Free Essay on Human Resource Management and Its Five Functional Areas

No organization can exist without people. In any organization, human resource management is the function tasked with the management of people, their performance and culture. The function can either be internal or outsourced. It majorly involves obtaining people's services, enhancement of employees' skills, ensuring the staff are increasingly motivated and remain focused and committed to the firm's vision and objectives. In summary, any human resource management function deals with employees' management from their hiring stage up until the retirement stage. Although there are numerous functions human resource management performs, there are five main functional areas it handles as discussed below. They include recruitment and staffing, training and development, handling employee benefits and compensation, management of staff relations and ensuring that employees are providing with good working conditions.

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Thesis Statement

To start with, recruitment and staffing are one of the key human resource management functional areas. Recruiting involves thorough sourcing, screening, and hiring of potentially highly qualified candidates to execute various roles within the organization. According to Deutsch (2015), the recruitment and selection process should involve the public or private announcement of vacant positions, in-depth review, and scrutiny of resumes, conducting either telephone or face to face interviews and carrying out of thorough background checks. Human resource professionals then offer competitive compensation packages to attract highly qualified potential staff before conducting staff orientation to ensure all new staff is familiar with the firm's internal policies and processes. The entire selection process ensures that the firm does not on-board non-competent or underqualified staff who may make a mistake or not deliver as expected leading to high staff costs.

In addition, human resource management involves the critical process of management of staff relations. Given that the staff is the backbone of any organization's operational success, employee relations have to be handled with optimum care and consideration. Good employee relations have to be cultivated to foster excellent staff behavior, produce and culture within and outside the organization. Bhattacharyya (2017) states that human resource professionals have to plan and coordinate team building activities that will encourage staff to interact and know each other on a personal basis. The human resource function should also have an open door policy to encourage employees to air any human resource related concerns or issues. Fostering best employee management relations encourages good working conditions and employee satisfaction hence boosting their motivation to give better quality output.

Further, another functional area is handling the staff's benefits and any form of compensation. At the onboarding process, the human resource professional will give an offer to any potential employee for which the employee chooses to accept or decline. The compensation package should be tied to job grades and different roles in the organization. Human resource personnel has to evaluate all the different forms of compensation which may include but not limited to: salaries, commissions, bonuses, flexible working hours and all types of allowances such as the car, housing, leave and medical allowances to ensure they are fair to all employees. In addition, the compensation and benefits should be annually reviewed to ensure they are up to to the internal and external operating environment and also for compliance purposes. Ivancevich, and Konopaske (2012) suggests that the staff's compensation and benefits structure should always be compliant to applicable labor and wages laws to avoid any fines or bad publicity that may tarnish the organization's reputation.

Another key function of human resource management is training and development. Training majorly involves acquisition or enhancement of knowledge, techniques, and skills linked with the ability to better perform current and future work at a more technical capacity. On the other hand, development relates to ensuring employees acquire interpersonal skills to enable them to perform well in circumstances that require either social, managerial, cultural awareness, leadership or business development skills. The training and development programs may include risk management, anti-bribery, sexual harassment, safety, leadership, customer service among others. Effective and efficient training and development are vital in ensuring that any organization attains its goals and objectives. It is necessary that the human resource management department in every firm ensures that at the beginning of every year, a training and development calendar is developed to help track every training program, establish staff participation and also monitor utilization of skills acquired by staff in day to day execution of roles.

Lastly, human resource management is responsible for the core function of ensuring good working conditions for all employees. This includes ensuring that employees have safe and healthy working conditions, ensuring timely processing staff payroll and applying friendly human resource internal policies. The internal policies should encourage open communication and support zero tolerance on sensitive matters such as sexual harassment, unfair treatment of workers on basis of either race, religion, sex, tribe, sexual orientation discrimination. Working conditions and staff's performance in any organization are positively correlated (Eluka & Okafor, 2004). Conducive working conditions highly motivate staff to not only give highly productive output but it also acts as a motivation factor thereby boosting employees' satisfaction. This is not only beneficial to the employee but also to the organization as it attains boost in revenues and minimizes cost involved in terminating or hiring new staff.

Conclusion

It is important to note that human resource management plays a core function in any organization. The discussed human resource management functional areas link back to both operational and managerial functions in the firm. In my view, the human resource management function should, therefore, be involved in every major decision executive management or board of directors makes, especially, if the decision affects the people working in the organization. This will ensure that they give input and air any concerns that could possibly lead to disruption of work, demotivation of staff, high staff turnover or adversely affect the firm's reputation. A user-friendly human resource information system should also be adopted by the company to facilitate execution of the human resource responsibilities more seamlessly and ensure real-time handling of all employee affairs.

References

Armstrong, M. (2006). A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. London, England: Kogan Page Publishers.

Bhattacharyya, B. (2017, August 1). 5 Major Functions of Human Resource Management. Retrieved from https://www.keka.com/5-major-functions-human-resource-management/

Ivancevich, J., & Konopaske, R. (2012). Human Resource Management: 12th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Deutsch, K. (2015, April 13). The Functional Areas of Human Resources | Expert Human Resources Consultants. Retrieved from https://newfocushr.com/2015/04/13/the-functional-areas-of-human-resources/

Eluka, J. C., & Okafor, C. N. (2004, January 1). (PDF) A Critical Review of The Effect of Working Conditions On Employee Performance: Evidence From Nigeria. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284183810_A_Critical_Review_of_The_Effect_of_Working_Conditions_On_Employee_Performance_Evidence_From_Nigeria