Human Resource Management Soft and Hard Practices - Essay Example

Human Resource Management affiliation Human Resource Management Human resource management is the work that is used commonly to define all those activities of an organization that are concerned with selecting and recruiting, planning work for, developing and training, rewarding and appraising, controlling, motivating, and directing workers. In other words, it denotes to the outline of practices, procedures, policies, and philosophies of the management of the affiliation that exists amongst a worker and an employer. There are numerous techniques to approach the management of the human resource in an organization. However, the two extensive approaches to HRM are the soft HR and hard HR. The purpose of this study is to expound what Human Resource Management (HRM) is and its five wide functions. Additionally, it also discusses what soft, and hard HRM is and to what degree do soft and hard HRM practices vary. Human resource management involves several distinct but intersecting areas of administrative activity. The five wide functions of HRM are people resourcing, managing performance, managing reward, human resource development, and employment relations. Each of these will be discussed in detail below. To start with, people resourcing is making sure there is sufficient staffing for the present and future needs of the business through activities like human resource planning, induction, selection, recruitment succession planning, talent management, and the dissolution of the Employment affiliation (including managing redundancy and retirement). Second, managing performance is the process of managing a team and individual performance and the support of employees to the accomplishment of the goals of the organization, for instance, through performance appraisals and goal setting (Bratton & Gold 2012). Thirdly, managing reward is implementing and designing the pay and reward systems covering collective and individual, economic and non-economic reward, comprising workers benefits, pensions, and perks. In addition, employee relations is managing the communication and participation of employees in activities of the organization like decision making, managing workers welfare, handling union-management affairs (comprising collective bargaining and industrial action over the terms and conditions of hiring), handling employee discipline and grievance. Finally, human resource development is identifying organizational, team, and individual development designing and requirements, evaluating and implementing development and learning interventions. HRM can also be involved in broader operational and strategic managerial activity like employer branding and change management. In a number of these areas, human resource management specialists play a leading and central role and in additional they are more likely to accomplish an advisory capacity for executives in other areas of the organization. For instance, in filling a job opening, human resource specialists in big companies are likely to offer support in designing the advertisements and specification of the job, making sure they comply with the law and advising on or helping with the selection process. HRM specialists may be responsible for all the HR procedures in an organization or in a large organization; they can specialize in a single or more particular areas of diversity, training, or reward. Essentially, HRM comprises not only the undertakings that are the duty of the HR specialists or departments but also the undertakings that are carried out with the executives in all areas of the organization who are in charge for the supervision of co-workers (Storey, 2014). The dichotomy of soft and hard HRM started in the United States but has mostly been discussed in the British Literature ever since the growth of a normative model of human resource management in the 1980s by Guest and other scholars. The publication in search of excellence that was produced in 1932 by Waterman and Peter is the one that revived the significance of the human side of an organization. In this was the detection of competitive benefit through quality syndrome or the impression that employee’s policy should be interconnected to strategy and individuals are an asset. These ideas joined tight controls on outcomes with autonomy in actions, decisions, and priorities. These schemes were scholastically developed by Michigan University in 1984 by Fombrun and others and in Harvard University in 1985 by Beer and others. These notions have been reworked on critically by Sisson, Storey, and Guest as from the late 1980s ( Edgar & Geare , 2005). Drawing on human relations school, the Harvard model emphasizes on teamwork, communications and the use of personal talents. The Michigan approach has a unitarist outlook that endorses management’s opinions. Guest draws on the Michigan model, which recommends the hard HRM approach and the Harvard model that is linked with the soft HRM approach. Hard HRM emphasizes on the resource feature of HRM. It stresses HRM emphasis on the vital significance of the close incorporation of human resource activities, systems, and policies with organization strategy (Jenkins & Delbridge, 2013). From this view, human resources are essentially an aspect of production, an expenditure of doing business instead of the only resource able of rotating inanimate aspects of production into the capital. Human resource are regarded as passive to be deployed and provided as skills and numbers at the correct price, instead of the source of resourceful energy. In contrast, soft HRM emphasizes on human and is linked with the McGregor and Herzberg school of human relations. Marescaux, Winne, & Sels, (2013) states this as developmental humanism. While stressing on the significance of integrating human resource policies with organizational objectives, the soft model emphasizes on treating workers as treasured resources and a basis of competitive advantage for their adaptability, commitment, and high quality performance and skill. Workers are proactive instead of passive contributors to productive procedures, capable of development, commendable of collaboration and trust that is attained through participation. The soft version is viewed as a technique of releasing unexploited reserves of human originality by increasing employee involvement participation, and commitment. Whereas the hard HRM is a tough-minded and calculative as any other division of management, interacting through the tough dialectal of economics and business. The hard HRM has some relationship with scientific management as individuals are condensed to passive objects that are not treasured as a complete person but are evaluated on whether they have the attributes or skills that are required by the organization. References Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2012). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave Macmillan. Edgar , F., & Geare , Alan . (2005). HRM practice and employee attitudes: different measures – different results. Personnel Review. http://doi.org/10.1108/00483480510612503 Jenkins, S., & Delbridge, R. (2013). Context matters: Examining ‘soft’and ‘hard’approaches to employee engagement in two workplaces. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(14), 2670-2691. Marescaux, E., Winne, S. De, & Sels, L. (2013). HR practices and HRM outcomes: the role of basic need satisfaction. Personnel Review, 42(1), 4–27. http://doi.org/10.1108/00483481311285200. Storey, J. (2014). New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals). Routledge. Read More