Human Resource Management And Their Day Today Functions (Essay Sample)

Human Resource Management
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HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
A critical component of any organizational structure, human resource management is a requirement in virtually all organizations. It is a key component in the operational framework of any business entity or organization that involves strategically managing the workforce employed in a business entity (Walker, 2013). The management of human resource in organizations guides the relationship that employees in any given organization have with the organization. This aspect of an organization is vital in attracting and selecting new employees, managing and retaining the existing employees while developing their capabilities toward achieving organizational goals and objectives. As Huselid, Becker & Beatty (2015) note, in the present day marketplace that is fuelled by intangible assets, optimal workforce is critical to a firm’s ultimate survival and success. In the present economic set up, external factors and social conditions influence the way work is done, thereby shaping a new future for human resource management (Walker, 2013). To understand these changes and their influence, it is important to first establish the functions played by human resource management in an organization.
Functions of Human resource management
The process of managing human capital is meant to first of all maximize the performance of a company by appropriating the most suitable labor for its requisite job. This, Ulrich (2013) observes, goes into the final achievement of an organization’s strategic objectives. The management of human resource as a process involves designing employee benefits, undertaking employee recruitment, overseeing the training and development of employees, appraising the performance of employees and managing industrial relations (Ulrich, 2013). As such, therefore, the human resource department in any organization plays a critical role in the operations of such entities, supplying, appraising, retaining, disciplining and replacing the most important of all the factors of production.
External Factors Influencing Human Resource
The external factors that influence human resource and its management refer to those aspects of business operations that exert an influence on business processes but are from outside of the organization. These factors are usually outside the sphere of the organization’s control (Bamberger, Biron & Meshoulam, 2014). Since the organization cannot influence these aspects, the best way of managing such influences is to constantly change the process of human resource management.
Government Regulations
Among the external influences of human resource are government regulations. Government regulations refer to the policies and statutes established by the government to guide the process of human resource management. The regulations imposed by governments go a long way in informing the future for HR management. As the ultimate regulatory bodies, all governments are tasked with the creation of policies to safeguard citizens from exploitation or unfair treatment, most of which affect human resource and its management. Governments therefore create legislations to guide the employment of its citizens.
Among the legislations created by governments is the minimum wage legislation. These legislations spell out the minimum statutory wages that organizations can pay their employees. Also stipulated in these minimum wage legislations are the basic working conditions for employees (Budhwar & Debrah, 2014). All these stipulations end up affecting the process of human resource management in an organization. Each organization has to adhere to these stipulations or risk facing legal actions and punitive measures leveled on them by the responsible governments. Though external, the minimum wage and basic working condition legislations passed by governments affect the number, remuneration, and treatment of employees in any organization; the core functions of human resource management practitioners (Budhwar & Debrah, 2014).
Government regulations may also involve such benevolent policies as statutory contributions to various retirement benefit schemes and certain hospital insurance funds. These policies usually serve to stipulate the proportion of periodic contributions to such schemes that employers must contribute, as well as the proportions that are to be footed by the individual worker. The governments’ legislations on retirement benefits and health insurance help safeguard the wellbeing of employees (Boonstra, 2008). These policies, enforceable through statues, act as an influence on the human resource of an organization, and exert an influence on the management of such human resource.
Governments may also put in place laws and regulations to help in governing the health and safety standards in the workplace. Organizations have to adhere to such workplace health and safety standards and regulations in the process of their operations or face punitive actions from the government. In the implementation of these standards and regulations, the human resource department has to be at the forefront. The process of governmental regulation may also affect the policies on education within a given jurisdiction. These policies may affect the talent pool to which organizations have access and therefore directly influence their human resource, and the management of such human resource.
In some countries, the government formulates such laws as the Equal Opportunity Act to ensure that all citizens, regardless of belonging to a minority faction of the population, have access to similar opporutinites (Shields et al, 2015). Such regulations affect the human resource policies adopted by an organization. At times, the human resource managers of an organization may have no choice but to hire a candidate out of their comfort zone just to avoid costly suits that have a basis in such a regulation. These regulations aim to reduce discrimination on the basis of one’s origin, race or affiliation and therefore level the competition.
Technology
Technology refers to the knowhow used in the production of goods and services. The use of technology affects the production process in organizations, determines the cost and efficiency of such production and guides the resources utilized in the process. Advancements in technology may affect the human resource of a company in several ways. For one, such an advancement would render certain human labor moribund. In essence, certain technological advancements would eliminate the need for human labor. This creates a situation referred to as structural unemployment, thereby informing the future of the human resource management process, note Buller & McEvoy (2012).
Certain technologies may create efficiencies in production and hence free up resources that would then be used elsewhere. The increase in efficiency, coupled with a reduction in costs may allow human resources practitioners to offer better packages to existing workers. Advancements in technology, therefore, may, in such a way, prove beneficial to human resource practitioners. The increased efficiency leads to cheaper ways of carrying out tasks and thereby leads to internal cost saving advantages which may in turn translate to better working conditions for the existing human resource (Buller & McEvoy, 2012).
Economy
The shape of the economy tends to affect human resource and shape both its present and future. According to Jiang, Lepak, Hu & Baer (2012) the economic cycles such as troughs and peaks affect the demand of organizations for human labor. During high seasons, peaks, organizations tend to produce more commodities and therefore need more labor to achieve this end. As such, human resource managers hire more and more workers to fill the demand for labor. Similarly, during low seasons, troughs, economic activities slow down; production of commodities by businesses slackens and the labor required for the process is reduced. This leads to dismissal of laborers by business organizations and hence increases the unemployment levels in the economy (Jiang, Lepak, Hu & Baer, 2012).
Demographics
Demography refers to the composition of a given population in terms of varied aspects such as among others, race, age, sex, class and standard of education. These aspects influence human resource in a variety of ways. The age component of demography, for instance, determines the workforce of a population. In a population where there are more seniors than youths, the pool of labor is severely constrained, and labor as a factor of production then tends to be more expensive (Punnett, 2015). In such a scenario, the human resource managers in an organization are then forced to offer competitive packages in order to entice labor to join their organizations. On the flip side, populations that have more youths than seniors will have a bigger pool of labor hence the cost of the factor of production may be lower (Punnett, 2015).
Populations with younger people may, however, not always be attractive to human resource management practitioners. Empirical research of workplace behavior shows that young workers, especially Millennials tend to be more restless in general. This fact has led to lots of organizations preferring to employ more individuals from Generation X and Generation Y. The restlessness of millennials can be construed as poor workmanship (Solomon, Russell-Bennett & Previte, 2012). These individuals tend to be more mobile due to their restlessness, making investing in them a risky prospect. Practitioners in the field of human management are therefore reluctant to deal with this group of individuals; a decision informed by the age aspect o...