Before discussing the philosophy, functions, and how human resources management is being strategically positioned, one must first define what human resources management is, and state what the philosophy of personnel management. Human resources management is the strategic and logical approach to the management of people within the organization who individually or collectively contribute to the attainment of the objectives of the business.
Human resources management is the strategic and logical approach to the management of the people within an organization who individually or collectively contribute in attainment of the objective or goals of the company. The philosophy of human resources management is that people are seen as critical resources to be developed for the future benefit to the organization. It can also be said that people are to be invested in and not to be controlled.
Whereas the personnel management philosophy states that employees are expenses and need to be controlled to ensure profitability of the organization. The functions of human resources management are: staffing, human resources development, compensation, employee and labour relations, and safety and health. The staffing function is the process in which the organization ensures that it has the proper number of employees with the suitable skills in the right jobs at the right time to attain the objective of the company.
The human resource development function can be simpely be defined as the all activities that are designed and aimed at improving the abilities of the employee in achieving the organizations objectives. The aspects under human resources development are training, development, career planning, career development, organization development, performance management, and performance appraisal. The compensation function deals with the rewards that the employees receive as a result of their employment.
There are three aspects of compensation: direct financial compensation, indirect financial compensation, and nonfinancial compensation. Next is the employee and labour relations function which deals with the handling and the managing of employee grievances between the company and the union. The final function is the safety and health it entails the safety of the environment of the employee, and that if the environment is safe the employees will have good health and the employee will be productive.
The human resources management and personnel management philosophies can be correlated to McGregor’s theory X and theory Y. Theory X is the assumption the average person dislikes work and wants to avoid, wants no responsibility and has no ambition to work, and therefore needs to be controlled, which in turn correlates to the personnel management philosophy. Whereas the theory Y which relates to the human resources philosophy assumes that the average person likes to work, will seek responsibility, and they are committed to the job an ambitious.
In conclusion, human resources management is being strategically positioned now more than before in terms of the organization recruits and selects or how the organization trains its staff. For example organizations which engage in the recruitment and selection processes efficiently will be able to accurately provide individuals best suited for the positions that need to be filled. HR Planning is also a strategic instrument used to forecast the need of the organisations resources, and when effectively used, proves that business operate munch more efficiently
