of minimum or desired qualifications, resume/application review, oral interviews, work performance measures (e.g., writing samples), and traditional tests (e.g., of job knowledge).
The field of personnel selection has a long history and is associated with several fields of research and application, including human resources and industrial psychology. There are also many professional organizations (e.g, The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology) associated with the study of personnel selection, as well as specialized degrees offered by educational institutions.
In some organizations the term Learning & Development is used instead of Training and Development in order to emphasise the importance of learning for the individual and the organization. In other organizations, the term Human Resource Development is used.
Performance appraisal (or evaluation) is the human resources activity used to determine the extent on which the employees are performing the job effectively. The history of performance appraisal roots can be traced to Taylor's pioneering Time and Motion studies. Performance appraisal can be either
Informal, when supervisors think about how well the employees are doing and
Formal, when there is a system set up by the organization to regularly and systematically evaluate employee performance. In the following we are referring to formal performance appraisal.
Incentive Theory is an element of human resources or management theory. In the cooperate sense, it states that firm owners should structure employee compensation in such a way that the employees' goals are aligned with owners' goals. As it applies to the operations of firms, it is more accurately called the principal-agent problem.
In economics a wage is the return to labor. This compensation/return may be in the form of goods produced by the laborer or "in kind" or in money when the laborer is employed in an enterprise with others. But in any case the compensation/return is still called a wage or wages. For instance, a man existing in a world without others will acquire his wages directly from his labor on land that is free. Without consideration for tools and weapons and the like, the food he hunts and gathers are his wages. A self employed person in the lawn care business will realize income in the form of wages for his labor and interest for his investment in the lawn mower and other capital goods.
In finance a wage is the amount of money paid for some specified quantity of labour. When expressed with respect to time (usually per hour), it is typically called the wage rate, and is specified in pre-tax amounts. It is often the main monetary item upon which a worker and an employer focus when negotiating an employment contract.
In the financial sense early forms of wages included salt (from which the word salary is derived). In modern English, the word salary tends to be used when referring to employment in which the employee is not paid by the hour.
Depending on the structure and traditions of different economies around the world, wage rates are either primarily market-driven (the USA) or influenced by other factors such as tradition, social structure and seniority, as in Japan.
Several countries have enacted a statutory minimum wage rate in an attempt to prevent the exploitation of low-paid workers.
Industrial relations is a multidisciplinary field that studies the employment relationship.[1] Industrial relations is increasingly being called employment relations because of the importance of non-industrial employment relationships. Many outsiders also equate industrial relations to labour relations and believe that industrial relations only studies unionized employment situations, but this is an oversimplification.
Often one of a company's most expensive assets is its human capital, the human resources of the organization. The management of your human resources focuses on:
Recruitment and selection of employees who can succeed at their jobs and who will stay with your organization, and
Making sure that employees' abilities are optimally nurtured and developed so that the company can receive an optimal return on the investment made in these employees.
Recruitment and Selection
This is particularly challenging in a global organization where one of your biggest challenges will be finding, retaining and developing a superior global workforce. ITAP knows how to identify the "success factors" of a position…which is a key to identification of superior candidates. Successful companies know what the jobs entail and seek to hire those candidates who can be more successful/effective with the lowest amount of support. Well written job descriptions, and competency models that clearly delineate success behaviors make for effective selection and hiring. Understanding cultural differences in the recruitment process, the selection of candidates and what motivates employees in various cultures is crucial to the success of global organizations.
