Human Resource Management

Unit 1
 Concepts of human resource management,
nature, scope
Functions of human resource management
(HRM)
Various models of HRM, merits and
Content demerits of different HRM models
Roles of human resource managers

Responsibilities of human resource

managers
Google promotes innovation in an
unique way. It makes its workforce
adhere to its 70/20/10 rule.
An employee is expected to spend 70
percent of his or her time on own job.
20 percent on “continuous
innovation” within that job, and 10
percent on “discontinuous
innovation” in any area he or she
deems productive.
Anyone using Uber already knows about on-demand workers.
It is signing up tens of thousands of new independent contractor
drivers per week, a rate that is doubling fast.
HR and GIG Economy
Upwork (www.upwork.com) symbolizes on-demand work. Millions of
freelancers from graphic designers to translators, accountants, and
lawyers register on its site. Employers use it to find, screen, hire, and
pay the talent they need, in more than 180 countries. These workers
are part of a vast workforce comprised of contract, temp, freelance,
independent contractor, “on-demand,” or simply “gig” workers. Other
on-demand sites include Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, IKEA’s TaskRabbit,
and Handy (which lets users tap Handy’s thousands of freelance
cleaners and furniture assemblers when they need jobs done), and, of
course, Uber, Ola and G Auto. Such workers may comprise half the
workforce in the next 10 years.
But freelance work goes beyond sites like Handy and Uber. For example
employers are using more temp workers and contractors. Before it
combined with Alaska Air group, Virgin America used contractors rather
than employees for jobs including baggage delivery, reservations, and heavy
maintenance. A trucking company supplies contract workers who unload
shipping containers at Walmart warehouses. And (somewhat amazingly)
even Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc., has about the same number of
outsourced jobs as full-time employees.30 We’ll see in gig economy features
like these that companies that rely on freelancers and other such
nontraditional employees need special HR policies and practices to deal with
them. Gig economy work has detractors.31 Some people who do these jobs
say they can feel somewhat disrespected. One critic says the work is
unpredictable and insecure. An article in the New York Times said this: “The
larger worry about on-demand jobs is not about benefits, but about a lack
of agency—a future in which computers, rather than humans, determine
what you do, when and for how much.”32 Some gig workers are taking
action. For example, some Uber drivers in U.S. sued to unionize. Indian gig
workers engaged with Uber and Ola, and Swiggy delivery personnel also
staged strikes in different cities. Their demands also were more or less the
same.
HRM

• Simply put, HRM refers to the application of management

principles to management of people in an organisation.

• The process of acquiring, training, appraising, and compensating

employees, and of attending to their labor relations, health and
safety, and fairness concerns.
The nature of human resource
management:

1. A Managerial Process: Human resource

management is an important aspect of
management that involves planning, organising,
directing, staffing and controlling of human
resources so as to achieve organisational success.
2. Forward Looking: HRM is a forward-looking
approach that attempts to assess the future human
resource requirement and assures availability of
required work force at right place and right time.
3. Mixture of Art and Science: Human resource
management is the mixture of art and science. It is art
because it deals with the qualitative aspect like skill,
knowledge, talent and creativity of the work force and
aims at nurturing and developing the quality of the work
force. It is an art of engaging the best person at work and
managing the personnel to bring out the best
performance. It is a science as different scientific
techniques are applied for recruitment, selection,
training and development and appraisal and motivation
of the workforce.

4. All Pervasive: It is needed in all
kinds of organizations and
activities, beginning with identifying the
management.
5. Continuous Process: Human
resource management is a continuous
process and involves a series of
work force requirement, to recruitment
and selection, training, performance
appraisal.
6. Key to Organisational
Success: The growth, survival
and development of the
organization, its profitability,
productivity, innovativeness
largely depends upon the quality
of the work force and how
efficiently the work force is put
to work and managed efficiently.
7. Utilization of Human Capital: HRM is concerned with effective
utilization of human capital.

8. Management of Individuals: Human resource management deals with

management of every individual working in the organisation.

9. Dynamic: Every individual working in an organisation possesses

different and distinct physiological, psychological, sociological and ethical
qualities.
10. Integration of Individual and Organizational Objectives: Human
resource management integrates the individual and organisational
objectives.
Assignment
• Title – Name of the competency
• Definition – Overall definition of the competency
• Sub-competencies – General baseline skills and behaviors required
• Behaviors – Behaviours that reflect the highest level of proficiency
• Proficiency Standards – Skill standards that reflect job-specific
requirements and reflect four stages of career development (early,
mid-level, senior, executive)
Competency example
• Title: Develop customer relationships
• Definition: As part of the Sales process, the ability to create a lasting
relationship with customers via interactions is integral to the role.
• Sub-competencies: Ability to communicate effectively with customers
• Behaviors: Emotional intelligence
• Proficiency Standards: Identify customer concerns and present
methods for addressing concerns.
HR COMPETENACY MODEL
 Fombrun’s human resource cycle model (1984)
• The Michigan model by Fombrun (1984) explains strategic HRM that
focused on management, professional groups, and the new labour force.
The main motive of the model was to align the formal structure of the
organization, its new strategies, and policies with the human resource
system. This helps to drive the strategic objectives of the organization in a
better way. They saw the employees of the firm as a strategic resource to
have a competitive advantage. Its elements include selection, appraisal,
development, and rewards.
• The model interlinks remuneration, assessment, development, and
selection implying that there must be a horizontal alignment. The drawback
of this model is that it ignores situational factors such as the interest of the
stakeholders and the notion of strategic choice. It emphasizes market
performance and organisational growth (Mbongaya, 2006).
 The Harvard framework for human resource
management (1992)
• Boxall and Beer from Harvard proposed the Harvard Framework of Human
Resource Management in 1992 (Beer, Boselie, & Brewster, 2015). They
believed in the combination of systems as bureaucrats, markets and clan
approach. This can remove the limitations of a single model and hence
increase the efficiency, innovativeness, and reliability towards the
organization’s strategies (O’Riordan, 2017). This model includes the global
development of businesses, the power of different stakeholders like
government, labour unions, and management, and linking corporates with
human resource strategies (Poole, 2015). Hence in the globalized world,
where economies are fluctuating, technologies are advancing, and customer
demands are changing, organizations are forced to adopt the Harvard model
on a practical basis.
• This model comprises several situational factors, the interests of the
stakeholders, a long-term approach and a feedback process. There
are various modifications done in the Harvard model from time to
time to adapt to the changing environment. Their main objective is to
resolve the problem of historical personnel management of
traditional and routine functions (Campbell, 2003). Harvard’s model
uses modern techniques and strategic functions. But the limitation of
the model is that it ignores the hard HRM approach which shows that
there is a high chance of business failures (Brunetto, Farr-Wharton, &
Shacklock, 2011).
Advantages of Harvard Model
• Understand the interests of various stakeholders in the company for
better management.
• Showcases the importance of trade-offs, irrespective of nature
between the interests of stakeholders and employees and different
company groups.
• This model broadened the context of HRM, including employee
influence, company’s operation, and related supervisory rules.
• Disadvantages of Harvard Model
• This model lacks exact advice for creating strategies effectively.
• Not suitable for the government sector.
 The Dave Ulrich HR Model
Dave Ulrich is a renowned HR thought leader, and his eponymous HR
model came into being in 1996. Devised as a means to streamline HR operations
in large organizations, Ulrich proposed to change the structure of HR functions by
splitting the human resource management into roles. He identified four key HR
roles which are:

• Strategic partner: HR business partners who are deployed to help the business
grow, fall under this category. They do so by formulating strategies that benefit
both – the employees and stakeholders of the company.
• Change agent: Change agents are concerned with enhancing the overall
employee experience. They study the organization’s culture, identify areas
where change is needed, and map out implementation plans.
• Administrative expert: Administrative experts focus on talent management.
They take care of day-to-day HR operations and use metrics to measure the
efficacy of the existing HR functions and processes like retention, reward
systems, etc. ‍
• Employee champion: Safeguarding employees’ interests is at the heart of an HR
manager who is an employee champion. Ensuring safety, wellness, diversity,
inclusion, and engagement are some of the themes that govern the work of
employee champions.
ULRICH MODEL
• Advantages of Ulrich model
• The Ulrich model can completely change the landscape of business and has
even performed this thing for two decades now.
• It serves the talent convincingly for boosting their productivity and
increasing their experience.
• This model convinces the HR professionals for supporting a company
having tons of competition.
• It encourages HR to create a strategy that justifies the department’s
performance.
• Disadvantages of Ulrich Model
• Implementing this model demands lots of patience that very few have
these days for surviving in this community.
• This model is proactive in nature that most employees might not like in the
long run.
 The Warwick Model
• Formulated by Chris Hendry and Andrew Pettigrew at the University of
Warwick, the Warwick model of HRM draws upon the Harvard Model and
analyses the five key factors that contribute to the functioning of the human
resources department. These five elements are:

• Outer context: This includes external factors such as politics, technical

environment, laws, competencies, and socio-economic conditions of a place
that guide the inner context of the company.
• Inner context: This is based upon the outer context and lays the foundation of
a company. Company culture, structure, leadership, technology, are some of
the areas that fall under this element.
• Business strategy: This includes the overall business strategy, objectives,
goals, and product market optimization.
• HRM context: This element focuses on the foundations of the human
resources, such as HR outputs, HR roles, organizations, definitions, etc.
• HRM content: This key factor deals with specific HR functions like reward
system, work system, employer relation, HR flows, and others.
Warwick Model of HRM Advantages
In general, the Warwick Model of HRM tries to balance inner
and outward context impacts, especially when there is no
agreement. The two contexts feed the overarching approach,
which in turn feeds the context and content. HR
implementation then feeds back into both inner and exterior
environments, impacting both directly and indirectly through
social forces.
• Warwick Model of HRM Disadvantages
The lack of a clear feedback loop between internal HR
practices and external company outcomes is the model's
fundamental flaw. Instead, feedback loops must filter through
several contexts, causing them to become muddled and
making it more difficult to discern which inputs cause which
effects.
 Guest’s model of HRM
This model was developed by David Guest in 1997. It explains how HRM is
different from personnel management (Morrow, 2000). It works on the
assumption that the human resource manager begins with certain strategies,
which will result in outcomes. The model integrates HRM practices leading to
superior individual and organizational performance (Mbongaya, 2006). It has
six dimensions of analysis:
1.Strategy,
2.Practices,
3.Outcomes,
4.Behaviour outcomes,
5.Performance outcomes and,
6.Financial outcomes.
Guest’s model of HRM
• The essential elements of HRM such as that in the Harvard map have
a direct relationship with valued business consequences (Price, 2017).
It adds a different level of analysis from previous versions of the
models. Performance is both a multi-level as well as a cross-level
phenomenon. It is useful in finding a relationship
between HRM practices and performance. The main limitation of this
model is that it fails to consider that HRM practices differ and may
complicate cross-level processes in the chain.
 The ASTD Competency HRM Model
• The second model we want to mention is the ASTD Competency model, whose main motive
is to create a strategy for laying out performance to tackle different descriptors. The
American Society created it for Training and Development in 2004, but there are few
modifications made in the model.
• The main motive of the ASTD Competency Model is to find what competencies need to be
learned by individuals to achieve growth in the field of their choice. The idea of certain
foundational competencies like business & management, interpersonal, and personal things
are categorized in this model.
• Advantages of the ASTD model
• It is greatly helpful in boosting productivity and completing the goals of the company.
• Introduces a range of expertise like social learning, employee performance, and coaching.
• Target the effective growth of the employee in the company.
• Disadvantages of ASTD Competency Model
• Few complain it affects the decision making of higher authorities that makes it inappropriate
to use in the long run.
• Employees have to refresh their skill sets consistently.
Top HR Professionals