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Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the
workforce The workforce or labour force is a concept referring to the Pooling (resource management), pool of human beings either in employment or in unemployment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single types of companies, company or ...
of an
organization An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived from ...
,
business sector In economics, the business sector or corporate sector - sometimes popularly called simply "business" - is "the part of the economy made up by companies". It is a subset of the domestic economy, excluding the economic activities of general gov ...
, industry, or
economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...
. A narrower concept is
human capital Human capital is a concept used by social scientists to designate personal attributes considered useful in the production process. It encompasses employee knowledge, skills, know-how, good health, and education. Human capital has a substantial ...
, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include manpower,
labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...
, personnel, associates or simply: people. The Human Resources department (HR department) of an organization performs
human resource management Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
, overseeing various aspects of
employment Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any othe ...
, such as compliance with
labor law Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, ...
and employment standards, interviewing and selection, performance management, administration of
Employee benefits Employee benefits and (especially in British English) benefits in kind (also called fringe benefits, perquisites, or perks) include various types of non-wage compensation provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries. Inst ...
, organizing of employee files with the required documents for future reference, and some aspects of
recruitment Recruitment is the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs (either permanent or temporary) within an organization. Recruitment also is the processes involved in choosing individual ...
(also known as
talent acquisition Acqui-hiring or Acq-hiring (a portmanteau of "acquisition" and "hiring", also called talent acquisition) is a neologism which describes the process of acquiring a company primarily to recruit its employees, rather than to gain control of its prod ...
) and employee offboarding. They serve as the link between an organization's management and its employees. The duties include planning, recruitment and selection process, posting job ads, evaluating the performance of employees, organizing resumes and job applications, scheduling interviews and assisting in the process and ensuring
background check A background check is a process a person or company uses to verify that an individual is who they claim to be, and this provides an opportunity to check and confirm the validity of someone's criminal record, education, employment history, and oth ...
s. Another job is
payroll A payroll is the list of employees of some company that is entitled to receive payments as well as other work benefits and the amounts that each should receive. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks pe ...
and benefits administration which deals with ensuring vacation and sick time are accounted for, reviewing payroll, and participating in benefits tasks, like claim resolutions, reconciling benefits statements, and approving
invoice An invoice, bill or tab is a commerce, commercial document issued by a sales, seller to a buyer relating to a sale transaction and indicating the product (business), products, quantities, and agreed-upon prices for products or Service (economic ...
s for payment. HR also coordinates employee relations activities and programs including, but not limited to, employee counseling. The last job is regular maintenance, this job makes sure that the current HR files and
database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
s are up to date, maintaining
employee benefits Employee benefits and (especially in British English) benefits in kind (also called fringe benefits, perquisites, or perks) include various types of non-wage compensation provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries. Inst ...
and employment status and performing payroll/benefit-related reconciliations.


Activities

A human resources manager can have various functions in a
company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
, including to: * Determine the needs of the staff/personnel. * Determine whether to use temporary staff or hire employees to fill these needs. * Determine do's and don'ts. * Train and develop management styles * Recruit and/or interview the best employees * Train employees and upgrade their learning knowledge * Supervise the work * Evaluate the work * Establish discipline work culture in the organization * Avoid politics in the office. * Apply HR software for the ease of work in the organization. * Manage employee relations. If there are unions, perform collective bargaining * Prepare employee records and personal policies. * Manage employee payroll, benefits, and compensation * Ensure equal opportunities * Deal with
discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...
* Deal with performance issues * Ensure that human resources practices conform to various regulations *
Motivate Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...
employees * Mediate disputes * Disseminate information in the organization so as to benefit its growth Managers need to develop their
interpersonal skills A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways. The process of learning these skills is called social ...
to be effective. Organizational behavior focuses on how to improve factors that make organizations more effective.


History

Human resource management used to be referred to as "
personnel administration Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any oth ...
." In the 1920s, personnel administration focused mostly on the aspects of hiring, evaluating, and compensating employees. However, they did not focus on any employment relationships at an organizational performance level or on the systematic relationships in any parties. This led to a lacked unifying paradigm in the field during this period. According to an
HR Magazine The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a professional human resources membership association headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. SHRM promotes the role of HR as a profession and provides education, certification, and networking to ...
article, the first personnel management department started at the National Cash Register Co. in 1900. The owner, John Henry Patterson, organized a personnel department to deal with grievances, discharges and safety, and information for supervisors on new laws and practices after several strikes and employee lockouts. This action was followed by other companies; for example, Ford had high turnover ratios of 380 percent in 1913, but just one year later, the line workers of the company had doubled their daily salaries from $2.50 to $5, even though $2.50 was a fair wage at that time. This example clearly shows the importance of effective management which leads to a greater outcome of employee satisfaction as well as encouraging employees to work together in order to achieve better business objectives. During the 1970s, American businesses began experiencing challenges due to the substantial increase in competitive pressures. Companies experienced globalization, deregulation, and rapid technological change which caused the major companies to enhance their strategic planning – a process of predicting future changes in a particular environment and focus on ways to promote
organizational effectiveness Organizational effectiveness is a concept organizations use to gauge how Effectiveness, effective they are at reaching intended outcome (probability), outcomes. Organizational effectiveness embodies the degree to which firms achieve the goals they ...
. This resulted in developing more jobs and opportunities for people to show their skills which were directed to effectively applying employees toward the fulfillment of individual, group, and organizational goals. Many years later the major/minor of human resource management was created at universities and colleges also known as
business administration Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of management ...
. It consists of all the activities that companies used to ensure the more effective use of employees. Now, human resources focus on the people side of management. There are two real definitions of HRM (
Human Resource Management Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
); one is that it is the process of managing people in organizations in a structured and thorough manner. This means that it covers the hiring, firing, pay and perks, and performance management. This first definition is the modern and traditional version more like what a personnel manager would have done back in the 1920s. The second definition is that HRM circles the ideas of management of people in organizations from a macromanagement perspective like customers and competitors in a marketplace. This involves the focus on making the "employment relationship" fulfilling for both management and employees. Some research showed that employees can perform at a much higher rate of productivity when their supervisors and managers paid more attention to them. The Father of Human relations, Elton Mayo, was the first person to reinforce the importance of employee communications,
cooperation Cooperation (written as co-operation in British English) is the process of groups of organisms working or acting together for common, mutual, or some underlying benefit, as opposed to working in competition for selfish benefit. Many animal a ...
, and involvement. His studies concluded that sometimes the human factors are more important than physical factors, such as quality of lighting and physical workplace conditions. As a result, individuals often place value more on how they feel. For example, a rewarding system in Human resource management, applied effectively, can further encourage employees to achieve their best performance.


Origins of the terminology

Pioneering economist
John R. Commons John Rogers Commons (October 13, 1862 – May 11, 1945) was an American institutional economist, Georgist, progressive and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Early years John R. Commons was born in Hollansburg, Ohio on ...
mentioned "human resource" in his 1893 book ''The Distribution of Wealth'' but did not elaborate. The expression was used during the 1910s to 1930s to promote the idea that human beings are of worth (as in human dignity); by the early 1950s, it meant people as a means to an end (for employers). Among scholars the first use of the phrase in that sense was in a 1958 report by economist E. Wight Bakke. In regard to how individuals respond to the changes in a labor market, the following must be understood: * Skills and qualifications: as industries move from manual to more managerial professions so does the need for more highly skilled staff. If the market is "tight" (i.e. not enough staff for the jobs), employers must compete for employees by offering financial rewards, community investment, etc. * Geographical spread: how far is the job from the individual? The distance to travel to work should be in line with remuneration, and the transportation and infrastructure of the area also influence who applies for a position. * Occupational structure: the norms and values of the different careers within an organization. Mahoney 1989 developed 3 different types of occupational structure, namely, craft (loyalty to the profession), organization career path (promotion through the firm), and unstructured (lower/unskilled workers who work when needed). * Generational difference: different age categories of employees have certain characteristics, for example, their behavior and their expectations of the organization.


Criticism of the terminology

One major concern about considering people as assets or resources is that they will be commoditized, objectified, and abused. Human beings are not "
commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...
" or "resources", but are creative and social beings in a productive enterprise. The 2000 revision of
ISO 9001 The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 90 ...
, in contrast, requires identifying the processes, their sequence, and interaction, and to define and communicate responsibilities and authorities. In general, heavily unionized nations such as
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
and
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
have adopted and encouraged such approaches. Also, in 2001, the
International Labour Organization The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is the first and o ...
decided to revisit and revise its 1975 Recommendation 150 on Human Resources Development, resulting in its " Labour is not a commodity" principle. One view of these trends is that a strong social consensus on political economy and a good social welfare system facilitate
labor mobility Labor or worker mobility is the geographical and occupational movement of workers. Impediments to mobility are easily divided into two distinct classes with one being personal and the other being systemic. Personal impediments include physical loca ...
and tend to make the entire economy more productive, as labor can develop skills and experience in various ways, and move from one enterprise to another with little controversy or difficulty in adapting. Another important controversy regards labor mobility and the broader philosophical issue with the usage of the phrase "human resources". Governments of developing nations often regard developed nations that encourage immigration or "guest workers" as appropriating human capital that is more rightfully part of the developing nation and required to further its economic growth. Over time, the United Nations have come to more generally support the developing nations' point of view, and have requested significant offsetting "foreign aid" contributions so that a developing nation losing human capital does not lose the capacity to continue to train new people in trades, professions, and the arts. Some businesses and companies are choosing to rename this department using other terms, such as "people operations" or "culture department," in order to erase this stigma.


Development

Human resource companies play an important part in developing and making a company or organization at the beginning or making a success at the end, due to the labor provided by employees. Human resources are intended to show how to have better employment relations in the workforce. Also, to bring out the best work ethic of the employees and therefore making a move to a better working environment. Human resources also deals with essential motivators in the workplace such as
payroll A payroll is the list of employees of some company that is entitled to receive payments as well as other work benefits and the amounts that each should receive. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks pe ...
, benefits, team morale and workplace harassment.


Planning

Administration and operations used to be the two role areas of HR. The strategic planning component came into play as a result of companies recognizing the need to consider HR needs in goals and strategies. HR directors commonly sit on company executive teams because of the HR planning function. Numbers and types of employees and the evolution of compensation systems are among elements in the planning role. Various factors affecting Human Resource: planning organizational structure, growth, business location, demographic changes, environmental uncertainties, expansion etc. Additionally, this area encompasses the realm of
talent management Talent management (TM) refers to the anticipation of required human capital for an organization and the planning to meet those needs. The field has been growing in significance and gaining interest among practitioners as well as in the scholarl ...
.


See also

* Activity-based working *
Chief human resources officer A chief human resources officer (CHRO) or chief people officer (CPO) is a corporate officer who oversees all aspects of human resource management and industrial relations policies, practices and operations for an organization. Similar job titles in ...
*
Employee offboarding Employee offboarding describes the separation process when an employee leaves a company. The offboarding process might involve a phased transfer of knowledge from the departing employee to a new or existing employee; an exit interview; return of any ...
*
Human resource accounting Human Resource Accounting (HRA) is the process of identifying and reporting investments made in the human resources of an organisation that are presently unaccounted for in the conventional accounting practice. It is an extension of standard acc ...
*
Human Resources Development Convention, 1975 Human Resources Development Convention, 1975 is an International Labour Organization Convention. It was established in 1975: Having decided upon the adoption of certain proposals with regard to human resources Human resources (HR) is the ...
*
Human resource management Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, ...
*
Industrial and organizational psychology Industrial and organizational psychology (I-O psychology), an applied discipline within psychology, is the science of human behavior in the workplace. Depending on the country or region of the world, I-O psychology is also known as occupational ...


Notes


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Human Resources Resources *