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Unit 6: Human Resource Management

that employee programs impact the business in measurable ways. The new role of HRM Notes
involves strategic direction and HRM metrics and measurements to demonstrate value.

6.1 Staffing

Human Resource Management (HRM, HR) is the management of an organization’s employees.
This includes employment and arbitration in accord with the law, and with a company’s
directives.

6.1.1 Features
• Organizational management
• Personnel administration

• Manpower management
• Industrial management.

But these traditional expressions are becoming less common for the theoretical discipline.
Sometimes even employee and industrial relations are confusingly listed as synonyms, although
these normally refer to the relationship between management and workers and the behavior
of workers in companies. The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that
employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought
of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets.
Human Resource Management (HRM) is seen by practitioners in the field as a more innovative
view of workplace management than the traditional approach. Its techniques force the managers
of an enterprise to express their goals with specificity so that they can be understood and
undertaken by the workforce and to provide the resources needed for them to successfully
accomplish their assignments. As such, HRM techniques, when properly practiced, are expressive
of the goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall. HRM is also seen by many to
have a key role in risk reduction within organisations.
Synonyms such as personnel management are often used in a more restricted sense to describe
activities that are necessary in the recruiting of a workforce, providing its members with
payroll and benefits, and administrating their work-life needs. So if we move to actual definitions,
Torrington and Hall (1987) define personnel management as being:

Notes “A series of activities which: first enable working people and their employing
organisations to agree about the objectives and nature of their working relationship
and, secondly, ensures that the agreement is fulfilled”.

6.1.2 Academic Theory

Research in the area of HRM has much to contribute to the organizational practice of HRM.
For the last 20 years, empirical work has paid particular attention to the link between the
practice of HRM and organizational performance, evident in improved employee commitment,
lower levels of absenteeism and turnover, higher levels of skills and therefore higher productivity,
enhanced quality and efficiency. This area of work is sometimes referred to as ‘Strategic HRM’
or SHRM. Within SHRM three strands of work can be observed: Best practice, Best Fit and the
Resource Based View (RBV).

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