Human Resource Management

Article by Mark D. Lewis, ManagementInfoCenter.com

The importance of Human Resource (HR) management is rapidly increasing for all types of companies due to the crucial role of the workforce in the overall profitability of the company. Various activities are covered under human resource management (HRM) and the priority needs to be the staffing need in terms of choosing between independent contractors and employee recruitment to meet the organization need.

Recruitment and training of the best candidates available has to be done with the purpose of ensuring good performance dealing with performance issue and keeping personnel and management policies in tune to various regulations.

HRM provides assistance to the state personnel system agencies for improving efficiency and effectiveness in human resource programs by lending technical support, training and data. Also included policy expansion, program manuals and guidelines. Management of classification and compensation plans, advancing statewide program reports, execution of training and professional development, administration oversight and management of the personnel information system for enabling human resource processes and transactions, boosting competencies to better both individual and organizational output, higher levels of innovation, creativity and flexibility that is required for increased competitiveness and trying new strategies in work process design, succession planning, career development and inter-organizational movement.

The roles in HRM have gone through a sea change in the last three decades. In earlier times, the larger organizations mainly considered the personnel department for handling paperwork and for recruitment and payments. Gradually the importance of the role played by the HR Department increased significantly for functions like staffing, training and assistance in personnel management to ensure the highest level of output from both the workforce and the organization for increased fulfillment.

There are several advantages associated with human resource management. In recruitment and staffing, it enables job postings, tracking applicant information, rates and ranks of candidates according to a chosen criteria and score, providing referral certificates and compiling information for new hiring records.

Employee self-service is ensured as employees have a user-friendly, secure and a familiar Web environment giving them access to information any time. Also included are online timesheet data entry, payroll data review and benefits enrollment.

Payroll management is made possible with complex pay rules as in contract and reserve pay processing fort schools, colleges and universities. Complete dating over the management of payroll includes setup of flexible pay rules with the setup of flexible pay rules as per bargaining classifications and incorporation of retroactive pay processing and support to conform to complex Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) processing.

Time and attendance unique to the public sector is supported in areas like standby pay, shift differential and leaves. In leave processing, automated accrual is enabled, using bargaining unit/classification and leave substitution. According to the amount of data to be processed, HRM offers exception-based entry to lower total data entry.

Being a comprehensive position management system, it is able to support the functions and decisions necessary for staff planning, human resource budgeting and position monitoring and analysis. Multiple incumbents can be handled from the same position along with employees with multiple positions.

HRM is all about striking a balance. It may be necessary to recruit only qualified candidates in tune to the firm’s needs while at the same time, training and development of employees is done to meet the needs of the firm. Small business on expansion mode mostly falls into either of the two categories. In other words, the best manpower that they can find and afford is recruited while also being aware of the need to provide training and development of both old and new employees at pace with the organizational growth.

A well coordinated policy with staff understanding results in increased confidence which in turn leads to trust, which facilitates the foundation for a positive cultural environment. This provides the crucial driving force behind improved performance.