RIZAL TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

College of Business and Entrepreneurial Technology

Department of Human Resource Development Management

INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Module 1

Learning Objectives:
At the end of this module, the learner should be able to:
(1) understand the concept of Human Resource Management;
(2) distinguish the important events and developments of Human Resource Management; (3)
identify the functions, objectives, importance and purpose of Human Resource Management; and (4)
recognize the different personnel of Human Resource Management and their functions.

Introduction:

The Human Resource Department is considered to be the heart of an organization. It plays a vital
role in the success of many workplaces nowadays. With how the HRD is considered to be an important
department in an organization, many scholars continue to study and improve how employees are being
strategically managed. It is then imperative to understand the meaning of Human Resource Management first.
Though Human Resource Management deals with how to manage people or employees in the
organization as its core meaning, still, many great scholars had defined human resource management in
different ways. Here are some of the definitions of Human Resource Management:
Edwin Flippo defines Human Resource Management as the "planning, organizing, directing,
controlling of procurement, development, compensation, integration, maintenance and separation of human
resources to the end that individual, organizational and social objectives are achieved."
The National Institute of Personal Management (NIPM) of India has defined human resources
— personal management as "that part of management which is concerned with people at work and with their
relationship within an enterprise. Its aim is to bring together and develop into an effective organization of the
men and women who make up enterprise and having regard for the well — being of the individuals and of
working groups, to enable them to make their best contribution to its success."
Lastly, according to Decenzo and Robbins, "Human Resource Management is concerned with the
people dimension in management. Since every organization is made up of people, acquiring their services,
developing their skills, motivating them to higher levels of performance and ensuring that they continue to
maintain their commitment to the organization is essential to achieve organizational objectives. This is true,
regardless of the type of organization — government, business, education, health or social action."
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HR Management as a Process

Human Resource Management is the process of hiring, firing, and motivating employees in between.
This deals with different processes such as recruiting (can be internal or external recruitment), selecting, on
boarding which involves inducting employees, providing orientation, imparting training and development,
evaluating and appraising the performance of employees, deciding compensation and providing benefits,
motivating employees, maintaining proper relations with employees and their trade unions, and ensuring
employees' safety, welfare, and health measures in compliance with labor laws.
Human resource management (HRM) is the practice of recruiting, hiring, deploying and managing an
organization's employees. HRM is often referred to simply as human resources (HR). A company or
organization's HR department is usually responsible for creating, putting into effect, and overseeing policies
governing workers and the relationship of the organization with its employees. The term human resource was
first used in the early 1900s, and then more widely in the 1960s, to describe the people who work for the
organization, in aggregate.
The history of Human Resource Management (HRM) begins around the 19th century when welfare
officers (sometimes called 'welfare secretaries) came into being. They were women and were involved with the
protection of other women and girls. Their creation was a reaction to the:
• Harshness of industrial conditions

• Pressures arising from the extension of the franchise

• Influence of trade unions and the labor movement
• Campaigning of enlightened employers, often Quakers, for what was called 'industrial betterment'
As the role grew, some tension rose between the aim of moral protection of women and children and
the need for higher output. Personnel or human resource management is relatively new field in the Philippines.
It was only in the early 1950’s that is gradually gained acceptance and recognition in private business and
industry. For it to gain acceptance and recognition, three conditions need to exist:
1. Top management must be convinced that personnel management is needed in its business
operations;
2. Qualified personnel administration must be available;
3. Personnel administrators must demonstrate their capacity to contribute to the company’s
objectives and goals.

Today’s HR activities
In today's HR world we ensure that we cover a number of special disciplines, including:
• Diversity (plus other aspects of employment law)

• Employee relations (including performance and absence management)

• Organization development and design
• Learning and development
• Correcting systems, policies, and procedures
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These disciplines ensure that your business is working to best practice, within the law and making
maximum use of its team. This offers financial and operational benefits to the business and team.

Difference between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management

Coming to the crux of difference, Personnel Management is the seed and root for Human Resources
Management. In simple words, Human Resource Management evolved from the Personnel Management. The
main principle of the Personnel Management was to extract work from an employee for the
remuneration paid. Employees during the personnel management era were not given high priority in the
decision-making process and were not allowed much interaction with management. Personnel management
was more confined to the factories, and the main focus of the Personnel manager was to see that everything
was in compliance with the labor laws, with not much emphasis made on the morale of employees. Employees
were just treated as tools, obliged to the organization but not as assets of the organization, and were seen as
cost and expenditure to the company rather than capital and investment. Personnel officers mostly used are
disciplinary oriented instead of flexible and interactive with employees. Nurturing employees was not a priority
by the personnel managers, and employee perspective was ignored, which means personnel managers tend to
be punitive if any error is committed by the employees.
On the other hand, Human Resource Management sees employees from as the most valuable
resources for the organization and as assets and capital for their organization. In contrast with personnel
management, motivating employees is a basic feature of human resource management. The main principle
of the Human resource management is to see what should be given to an employee for extracting the
desired work. HR Managers always encourage participation of employees in decision making and their
suggestions are most valued. Flexibility in work, welfare and work-life balance to employees is high priority for
HR managers, and they show much more concern towards employee issues. Adoption of new policies and
optimization methods by the HR manager are well encouraged and swift. The finest difference between personnel
management and human resource management is integration and augmentation of Information Technologies in the human
resources management process and functions for enhanced productivity and time savings as time is money.

Father of Personnel Management

Robert Owen
(14 May 1771- 17 November 1858)
Robert Owen (1771-1858), a social and educational reformer, remains a controversial and enigmatic
figure. Having profited enormously from enterprise in the early Industrial Revolution he set about trying to
remedy its excesses through environmental, educational, factory, and poor law reform. Synthesizing reformist
ideas from the Age of Enlightenment and drawing on his own experience as an industrialist, he constructed A
New View of Society (1816), a rallying call for widespread social change, with education at its core. New
Lanark, the test-bed for his ideas, became internationally famous.
Robert Owen raised the demand for a ten-hour workday in year 1810, and instituted it in his New
Lanark cotton mills. By 1817, he had formulated the goal of the 8-hour workday and coined the slogan "8
hours labor, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours full rest".

Women and children in England were granted the ten-hour workday in 1847. The 8-hour workday
movement forms part of the early history for the celebration of the Labor Day, and the May Day in many
nations and cultures.

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Father of Human Resource Management

George Elton Mayo

(26 December 1880 - 7 September 1949)
Elton Mayo was born in Adelaide, South Australia on 26 December 1880 and died in Guildford,
Surrey on 1 September 1949. He was the second child of a respected colonial family. Elton was expected to
follow his grandfather into medicine, but failed at university studies and was sent to Britain. There he turned
to writing and wrote on Australian politics for the Pall Mall Gazette and started teaching. He then returned to
Australia to work in an Adelaide publishing business where his views on management caused to be unpopular.
He went back to study, and became the most brilliant student of the philosopher Sir William Mitchell.
Mayo went on to his most famous experiments — those at the Hawthorne Works of the General
Electric Company in Chicago between 1924 and 1927. He undertook further experimentation to find out what
effect fatigue and monotony had on job productivity and how to control them through varying rest breaks,
work hours temperature, and humidity.
Modern human resources gained a permanent role within organization during the human relations
movement initiated during the late 1920s. This movement acknowledged that social and psychological factors
could better explain worker productivity and output. The Hawthorne Studies conducted at the West Electric
Company in the late 1920s initiated the human relations movement.
Mayo is known as the founder of the Human Relations Movement, and is known for his research
including the Hawthorne Studies (The "Hawthorne effect" refers to improvements in worker productivity or
quality that result from the mere fact that workers are being studied or observed. This observation came from
studies carried out at Western Electric's Hawthorne plant during the late 1920s. The experiments validated the
idea that people are motivated by additional factors rather than by purely economic factors) and his book The
Human Problems of an Industrialized Civilization (1933).

Human Resource Management Functions

The modern HR technology term, human capital management (HCM), has come into more frequent
use than the term HRM, with the widespread adoption by large and midsize companies and other
organizations of software to manage many HR functions.
HRM is really employee management with an emphasis on those employees as assets of the business.
In this context, employees are sometimes referred to as human capital. As with other business assets, the goal
is to make effective use of employees, reducing risk and maximizing return on investment (ROI).

Human Resource Management involves management functions like planning, organizing, directing
and controlling.
• It involves procurement, development, maintenance of human resource
• It helps to achieve individual, organizational and social objectives
• Human Resource Management is a multidisciplinary subject. It includes the study of management,
psychology, communication, economics and sociology.
• It involves team spirit and team work. It is a continuous process.
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HRM can be broken down into subsections, typically by pre-employment and employment phases, with an
HR manager assigned to each. Different areas of HRM oversight can include the following:
• Employee recruitment, onboarding and retention
• Talent management and workforce management
• Job role assignment and career development
• Compensation and benefits
• Labor law compliance
• Performance management
• Training and development
• Succession planning
• Employee engagement and recognition
• Team building

Objectives of Human Resource Management

The objectives of HRM can be broken down into four categories:
1. Societal objectives: Measures put into place that responds to the ethical and social needs or challenges of
the company and its employees. This includes legal issues such as equal opportunity and equal pay for equal
work.
2. Organizational objectives: Actions taken that help to ensure the efficiency of the organization. This
includes providing training, hiring the right amount of employees for a given task or maintaining high
employee retention rates.

3. Functional objectives: Guidelines used to keep the HR functioning properly within the organization as a
whole. This includes making sure that all of HR's resources are being allocated to its full potential.
4. Personal objectives: Resources used to support the personal goals of each employee. This includes
offering the opportunity for education or career development as well as maintaining employee satisfaction.

Importance of Human Resource Management

Behind production of every product or service, there is a human mind, effort and man hours
(working hours). No product or service can be produced without the help of a human being. Human being is
fundamental resource for making or construction of anything. Every organization's desire is to have skilled
and competent people to make their organization competent and the best.
Among the five Ms of management, i.e., men, money, machines, materials, and methods, HRM
deals about the first M, which is men. It is believed that in the five Ms, "men" is not the easiest to manage.
"Every man is different from the other and they are totally different from the other Ms in the sense that men
possess the power to manipulate the other Ms. Whereas, the other Ms are either lifeless or abstract and as
such, do not have the power to think and decide what is good for them.

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Importance of Human Resource Management to All Managers

Why are these concepts and techniques important to all managers? Perhaps it is easier to answer this
by listing some of the personnel mistakes you do not want to make while managing. For example, you do not
want to:
1. Hire the wrong person for the job.
2. Experience high turnover
3. Have your people not doing their best
4. Waste time with useless interviews
5. Have your company taken to court because of discriminatory actions
6. Have your company cited under federal occupational safety laws for unsafe practices
7. Have some employees think their salaries are unfair and inequitable relative to others in the
organization
8. Allow a lack of training to undermine your department's effectiveness

9. Commit any unfair labor practices

Human Resource Management Personnel

Strategic level
The Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) is a corporate level officer, responsible for formulating and
executing human resource strategy in match with overall organization's plan and strategic direction of the
organization, particularly in the areas of succession planning, talent management, change management,
executive compensation, and organizational performance. He supervises industrial relations policies, practices
and operations of an organization. CHRO may also involve in selection of board members of an organization.
Supervision level
The HR Director belongs to top-level management and is responsible for the administration of all human
resource activities and policies. The director supervises employees' compensation, benefits, staffing,
affirmative action, employee relations, health and safety, and training and development functions. They also
oversee below mentioned professional human resources staff.
Execution level
The Recruiter (Hiring manager) is responsible for filling vacancies by finding the right candidates and
finally placing them in the job. The best recruiters can woo even the most passive candidates, but should have
the data needed to influence their organization's hiring strategy. They are part-artists and part-scientists. Here
are some tips to become the best recruiter:
• Modern recruiters should have an innate instinct for mutual connection. They should know how to
network and navigate skill sets, hiring manager personalities, to make a perfect match and suits to company
culture.
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• They should live and die by the mantra, 'if you can't measure it, you can't manage it' They should
understand the importance of numbers and data, and it will not only help them make better decisions but will
also earn the trust of others in the organization.
• They should think about jobs the way marketers think about products. Whether through their own
profiles or through employer branding promotions, they should know how to tell a great story about
company.
• They should love recruiting innovation. They should know what tools work best, and become
masters when it comes to using them.

• They should be able to read the candidate and know how to positively influence their emotions,
inspire excitement and get to a YES!

Trainers are responsible for imparting required skills for performing job and updating new skills and
knowledge for perfection and error free.

The Safety officer sees and ensures the safety of employees at the workplace. The fact that is 1 in 4
workplace injuries are caused by overexertion. According to [section 40B] of The Factories Act of 1948, there
must be a Safety officer for thousand employees in an organization wherein manufacturing does. The
fundamental duty of a safety officer is to instruct workers about safety measures and precautions at workplace.
The general safety instructions to workers are:
• to wear proper protective clothing and use required safety equipment;
• to read all of the instructions and warnings on chemical labels and never mix chemicals; • to be
aware of your surroundings and watch for any hazards, if there are hazards, such as wet floors, warn
others with the proper signs and barricades; and
• to have emergency plans in place, and know where all the exits and first-aid kits are located.
The Welfare officer is responsible to take care of the welfare of employees. According to [section 49]
of The Factories Act of 1948, the Welfare officer must be appointed for every 500 employees in the
organization. They usually deal with the task of solving day-to-day experiences of the industrial workers. But
this method is not so effective due to the dual responsibilities on the welfare officers were basically appointed
to deal with welfare measures and their applications in the industry.
Consequently a new chapter II-B is added in the Industrial Disputes Act of 1947by way of amendment with
effect from 15th September 2010, and a new section 9-C is added.

The Conciliation officer is the personnel in charge with the duty of mediating in and promoting the
settlement of industrial disputes. Generally small and medium-sized organizations do not appoint
consideration officers; they refer settlement issues to separate conciliation officer appointed by the
government and the industrial disputes act of 1947.
The Payroll officer is the one who oversees salaries, statutory payments & deductions as taxes and
other incentives.
The Counselor acts as friend for employees so as to resolve any dispute and issues between
employees. He also acts personal friend in giving suggestions for personal issues which could hamper the
efficacy at work place.
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The HR Generalist is responsible for all human resource activities for an organization. He or She
provides advice, assistance and follow-up on organizational policies, procedures, and documentation.
Coordinate the resolutions of specific policy-related and procedural problems and inquiries.
The HR Analyst is a challenging position generally appointed by huge organizations where
magnitude of HR issues is high. He is the one who identifies burning issues and its causes with the help of
available data and information and if it unavailable, he is responsible for exploration and collection of data
and information could be with the support of Human Resource Information Systems so as to analyze and
draw a clear picture of current scenario and help executives to tackle them. HR analyst should have thorough
knowledge of HR metrics for making accurate analysis. But it is a fact that very least percentage of HR
managers have the skills to collect necessary data, analyze it, and present insights in a meaningful and
influential way to executives.

References:
Michaele Angelo O. Cantos and Kathleen A. Bautista (2019), “Introduction to Human Resource
Management”, House of Color Graphics and Services Inc.
Concepcion R. Martires (1999), “Human Resource Management: Principles and Practices Third
Edition”, National Book Store.
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