HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Human Resource Management
The Human Resources Management (HRM) function includes a variety of activities, and key among them is deciding what staffing needs you have and whether to use independent contractors or hire employees to fill these needs, recruiting and training the best employees, ensuring they are high performers, dealing with performance issues, and ensuring your personnel and management practices conform to various regulations. Activities also include managing your approach to employee benefits and compensation, employee records and personnel policies. Usually small businesses (for-profit or nonprofit) have to carry out these activities themselves because they can't yet afford part- or full-time help. However, they should always ensure that employees have -- and are aware of -- personnel policies which conform to current regulations. These policies are often in the form of employee manuals, which all employees have. Note that some people distinguish a difference between between HRM (a major management activity) and HRD (Human Resource Development, a profession). Those people might include HRM in HRD, explaining that HRD includes the broader range of activities to develop personnel inside of organizations, including, eg, career development, training, organization development, etc. There is a long-standing argument about where HR-related functions should be organized into large organizations, eg, "should HR be in the Organization Development department or the other way around?" The HRM function and HRD profession have undergone tremendous change over the past 20-30 years. Many years ago, large organizations looked to the "Personnel Department," mostly to manage the paperwork around hiring and paying people. More recently, organizations consider the "HR Department" as playing a major role in staffing, training and helping to manage people so that people and the organization are performing at maximum capability in a highly fulfilling manner.We will discuss the various aspects as per following;

a) Section 1-Getting the Best Employees
A British Foreign Office official looking back over a career spanning the first half of the twentieth century commented: ‘Year after year the fretters and worriers would come to me with their awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was only wrong twice!’Some would see this as the arrogant complacency to be associated with planners. Critics think of the inaccuracy and over-optimism of forecasting — the ‘hockey stick’ business growth projections. They regard planning as too inflexible, slow to respond to change, too conservative in assumptions and risk averse. These points are made about any sort of planning.
Practical benefits
When it concerns human resources, there are the more specific criticisms that it is over-quantitative and neglects the qualitative aspects of contribution. The issue has become not how many people should be employed, but ensuring that all members of staff are making an effective contribution. And for the future, the questions are what are the skills that will be required, and how will they be acquired. There are others, though, that still regard the quantitative planning of resources as important. They do not see its value in trying to predict events, be they wars or takeovers. Rather, they believe there is a benefit from using planning to challenge assumptions about the future, to stimulate thinking. For some there is, moreover, an implicit or explicit wish to get better integration of decision making and resourcing across the whole organisation, or greater influence by the centre over devolved operating units. Cynics would say this is all very well, but the assertion of corporate control has been tried and rejected. And is it not the talk of the process benefits to be derived self indulgent nonsense? Can we really afford this kind of intellectual dilettantism? Whether these criticisms are fair or not, supporters of human resource planning point to its practical benefits in optimising the use of resources and identifying ways of making them more flexible.For some organisations, the need to acquire and grow skills which take time to develop is paramount. If they fail to identify the business demand, both numerically and in the skills required, and secure the appropriate supply, then the capacity of the organisation to fulfil its function will be endangered.
Why human resource planning?
Human Resource Planning: an Introduction was written to draw these issues to the attention of HR or line managers. We address such questions as:

• what is human resource planning?
  
• how do organisations undertake this sort of exercise?
  
• what specific uses does it have?
  

In dealing with the last point we need to be able to say to hard pressed managers: why spend time on this activity rather than the other issues bulging your in tray? The report tries to meet this need by illustrating how human resource planning techniques can be applied to four key problems. It then concludes by considering the circumstances is which human resourcing can be used.
1. Determining the numbers to be employed at a new location
If organisations overdo the size of their workforce it will carry surplus or underutilised staff. Alternatively, if the opposite misjudgement is made, staff may be overstretched, making it hard or impossible to meet production or service deadlines at the quality level expected. So the questions we ask are:

• How can output be improved your through understanding the interrelation between productivity, work organisation and technological development? What does this mean for staff numbers?
  
• What techniques can be used to establish workforce requirements?
  
• Have more flexible work arrangements been considered?
  
• How are the staff you need to be acquired?
  

The principles can be applied to any exercise to define workforce requirements, whether it be a business start-up, a relocation, or the opening of new factory or office.
2. Retaining your highly skilled staff
Issues about retention may not have been to the fore in recent years, but all it needs is for organisations to lose key staff to realise that an understanding of the pattern of resignation is needed. Thus organisations should:

• monitor the extent of resignation
  
• discover the reasons for it
  
• establish what it is costing the organisation
  
• compare loss rates with other similar organisations.
  

Without this understanding, management may be unaware of how many good quality staff are being lost. This will cost the organisation directly through the bill for separation, recruitment and induction, but also through a loss of long-term capability. Having understood the nature and extent of resignation steps can be taken to rectify the situation. These may be relatively cheap and simple solutions once the reasons for the departure of employees have been identified. But it will depend on whether the problem is peculiar to your own organisation, and whether it is concentrated in particular groups (eg by age, gender, grade or skill).
3. Managing an effective downsizing programme
This is an all too common issue for managers. How is the workforce to be cut painlessly, while at the same time protecting the long-term interests of the organisation? A question made all the harder by the time pressures management is under, both because of business necessities and employee anxieties. HRP helps by considering:

• the sort of workforce envisaged at the end of the exercise
  
• the pros and cons of the different routes to get there
  
• how the nature and extent of wastage will change during the run-down
  
• the utility of retraining, redeployment and transferswhat the appropriate recruitment levels might be.
  

Such an analysis can be presented to senior managers so that the cost benefit of various methods of reduction can be assessed, and the time taken to meet targets established. If instead the CEO announces on day one that there will be no compulsory redundancies and voluntary severance is open to all staff, the danger is that an unbalanced workforce will result, reflecting the take-up of the severance offer. It is often difficult and expensive to replace lost quality and experience.
4. Where will the next generation of managers come from?
Many senior managers are troubled by this issue. They have seen traditional career paths disappear. They have had to bring in senior staff from elsewhere. But they recognise that while this may have dealt with a short-term skills shortage, it has not solved the longer term question of managerial supply: what sort, how many, and where will they come from? To address these questions you need to understand:

• the present career system (including patterns of promotion and movement, of recruitment and wastage)the characteristics of those who currently occupy senior positions
  
• the organisation’s future supply of talent.
  

This then can be compared with future requirements, in number and type. These will of course be affected by internal structural changes and external business or political changes. Comparing your current supply to this revised demand will show surpluses and shortages which will allow you to take corrective action such as:

• recruiting to meet a shortage of those with senior management potential
  
• allowing faster promotion to fill immediate gaps
  
• developing cross functional transfers for high fliers
  
• hiring on fixed-term contracts to meet short-term skills/experience deficits
  
• reducing staff numbers to remove blockages or forthcoming surpluses.
  

Thus appropriate recruitment, deployment and severance policies can be pursued to meet business needs. Otherwise processes are likely to be haphazard and inconsistent. The wrong sort of staff are engaged at the wrong time on the wrong contract. It is expensive and embarrassing to put such matters right.

How can HRP be applied?
The report details the sort of approach companies might wish to take. Most organisations are likely to want HRP systems:

• which are responsive to change
  
• where assumptions can easily be modified
  
• that recognise organisational fluidity around skills
  
• that allow flexibility in supply to be included
  
• that are simple to understand and use
  
• which are not too time demanding.
  

To operate such systems organisations need:

• appropriate demand modelsgood monitoring and corrective action processes
  
• comprehensive data about current employees and the external labour market
  
• an understanding how resourcing works in the organisation.
  

If HRP techniques are ignored, decisions will still be taken, but without the benefit of understanding their implications. Graduate recruitment numbers will be set in ignorance of demand, or management succession problems will develop unnoticed. As George Bernard Shaw said: ‘to be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer’. It is surely better if decision makers follow this maxim in the way they make and execute resourcing plans.

b) Employee Staffing: Specifying Jobs, Roles and Competencies

Employee Task and Job AnalysisFirst, let's look at some terms. A job is a collection of tasks and responsibilities that an employee is responsible to conduct. Jobs have titles. A task is a typically defined as a unit of work, that is, a set of activities needed to produce some result, e.g.,vacuuming a carpet, writing a memo, sorting the mail, etc. Complex positions in the organization may include a large number of tasks, which are sometimes referred to as functions. Job descriptions are lists of the general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. Typically, they also include to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications needed by the person in the job, salary range for the position, etc. Job descriptions are usually developed by conducting a job analysis, which includes examining the tasks and sequences of tasks necessary to perform the job. The analysis looks at the areas of knowledge and skills needed by the job. Note that a role is the set of responsibilities or expected results associated with a job. A job usually includes several roles.
Employee Job Descriptions First, let's look at some terms. A job is a collection of tasks and responsibilities that an employee is responsible to conduct. Jobs have titles. A task is a typically defined as a unit of work, that is, a set of activities needed to produce some result, e.g., vacuuming a carpet, writing a memo, sorting the mail, etc. Complex positions in the organization may include a large number of tasks, which are sometimes referred to as functions. Job descriptions are lists of the general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. Typically, they also include to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications needed by the person in the job, salary range for the position, etc. Job descriptions are usually developed by conducting a job analysis, which includes examining the tasks and sequences of tasks necessary to perform the job. The analysis looks at the areas of knowledge and skills needed by the job. Note that a role is the set of responsibilities or expected results associated with a job. A job usually includes several roles. Typically, job descriptions are used especially for advertising to fill an open position, determining compensation and as a basis for performance reviews. Not everyone believes that job descriptions are highly useful. Read Dr. John Sullivan's article listed at the end of the following
links. He points out numerous concerns about job descriptions that many other people have as well, including, e.g., that too often job descriptions are not worded in a manner such that the employee's performance can be measured, they end up serving as the basis for evaulation rather than performance, etc. Read the following links to buid your own impression.
Specifying Job and Role Competencies
Introduction -- What Are Competencies? (and jobs, tasks, roles, etc.)
First, let's look at some terms. A job is a collection of tasks and responsibilities that an employee is responsible to conduct. Jobs have titles. A task is a typically defined as a unit of work, that is, a set of activities needed to produce some result, e.g., vacuuming a carpet, writing a memo, sorting the mail, etc. Complex positions in the organization may include a large number of tasks, which are sometimes referred to as functions. Job descriptions are lists of the general tasks, or functions, and responsibilities of a position. Typically, they also include to whom the position reports, specifications such as the qualifications needed by the person in the job, salary range for the position, etc. Job descriptions are usually developed by conducting a job analysis, which includes examining the tasks and sequences of tasks necessary to perform the job. The analysis looks at the areas of knowledge and skills needed by the job. Note that a role is the set of responsibilities or expected results associated with a job. A job usually includes several roles.

c) Recruiting: and Advertising to Find Suitable Job Candidates
Typically, competencies are general descriptions of the abilities needed to perform a role in the organization. Competencies are described in terms such that they can be measured. It's useful to compare competencies to job descriptions. Job descriptions typically list the tasks or functions and responsibilities for a role, whereas competencies list the abilities needed to conduct those tasks or functions. Consequently, competencies are often used as a basis for training by converting competencies to learning objectives. See examples of competencies below. Compare them to job descriptions. As with job descriptions, there are those who have strong cautions about the use of competencies. See the last article, "Competency-Based Education and Training". Note that some experts assert that competencies should define the abilities for someone to excel in a certain role, that is, meet high performance standards, whereas other experts assert that competencies should define the abilities to adequately perform the role.
d) Outsourcing Services to Non-Employees
-Consultants (Getting and Using, and includes sample proposal, consultation plan and contract)
-Volunteer Programs
-Temporary / Contingent Workers

e) Screening Job Applicants
-Interviewing Job Candidates
-Conducting Background Checks
-Testing Job Candidates

f) Selecting from Among Job Applicants (Hiring)
-Testing Job Candidates: Handle With Care
-Putting Job Candidates to the Test
-Does "Behavioral Interviewing" of Job Candidates Really Work?

Section 2- Paying Employees (and Providing Benefits)
Benefits:Employee benefits typically refers to retirement plans, health life insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, vacation, employee stock ownership plans, etc. Benefits are increasingly expensive for businesses to provide to employees, so the range and options of benefits are changing rapidly to include, for example, flexible benefit plans. Employee benefits typically refers to retirement plans, health life insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, vacation, employee stock ownership plans, etc. Benefits are increasingly expensive for businesses to provide to employees, so the range and options of benefits are changing rapidly to include, for example, flexible benefit plans. Benefits are forms of value, other than payment, that are provided to the employee in return for their contribution to the organization, that is, for doing their job. Some benefits, such as unemployment and worker's compensation, are federally required. (Worker's compensation is really a worker's right, rather than a benefit.) Prominent examples of benefits are insurance (medical, life, dental, disability, unemployment and worker's compensation), vacation pay, holiday pay, and maternity leave, contribution to retirement (pension pay), profit sharing, stock options, and bonuses. (Some people would consider profit sharing, stock options and bonuses as forms of compensation.)
You might think of benefits as being tangible or intangible. The benefits listed previously are tangible benefits. Intangible benefits are less direct, for example, appreciation from a boss, likelihood for promotion, nice office, etc. People sometimes talk of fringe benefits, usually referring to tangible benefits, but sometimes meaning both kinds of benefits. You might also think of benefits as company-paid and employee-paid. While the company usually pays for most types of benefits (holiday pay, vacation pay, etc.), some benefits, such as medical insurance, are often paid, at least in part, by employees because of the high costs of medical insurance.
Compensation: Compensation includes topics in regard to wage and/or salary programs and structures, for example, salary ranges for job descriptions, merit-based programs, bonus-based programs, commission-based programs, etc. Compensation includes topics in regard to wage and/or salary programs and structures, for example, salary ranges for job descriptions, merit-based programs, bonus-based programs, commission-based programs, etc.
Compensation is payment to an employee in return for their contribution to the organization, that is, for doing their job. The most common forms of compensation are wages, salaries and tips. Compensation is usually provided as base pay and/or variable pay. Base pay is based on the role in the organization and the market for the expertise required to conduct that role. Variable pay is based on the performance of the person in that role, for example, for how well that person achieved his or her goals for the year. Incentive plans, for example, bonus plans, are a form of variable pay. (Some people might consider bonuses as a benefit, rather than a form of compensation.) Some programs include a base pay and a variable pay. Organizations usually associate compensation/pay ranges with job descriptions in the organization. The ranges include the minimum and the maximum amount of money that can be earned per year in that role. Employees have certain monies withheld from their payroll checks, usually including federal income tax, state income tax, FICA (social security) contributions, and employee contributions to the costs of certain benefits (often medical insurance and retirement).
Exempt and Non-Exempt Jobs in organizations have two classifications, exempt and non-exempt.Professional, management and other types of skilled jobs are classified as exempt. Exempt jobs get a salary, that is, a fixed amount of money per time interval, usually a fixed amount per month. It's not uncommon for exempt positions to receive higher compensation and benefits than non-exempt jobs, although non-exempt jobs often can make more money than exempt jobs simply by working more hours. Unskilled or entry-level jobs are usually classified as non-exempt. Non-exempt jobs usually get a wage, or an amount of money per hour. Non-exempt jobs also get paid over-time, that is, extra pay for hours worked over 40 hours a week or on certain days of the week or on holidays. Each job must have the same pay range for anyone performing that job, that is, one person can't have a higher maximum pay than someone else doing that same job.

Section 3- Training Employees
1) Career Development Businesses used to partner with employees to carry out employees' career planning and development. Times have changed. Now, businesses are coming to view career development primarily as the employee's responsibility. The following major categories of information are closely related and are provided in the order they're typically needed.
2) Orienting New Employees
3) Leadership Development Planning Simply put, leadership development is an effort (hopefully, planned in nature) that enhances the learner's capacity to lead people. Very simply put, leading is setting direction and guiding others to follow that direction. A critical skill for leaders is the ability to manage their own learning. The highly motivated, self-directed reader can gain a great deal of learning and other results from using the guidelines and materials in this library topic.
4) Management Development Planning Simply put, management development is an effort (hopefully, planned in nature) that enhances the learner's capacity to manage organizations (or oneself). Very simply put, managing includes activities of planning, organizing, leading and coordinating resources. A critical skill for anyone is the ability to manage their own learning. The highly motivated, self-directed reader can gain a great deal of learning and other results from using the guidelines and materials in this library topic.
5) Personal Development The focus of the Free Management Library is on resources for professional, management and organization development. At the core of these types of development is personal development. The library includes the basic resources from which to get started in cultivating personal development.
6) Supervisoral Development Planning Simply put, supervisory development is an effort (hopefully, planned in nature) that enhances the learner's capacity to be a supervisor. Supervision often includes conducting basic management skills (decision making, problem solving, planning, delegation and meeting management), organizing teams, noticing the need for and designing new job roles in the group, hiring new employees, training new employees, employee performance management (setting goals, observing and giving feedback, addressing performance issues, firing employees, etc.) and ensuring conformance to personnel policies and other internal regulations. A critical skill for anyone is the ability to manage their own learning. The highly motivated, self-directed reader can gain a great deal of learning and results from following the suggestions and using the materials in this section.
7) Overview of Training and Development (for new instructors, learners, supervisors, etc.)

Section 4- Ensuring Compliance to Regulations

Personnel Polices and Records
Employee Laws, Topics and Issues
Ethics - Practical Toolkit

Section 5- Ensuring Safe Work Environments

-Diversity Management
-Dealing with Drugs in the Workplace
-Employee Assistance Programs
-Ergonomics: Safe Facilities in the Workplace
-Dealing with HIV/AIDS in the Workplace
-Personal Wellness
-Preventing Violence in the Workplace
-Ensuring Safety in the Workplace
-Supporting Spirituality in the Workplace

Section 6- Sustaining High-Performing Employees

Employee Performance Management Simply put, performance management includes activities to ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on performance of the organization, a department, processes to build a product or service, employees, etc. Information in this topic will give you some sense of the overall activities involved in employee performance management. The reader would benefit from reviewing closely related topics referenced from the section , including basics concepts in performance management, organization performance management and group performance management.

Employee Performance Management Process
-Establishing Performance Goals
-Performance Plans
-Observation and Feedback
-Evaluating Performance
-Rewarding Performance
-Recognizing Performance Problems ("Performance Gaps")
-Performance Improvement / Development Plans
-Firing Employees

Group Performance Management Simply put, performance management includes activities to ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on performance of the organization, a department, processes to build a product or service, employees, etc. Information in this topic will give you some sense of the overall activities involved in group performance management. The reader would benefit from reviewing closely related topics referenced from the section , including basics concepts in performance management, organization performance management and employee performance management.

Interpersonal / Human Skills
-Building Trust
-Conflict (Interpersonal)
-Etiquette (Manners)
-Handling Difficult People
-Valuing Diversity
-Negotiating
-Office Politics

Personal Development The focus of the Free Management Library is on resources for professional, management and organization development. At the core of these types of development is personal development. The library includes the basic resources from which to get started in cultivating personal development.

Retaining Employees
>Creative Ideas for Retaining Employees

>Motivating and Retaining Employees
1. Operating Systems
2. Employment Agreement
3. Training
4. Tools to do the Job
5. Office Atmosphere
6. Support
7. Corporate Culture
8. Compensation
9. Benefits
10. Recognition
11. Communication
12. Empowerment
13. Leadership
14. Having Fun

>Retaining Employees in a Competitive Work

>11 Low-Cost Ideas for Retaining Employees

1. Give recognition by thanking employees for a job well done. Leave them a handwritten note, publish worker accomplishments in the company newsletter and on bulletin boards or, if appropriate, publicize them in the local newspaper. Recognize groups as well as individuals in order to foster a spirit of teamwork. If you'd like to establish a formal employee recognition program, you can obtain guidelines and resources at the National Association of Employee Recognition (www.recognition.org), particularly their FAQs and Recognition Articles sections. 2. When you notice a specific achievement, reward it right away with a bonus. You can also use non-cash items such as event or movie tickets or an extra paid vacation day. Keep your bonus-giving spontaneous since research shows that workers quickly adopt a sense of entitlement toward more regularly scheduled merit pay.
3. Offer flexible work schedules to help employees achieve a better work/life balance. For example, allow them to vary their arrival and departure times or the length of their work days/weeks with flextime. You could also offer compressed workweeks, for example, 40 hours in four days or allow workers to telecommute for at least part of their work time.
4. Exhibit the pictures and bios of new employees in a community area, whether it is your bulletin board, Web site or intranet. It makes the new employee feel valued, and if two or more workers find common ground, such as hometowns or hobbies, they're more likely to stay in your work place.
5. Acknowledge individuals' birthdays. Follow the example of Southwest Airlines, known for promoting a feeling of family among its employees. The airline mails greeting cards to commemorate birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, new babies and so on. Southwest also sends gifts to employees at significant times in their lives, so consider sending a gift or gift certificate along with your card.
6. Celebrate each anniversary of an employee's first day with you with a meal, gift or some other token of appreciation.
7. Ask for your employees' opinions and actually use some of their ideas. This includes asking what types of perks or benefits they'd appreciate or what they need in order to work more effectively. In addition, give them the chance to evaluate supervisors, provide input on decisions that affect their jobs and discuss the overall direction of the company. Try for annual one-on-one meetings in a neutral location or use materials such as questionnaires. For
more sensitive issues, consider confidential climate surveys.
8. Facilitate your employees' professional development, whether it's with college classes, seminars, conferences, membership in a professional organization, or even cross-training for career moves within your company. Some companies pay for courses even when employees choose non-job-related topics. If you have budget concerns, consider offering this perk only to employees who have been with you a certain length of time.
9. Match the talents, traits and skills of individuals to their jobs. You may want to invest in personality assessments to better help current and future employees. The AdvisorTeam Web site (www.advisorteam.com) provides a free Web-based "Temperament Sorter" or you can have a consultant perform evaluations for you. The Myers-Briggs Foundation Web site recommends CPP Inc.'s SkillsOne service (www.skillsone.com) for ethical online delivery of the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment.
10. Create traditions such as a holiday dinner, party or charity drive. Your traditions also can be more informal, for example, a stress-busting treat after or during your busy season.
11. Hire the right people in the first place. Find people who are looking for the characteristics of your work culture, whether it's fast-paced, laid back, structured or fluid. A good fit makes for a happy and valued employee who is less inclined to leave.