Introduction To Human Resource Management PDF

​ There\'s strong evidence that today\'s students want courses to be applied and have practical relevance. Organizations also want their new managers to have the ability to apply knowledge. The role of modern managers also continues to change, requiring today\'s organizational leaders to deal with i...

​ There\'s strong evidence that today\'s students want courses to be applied and have practical relevance. Organizations also want their new managers to have the ability to apply knowledge. The role of modern managers also continues to change, requiring today\'s organizational leaders to deal with increasingly dynamic and complex environments. **The role of modern managers also continues to change, requiring today\'s organizational leaders to deal with increasingly dynamic and complex environments**. **This course uses a three pronged approach with these objectives. To teach you the important functions and concepts of human resource management. To develop your ability to apply HRM functions and concepts through critical thinking.** And to develop your HRM skills in your personal and professional life. Human resource issues are emerging as some of the most prominent concerns for business owners and managers. You\'ve probably heard buzzwords floating around about managers, and particularly human resource managers needing to be more strategic, business focused, customer focused, and generally more in tune with the overall operational success of the organization. So what is happening in today\'s business environment that might cause human resource managers to rethink their way of doing business? A key item is causing the process of rethinking management is the fact that there\'s a much greater competition and an external environment that requires much greater rates of change. That creates an absolute requirement to be more adaptable and productive as an organization. As a result, human resource managers as well as operational managers have been forced to think in more strategic terms about how their organization can win against their competitors by utilizing their human resources. People within an organization are one of the primary means of creating a competitive advantage for the organization, because management of human resources affects company performance. This is because most organizations of comparable size and scope within the same industry generally have access to the same material and facility based resources that any other organization within the industry may have. The term successful is defined in this case as being more productive and more profitable than the competition. Managers are responsible for getting the job done through employees, so the organization\'s human resources are nearly always its most valuable resource. While employee job satisfaction can be an important aspect of employee engagement, the overall concept of employee engagement is much larger. It\'s a combination of job satisfaction, and willingness to perform for the organization at a high level over an extended period of time. We define engaged employees as those who understand what they need to do, and that add value to the organization, and are satisfied enough with the organization and their roles within it to be willing to do whatever is necessary to see that an organization succeeds. Technology and the ability to analyze large data sets have disrupted every industry and every way a company does or should do things, from operating processes to marketing to human resources. Around the mid 1970s, when there weren\'t even any computers available to most managers, The Human Resource Manager, we usually called them the Personnel Manager then, was considered to be an easy management job. HR managers were expected to be only paper pushers who could keep all of the personnel files straight for an organization. They maintained and organized records, but they had very little to do with the management of the organization\'s business processes. In these organizations, the HR department was considered to be a cost center, a division or department within the organization that brings in no revenue or profit for the organization. It only costs money for the organization to run this function. As you can easily see, we don\'t want many or any cost centers in an organization if we can help it. We need revenue centers instead. Revenue centers are divisions or departments that generate monetary returns for the organization. Where cost centers eat up available funds, revenue centers provide funds for the organization to operate in the future. Human resource management departments are not able to generate revenue directly because of their task within the organization, but they can generate significant revenue and profit in an indirect fashion. The old workplace in which managers simply told employees what to do is gone. In today\'s organization, you\'ll most likely work as part of a team, perform lots of quantitative analysis on business data, and share in the decision making and other management tasks. Modern organizations also expect significantly greater productivity than occurred in their historical counterparts. Welcome to the New Normal and Productivity Center. The Productivity Center is a revenue center that enhances profitability of the organization through enhancing the productivity of the people within the organization. So why does a modern organization worry so much about human resource management? Today\'s HR managers are no longer running an organization cost center. Their function, along with that of other managers within the organization, is to improve organizational revenues and profits, to be a profit center. But how does HR create revenue and profits for the organization? They do it by enhancing the productivity of the people within the organization. Productivity is the amount of output that an organization gets per unit of input, which human input usually is expressed in terms of units of time. We must be more competitive in today\'s business environment if we\'re to survive for the long term. As managers, we have to do things that will improve the productivity of the people who work for us and our organization, so we create productivity centers. But how can we become more productive? Productivity is the end result of two components that managers work to create and improve within an organization. First is effectiveness, a function of getting the job done whenever and however it must be done. The second is efficiency, a function of how many organizational resources we used in getting the job done. Both of these are important, but most of the time we\'re focused on efficiency. Our people allow us to be more efficient as an organization if they\'re used and motivated in the correct manner. This course is about how to make our people more efficient. Companies around the world are taking this need for efficiency very seriously and new technologies and new ways of working are helping companies improve their efficiency. HR management deals primarily with improving the efficiency of people within our organization. If our people are inefficient over long periods of time, our organizations will fail. So, how do we make our people more efficient? We can\'t really directly affect the performance of individuals within the organization. We can\'t force employees to act in a certain way all of the time within the organization. And while we have the ability, To punish them when they don\'t do what we need them to do, we don\'t have the ability to directly control all of their actions. So as managers for the organization, we have to do things that will have an indirect effect on our people\'s productivity, their efficiency, and effectiveness. And we have to do certain things within our control as managers that can cause our people to do the things that we need them to do. What types of issues are today\'s corporate executives concerned with? A recent SHRM or Society of Human Resource Management survey of HR and non HR executives asked what challenges they think will be most significant over the next 10 years. The three biggest challenges according to these executives are maintaining high levels of employee engagement, developing the next generation of organizational leaders, and maintaining competitive compensation and benefit offerings. The biggest challenges, according to HR executives, are very similar. They include developing the next generation of organizational leaders, managing the loss of key workers and skills, and maintaining competitive benefits and compensation offerings. The HR competencies that will be most critical include the following. Business Acumen, which is the ability to understand and apply information to contribute to the organization\'s strategic plan. Organizational Leadership and Navigation, which is the ability to direct and contribute to initiatives and processes within the organization. Next is Critical Evaluation, an ability to interpret information to make business decisions and recommendations. Also, HR Expertise, the ability to apply the principles and practices of HRM to contribute to the success of the business. Reviewing these challenges gives Human Resource Management has been reasonably good at identifying and meeting some of them, while others have gone without significant attention to date in most organizations. We have pursued a better selection and retention strategy for a number of years, and we\'ve recently become much better at identifying future leaders and managing organizational relationships, culture, and structure. Where we have still not done as well, at least in most organizations, is in business acumen, especially in quantitative areas dealing with metrics and data analytics. The ability to analyze large data sets allows human resource managers to work towards overcoming another of their challenges, creating strategic agility. These items are called dependent variables because they can be affected only through indirect means. We don\'t have the ability to directly manipulate them. We have to control some other variable, called an independent variable, because we can independently or directly control it to affect these items in a meaningful way. Turnover is the permanent loss of workers from an organization. Does turnover cost the organization? Absolutely. There\'s a strong and growing recognition that collective turnover can have important consequences for organizational productivity. On the other hand, absenteeism is the failure of an employee to report to the workplace as scheduled. Strategy and strategic planning look at our organization and environment, both today and in the expected future, and determine what we as an organization want to do to meet the requirements of that expected future. Only in the last 30 to 40 years has HR management really gone from reactive to proactive in nature. Instead of waiting for someone to quit and then going out to find a replacement, HR managers are now actively seeking out talent for their organization. The function of HR has been redesigned to enhance the other line functions of the business. To make our organizations more competitive and create sustainable competitive advantages. This is the basis of strategic human resource management. Strategy and planning deal with the concept of creating sustainable competitive advantage, a capacity that creates values for customers that rivals can\'t match. The last factor we\'ll discuss here is the emergence of social media as a major tool for the workplace. However, many of you probably don\'t know how much social media platforms have changed the way work is done in HR and in other parts of the organization. All managers require a mix of technical, interpersonal, conceptual and design, and business skills in order to successfully carry out their jobs. HR managers are no different. So all leaders need management skills to improve organizational performance. The set of necessary HR skills is similar to the skills needed by other managers, but of course it emphasizes people skills more than some other management positions. The recently Promulgated Society for Human Resource Management Competency Model discusses four basic competency clusters that match up well with the following four skill sets. The first skill set that an HR manager must develop to be successful, and also the easiest one to develop, is the technical skill set. Technical skills are defined as the ability to use methods and techniques to perform a task. Being successful as an HR manager requires many skills, including comprehensive knowledge of law, rules and regulations relating to HR, computer skills, skills, training knowledge and skills, understanding of performance appraisal processes, cultural knowledge and so on. This skill set is part of the SHRM technical expertise competency. The second major skill set is interpersonal skills, which comprise the ability to understand, communicate, and work well with individuals and groups through developing effective relationships. The resources you need to get the job done are made available through relationships with people both inside the organization, like coworkers and supervisors, and outside the organizations, like customers, suppliers, and others. HR managers must have strong people skills. Empathy is simply being able to put yourself in another person\'s place, to understand not only what he or she is saying, but why he or she is communicating that information to you. Empathy involves the ability to consider what the individual is feeling while remaining emotionally detached from the situation. Interpersonal skills also involve the ability to work well with others in teams, to persuade others, to mediate and resolve conflicts, and to gather information from others and to jointly analyze, negotiate, and come to a collective decision. This skill set is identified as interpersonal proficiency in the SHRM competency model. Conceptual and design skills are another skill set required of a successful HR manager. Such skill sets help in decision making. Clearly, the decisions you have made over your lifetime have affected you today. Likewise, leaders decisions determine the success or failure of the organization. So organizations are training their people to improve their decision making skills. Conceptual and design skills include the ability to evaluate a situation, identify alternatives, select a reasonable alternative, and make a decision to implement a solution to a problem. This skill set is a critical part of creating and maintaining the ability to lead in an organization. The conceptual part of this skill set is the ability to understand what is going on in our business process. The ability to see the bigger picture concerning how our department or division and the overall organization operates. Design skills are the other part of the equation. This is the skill set that allows us to figure out novel or innovative solutions to problems that we\'ve identified through the use of conceptual skills. Finally, SHRM\'s business oriented proficiency competency is a mandatory human resource management skill. Like technical skills, business skills are easier to develop than human relations and conceptual and design skills. Human resource professionals must have a knowledge of the organization and its strategies if they\'re to contribute strategically. This also means that they have an understanding of the financial, technological, and other facets of the industry and the organization and are able to manipulate large amounts of data using data analytic programs and HR metrics. As a result, all managers must have a basic understanding of the management of their organization\'s human resources. You need to be able to answer employee HR questions, and if you don\'t follow company HR policies, you can cause legal problems for your firm, get disciplined and get fired, and potentially even spend time in jail. So, in this course, we explain the difference between line and staff management and line managers major HR responsibilities. Line managers are the individuals who create, manage, and maintain the people and organizational processes that create whatever it is that the business sells. Put simply, they\'re the people who control the actual operations of the organization. HR managers, on the other hand, would generally be staff managers, individuals who advise line managers in some field of expertise. These managers act basically as internal consultants for the company within their fields of specialized knowledge. The following shows some of the major items that line managers would need to understand in order to be successful in their jobs. Line managers can inadvertently violate the law if they don\'t know what the various employment laws say and what actions are prohibited or required in dealing with employees. All managers need to know how they can manage labor costs, both from an efficiency standpoint and from the standpoint of understanding the state and federal laws that limit our options for managing our labor resources. Obviously, one of the major reasons to have managers is to provide motivation and leadership to employees in our organizations. Line managers are generally the first to see a problem with organizational processes. This is frequently an indication that some type of training is needed. Line managers are also the individuals who would debrief most employees on their annual performance appraisals. Line managers should almost always be responsible for the appraisal, also called an evaluation, of people who work for them as well as for processes of debriefing those individuals on their annual work evaluations. The line manager should also have a strong voice in who should be eligible for promotions in the organization, since the line manager\'s job is to know their people and the capabilities and limitations they have. Line managers have primary responsibility for maintaining safety and security of the organization\'s workforce. All line managers need to know all of these things and more in order to be successful in their jobs. Most HR jobs are either generalist jobs, in which the HR employee works in many different areas, or specialist jobs, in which the employee focuses on specific disciplines of HR. Such specialists also have responsibilities related to the management of diverse employee groups within the company. Staffing includes all of the things that we need to do to get people interested in working for our organizations. Going through the recruitment process, selecting the best candidates who apply, and getting them settled into their new jobs. Next, we have the training and development discipline. This is where education and training functions occur in organizations. A modern organization won\'t get very far without consistently training and developing its employees. Next is employee relations. This specialty covers a wide array of items associated with management and employee relations. It involves such things as coaching, conflict resolution, counseling, and discipline of the workforce as needed. It also involves leadership and team building efforts within the organization. The Labor and Industrial Relations Specialist works with the laws and regulations that control the organization\'s labor related relationships within their workforce. This is also the area that manages any relationships with the organization and unions. HR managers who work in this area might be involved in union votes, negotiations for agreements, collective bargaining, handling grievances, and other labor related issues. A Compensations and Benefits Specialist might find jobs in Compensation Planning, Salary Surveys, Benefits Management, Incentive Programs, and more. This area deals with how we reward people for the work they do for us. Rewards come in many styles and types, and the Compensation and Benefits Specialists help decide the total compensation package that the organization will use to attract and retain the best possible employees. We also need to protect our human resources. In the safety and security discipline, a manager might work in the area of occupational safety or health and make sure that we don\'t injure our people or cause them to become sick because of exposure to substances they work with. This discipline also includes fields such as stress management and employee assistance programs, which help employees cope with the demands of their jobs on a daily basis. And finally, this function works to ensure that employees are secure from physical harm inflicted by other workers, outsiders, or even acts of nature. In the Ethics specialty, you\'d bear responsibility for seeing to it that the organization acts in an ethical and socially responsible manner. You would work on codes of ethics and also make sure that employees live by those codes, such as by maintaining ways in which employees report violations of ethics, also known as whistleblowing. There are many different functions and areas that an HR manager can work as part of their organization, so it\'s pretty much guaranteed that you won\'t get bored in your role in 21st century human resource management. If you\'re interested in human resources as a career, there are several professional associations and certification programs associated with HR management that will help you get into these jobs and help you advance more quickly in the future. The Society for Human Resource Management, known as SHRM, is the largest and most recognized of the HRM advocacy organizations in the United States. According to its website, SHRM is the world\'s largest HR professional society, representing more than 285, 000 members in over 165 countries. What does SHRM do? Probably the biggest part of its work is dedicated to advocacy for national HR laws and policies for organizations in training and certification of HR professionals in a number of specialty areas. SHRM also provides its members with a place to network and learn from their peers, plus a vast library of articles and other information on HR management. SHRM is an outstanding organization that anyone thinking about a career in human resources should consider joining. Student memberships have always been and continue to be very inexpensive, especially considering all that is available to members of the organization. SHRM also provides a curriculum guide for colleges and universities that offer human resource degree programs. The guide identifies specific areas in which SHRM feels students should gain competence as HR majors. It breaks down curriculum areas into required, secondary, and integrated sections. In addition to SHRM, there are three organizations that have certification programs and are recognized in many countries around the world. The first is the Association of Talent Development, known as ATD. As the name implies, ATD primarily focuses on supporting those who develop the knowledge and skills of employees in organizations around the world. It\'s major certification is the Certified Professional in Learning and Performance, known as the CPLP. According to the ATD website, CPLP certification is designed to validate your knowledge and skills in the talent development profession. The Human Resource Certification Institute, known as HRCI, is the second organization that provides some of the most respective certifications for HR personnel anywhere in the world. The three biggest HRCI certification programs are the PHR, SPHR, and GPHR certification. PHR stands for Professional in Human Resources, SPHR stands for Senior Professional in Human Resources, and GPHR stands for Global Professional in Human Resources. These certifications are recognized by organizations worldwide as verification of a high level of training. The final organization is World at Work, focused on compensation, benefits, and total rewards. World at Work offers an array of certification programs for professionals in these areas. As you will quickly learn, World at Work mainly deals with compensation, benefits, and performance management programs. One of the more important things that you need to understand if you\'re thinking about becoming an HR manager is the issue of professional or personal liability for actions that you take on behalf of the organization. It\'s not a well known fact that HR managers can be held prsonally liable for some of the actions they take as part of the job. You need to be aware of the potential for personal liability, and in some cases, you may even need to consider professional liability insurance, for instance, if you\'re in an HR consulting role for outside organizations. Employee engagement is defined as a combination of job satisfaction, ability, and willingness to perform for the organization at a high level and over an extended period of time. This combination of satisfaction, ability, and willingness is a more critical predictor of company performance today than ever before. For more information, visit www. FEMA. gov One Gallup survey recently noted that around 32 percent of U. S. workers are engaged with their work, and worldwide it\'s even worse at a dismal 13 percent engagement. In another survey, Gallup reported that companies with the most engaged workforce had 147 percent higher earnings per share, better productivity and profitability, and lower absenteeism and turnover than their competitors. Many managers and employees think that compensation is the most important item in employee engagement, but that\'s simply not the case, at least in most organizations. Engaging employees is not an easy task, but we have some evidence of things that work, at least in some cases. Overall, compensation and benefits matter, but they\'re not enough. So, how do we improve engagement? Let\'s take a look at the following employee engagement tips. Give them the right tools. Mobile, social, digital tools that provide immediate information and feedback. Create trust. Walk the talk. Listen, and then act on the information received. Not only does a comprehensive approach to listening help an organization pinpoint and quickly address problems, it makes people feel valued. Employees are more important than clients or customers. Manage and lead an individual employee because they\'re individuals. Treat all employees with respect. This was the number one factor in job satisfaction and therefore in employee engagement in a 2016 SHRM survey. It is important to understand the importance of improved employee engagement for today\'s organizations. The Agile organization not only accepts change and disruption but also thrives in such environments. Because nearly every industry is being disrupted by technology, agility is becoming a requirement in order to become or remain an industry leader. How can human resource managers or management help the organization become agile? Create a digital culture. To do this, HR and line managers must become comfortable with mobile and on demand technology that allows the organization to be more agile and to respond more quickly to outside forces. Develop the ability not only to survive, but thrive on change. Along with creating a culture that is comfortable with digital technology and tools, the business needs to pay close attention to making people at all levels comfortable with immediate and continuing change. Explore the value of on demand workers. The historical, stable, large employee workforce is not only going to be the most valuable option for an agile organization, but Review legacy processes and structures for adaptability to the Agile workforce. These are just a few of the issues Agile organizations will have to consider for the future.