Topic Name
Human Resource Management
(HRM)
Human Resources Managment
The process of planning, organizing, directing
(motivating), and controlling the procurement,
development, compensation, integration,
maintenance, and separation of organizational
human resources to the end that organizational,
individual, and societal needs are satisfied.
The Importance of Human Resource
Management (HRM)
• As a necessary part of the organizing function
of management
– Selecting, training, and evaluating the work force
• As an important strategic tool
– HRM helps establish an organization’s sustainable
competitive advantage.
• Adds value to the firm
– High performance work practices lead to both high
individual and high organizational performance.
The HRM Process
• Functions of the HRM Process
– Ensuring that competent employees are identified
and selected.
– Providing employees with up-to-date knowledge
and skills to do their jobs.
– Ensuring that the organization retains competent
and high-performing employees who are capable
of high performance.
Human Resource Management Process
Environmental Factors Affecting HRM
• Employee Labor Unions
– Organizations that represent workers and seek to protect their
interests through collective bargaining.
• Collective bargaining agreement
– A contractual agreement between a firm and a union elected to represent a
bargaining unit of employees of the firm in bargaining for wage, hours, and
working conditions.
• Governmental Laws and Regulations
– Limit managerial discretion in hiring, promoting, and
discharging employees.
• Affirmative Action: the requirement that organizations take proactive
steps to ensure the full participation of protected groups in its
workforce.
Managing Human Resources
• Human Resource (HR) Planning
– The process by which managers ensure that they
have the right number and kinds of people in the
right places, and at the right times, who are capable
of effectively and efficiently performing their tasks.
– Helps avoid sudden talent shortages and surpluses.
– Steps in HR planning:
• Assessing current human resources
• Assessing future needs for human resources
• Developing a program to meet those future needs
Current Assessment
• Human Resource Inventory
– A review of the current make-up of the organization’s
current resource status
– Job Analysis
• An assessment that defines a job and the behaviors
necessary to perform the job
– Knowledge, skills, and abilities
• Requires conducting interviews, engaging in direct
observation, and collecting the self-reports of employees
and their managers.
Current Assessment (cont’d)
• Job Description
– A written statement of what the job holder does,
how it is done, and why it is done.
• Job Specification
– A written statement of the minimum qualifications
that a person must possess to perform a given job
successfully.
Recruitment and Decruitment
• Recruitment
– The process of locating, identifying, and attracting
capable applicants to an organization
• Decruitment
– The process of reducing a surplus of employees in
the workforce of an organization
• E-recruiting
– Recruitment of employees through the Internet
• Organizational web sites
• Online recruiters
Major Sources of Potential Job Candidates
Selection
• Selection Process
– The process of screening job applicants to ensure that
the most appropriate candidates are hired.
• What is Selection?
– An exercise in predicting which applicants, if hired, will
be (or will not be) successful in performing well on the
criteria the organization uses to evaluate performance.
– Selection errors:
• Reject errors for potentially successful applicants
• Accept errors for ultimately poor performers
Validity and Reliability
• Validity (of Prediction)
– A proven relationship between the selection device used
and some relevant criterion for successful performance
in an organization.
• High tests scores equate to high job performance; low scores
to poor performance.
• Reliability (of Prediction)
– The degree of consistency with which a selection device
measures the same thing.
• Individual test scores obtained with a selection device are
consistent over multiple testing instances.
Selection Devices
• Application Forms
• Written Tests
• Performance Simulations
• Interviews
• Background Investigations
• Physical examinations
Written Tests
• Types of Tests
– Intelligence: how smart are you?
– Aptitude: can you learn to do it?
– Attitude: how do you feel about it?
– Ability: can you do it now?
– Interest: do you want to do it?
Performance Simulation Tests
• Testing an applicant’s ability to perform actual job
behaviors, use required skills, and demonstrate
specific knowledge of the job.
– Work sampling
• Requiring applicants to actually perform a task or set of tasks
that are central to successful job performance.
– Assessment centers
• Dedicated facilities in which job candidates undergo a series of
performance simulation tests to evaluate their managerial
potential.
Other Selection Approaches
• Interviews
– Although used almost universally, managers need to
approach interviews carefully.
• Background Investigations
– Verification of application data
– Reference checks:
• Lack validity because self-selection of references ensures only
positive outcomes.
• Physical Examinations
– Useful for physical requirements and for insurance
purposes related to pre-existing conditions.
Orientation
• Transitioning a new employee into the organization.
– Work-unit orientation
• Familiarizes new employee with work-unit goals
• Clarifies how his or her job contributes to unit goals
• Introduces he or she to his or her coworkers
– Organization orientation
• Informs new employee about the organization’s objectives,
history, philosophy, procedures, and rules.
• Includes a tour of the entire facility
Types of Training
• General
Communication skills, computer systems application
and programming, customer service, executive
development, management skills and development,
personal growth, sales, supervisory skills, and technological
skills and knowledge
• Specific
Basic life/work skills, creativity, customer education,
diversity/cultural awareness, remedial writing, managing
change, leadership, product knowledge, public
speaking/presentation skills, safety, ethics, sexual
harassment, team building, wellness, and others
Employee Training Methods
• Traditional • Technology-Based Training
Training Methods Methods
On-the-job CD-ROM/DVD/videotapes/
Job rotation audiotapes
Mentoring and coaching Videoconferencing/
teleconferencing/
Experiential exercises satellite TV
Workbooks/manuals E-learning
Classroom lectures
Employee Performance Management
• Performance Management System
– A process of establishing performance standards
and appraising employee performance in order to
arrive at objective HR decisions and to provide
documentation in support of those decisions.
Advantages and Disadvantages of
Performance Appraisal Methods
Compensation and Benefits
• Benefits of a Fair, Effective, and Appropriate
Compensation System
– Helps attract and retain high-performance employees
– Impacts on the strategic performance of the firm
• Types of Compensation
– Base wage or salary
– Wage and salary add-ons
– Incentive payments
– Skill-based pay
– Variable pay
Current Issues in HRM
• Managing Downsizing
– The planned elimination of jobs in an organization
• Provide open and honest communication.
• Provide assistance to employees being downsized.
• Reassure and counseling to surviving employees.
• Managing Work Force Diversity
– Widen the recruitment net for diversity
– Ensure selection without discrimination
– Provide orientation and training that is effective
Current Issues in HRM (cont’d)
• Sexual Harassment
– An unwanted activity of a sexual nature that affects an
individual’s employment.
• Unwanted sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and
other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when
submission or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly
affects an individual’s employment.
– An offensive or hostile environment
• An environment in which a person is affected by elements of a
sexual nature.
• Workplace Romances
– Potential liability for harassment
Current Issues in HRM (cont’d)
• Work-Life Balance
– Employees have personal lives that they don’t leave
behind when they come to work.
– Organizations have become more attuned to their
employees by offering family-friendly benefits:
• On-site child care
• Summer day camps
• Flextime
• Job sharing
• Leave for personal matters
• Flexible job hours
Current Issues in HRM (cont’d)
• Controlling HR Costs
– Employee health-care
• Encouraging healthy lifestyles
– Financial incentives
– Wellness programs
– Charging employees with poor health habits more for benefits
– Employee pension plans
• Reducing pension benefits
• No longer providing pension plans
