Human Resource Management at Work

Human Resource Management at Work

What Is Human Resource Management?

To understand what human resource management is, we should first review what managers do. Most experts agree that there are five basic functions all managers perform: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. In total, these functions represent the management process. Some of the specific activities involved in each function include:

Planning: Establishing goals and standards; developing rules and procedures; developing plans and forecasting-predicting or projecting some future occurrence.

Organizing: Giving each subordinate a specific task; establishing departments; delegating authority to subordinates; establishing channels of authority and communication; coordinating the work of subordinates.

Staffing: Deciding what type of people should be hired; recruiting prospective employees; selecting employees; setting performance standards; compensating employees; evaluating performance; counseling employees; training and developing employees.

Leading: Getting others to get the job done; maintaining morale; motivating subordinates.  

Controlling: Setting standards such as sales quotas, quality standards, or production levels; checking to see how actual performance compares with these standards; taking corrective action as needed.

In this book, we are going to focus on one of these functions: the staffing, personnel management, or (as it's usually called today) human resource (HR) management function. Human resource management refers to the practices and policies you need to carry out the people or personnel aspects of your management job. These include：

Conducting job analyses (determining the nature of each employee's job)

Planning labor needs and recruiting job candidates

Selecting job candidates

Orienting and training new employees

Managing Wages and Salaries (how to compensate employees)

Providing incentives and benefits Appraising performance

Communicating (interviewing, counseling, disciplining)

Training and developing Building employee commitment

And what a manager should know about:

Equal opportunity and affirmative action Employee health and safety Grievances and labor relations