Reflective Paper - Assignment Example

Personnel manement also dealt with labor relations. Employees were only treated as machines and were only used to get work done. Towards the end of 1940, people working in organizations realised that their feelings were affected by their working conditions and also effected their productivity. During this time personnel management approach was discarded and human relations approach was adopted. The human relations approach focussed more on the social and psychological factors such as: Working conditions Relationship between the workers and their managers Support and style of leadership of the mangers workers involvement in the decision making process The human relations approach helped to change the attitude of the managers towards the workers, they started treating the workers like human being and not just machines for the production of goods.

However with the emergence of HRM people of the organization were recognized as a source of competitive advantage. HRM can therefore be termed as a system of policies, practices, programmes, philosophies,and decisions that affect the bahavior, performance, attitude of the people of the organization so that they are satisfied, perform and contribute in achieving the objective of the organization. Human Resource Management includes practices like human resource planning, job profiling, job design, job analysis, recruitment, selection, orientation, training and development, compensation, performance management, grievance management and maintaining labor relations.

Functions of HRM Figure 1: Multiple Role Of HR Functions (Amos,Ristow,Pearse, & Ristow, 2009, 10) From figure 1 we can say that an effective HR function fulfills multiple roles such as alligning its own strategies with the overall business strategies and assisting the business in organizing itself for the execution of all its strategies. It becomes very apparent from the figure that HRM plays a continuous role both in strategy formulation as well as in the implementation process. The function of HR can be classified in three broad heading (Pravin, 2010,6) These are: 1.

Managerial Functions 2. Operative Function 3. Strategic Function The Managerial function of HRM involves planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Planning- It is an effective tool for determining the personnel programmes that are neccesary to achieve the organizational goals. Accurate forecasting is the is vital for the success of any plan. Planning involves establishing the goals and objectives that are to be achieved, developing the rules and procedure and determining plans and forecasting techniques.

Organizing- After formulation of the plans, the organization of men and materials are done for accomplishment of the plans. Through organizing, a firm establishes its structure or hierarchy and determines the authority, accountability and responsibility of the employees in regards to the job. Organizing involves giving each member specific tasks, establishing divisions and departments, delegating and establishing channels of authority and communication and creating a system to coordinate the works of the members.

Staffing- It involves the creation and maintainance of human resources through employment, training and development, benefits and industrial relations measure. It involves