What is the main purpose of human resource management?

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 resources 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.

HRM is 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).

The modern HR technology term human capital management (HCM) has been used more frequently compared to the term HRM. The term HCM has had widespread adoption by large and midsize companies and other organizations of software to manage many HR functions.

The importance of human resource management

The role of HRM practices are to manage the people within a workplace to achieve the organization's mission and reinforce the culture. When done effectively, HR managers can help recruit new professionals who have skills necessary to further the company's goals as well as aid with the training and development of current employees to meet objectives.

A company is only as good as its employees, making HRM a crucial part of maintaining or improving the health of the business. Additionally, HR managers can monitor the state of the job market to help the organization stay competitive. This could include making sure compensation and benefits are fair, events are planned to keep employees from burning out and job roles are adapted based on the market.

How does HRM work?

Human resources management works through dedicated HR professionals, who are responsible for the day-to-day execution of HR-related functions. Typically, human resources will comprise an entire department within each organization.

HR departments across different organizations can vary in size, structure and nature of their individual positions. For smaller organizations, it is not uncommon to have a handful of HR generalists, who each perform a broad array of HR functions. Larger organizations may have more specialized roles, with individual employees dedicated to functions such as recruiting, immigration and visa handling, talent management, benefits, compensation and more. Though these HR positions are differentiated and specialized, job functions may still overlap with each other.

Amazon is an example of a large company with multiple types of specialized HR positions. Amazon's career website lists 15 different HR job titles:

• HR assistant
• HR business partner
• HR manager
• Recruiter
• Recruiting coordinator
• Sourcer
• Recruiting manager
• Immigration specialist
• LoA and accommodation specialist
• Compensation specialist/manager
• Benefits specialist/manager
• Talent management specialist/manager
• Learning and development specialist/manager
• HR technology/process project program manager
• HR analytics specialist/manager

Objectives of human resource management

The objectives of HRM can be broken down into four broad 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 number of employees for a given task or maintaining high employee retention rates.
3. Functional objectives: Guidelines used to keep HR functioning properly within the organization as a whole. This includes making sure that all of HR's resources are being allocated to their 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.

Within the unit of each organization, the objectives of HRM are to:

1. Help the organization achieve its goals by providing and maintaining productive employees.
2. Efficiently make use of the skills and abilities of each employee.
3. Make sure employees have or receive the proper training.
4. Build and maintain a positive employee experience with high satisfaction and quality of life, so that employees can contribute their best efforts to their work.
5. Effectively communicate relevant company policies, procedures, rules and regulations to employees.
6. Maintaining ethical, legal and socially responsible policies and behaviors in the workplace.
7. Effectively manage change to external factors that may affect employees within the organization.

Skills and responsibilities of an HR manager

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:

Skills that can add value to HR managers include:

• Employee relations
• Job candidate relations
• Sourcing and recruiting
• Interpersonal conflict management
• New employee onboarding
• HR software and information system experience
• Performance management
• Customer service
• Project management

HRM software

Almost all areas of HRM have sophisticated software that automates varying degrees of many HR processes, along with other added features such as analytics. For example, job candidate recruiting has seen enormous growth in the number of software platforms and systems that help both employers and job seekers to electronically match organizations and candidates with each other and then help manage the interviewing, hiring and employment processes.

While some HRM software systems started out on premises, nearly every area of HR tech, especially HCM systems, is moving to cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) platforms.

HRM career opportunities and requirements

When looking to start a career in human resource management, a bachelor's degree is typically required. Some colleges offer specific human resource management degrees, which can be one path into an entry-level HR position. Another way to land a job in HR is to complete an undergraduate course of study in a related field, such as business administration. Furthermore, several years of experience in operations-heavy roles may prove valuable when making a career transition into HR positions. For those lacking a relevant undergraduate degree or translatable work experience, there are also HR-specific master's degree programs to help build the necessary knowledge, skill sets and qualifications.

Modern HRM history

The birth of modern human resource management can be traced back to the 18th century. The British Industrial Revolution, giving rise to many large factories, created an unprecedented spike in worker demand.

With many of these laborers putting in long hours (often clocking in around 16-hour workdays), it became increasingly apparent that the happiness of workers had a strong positive correlation with productivity. Seeking to maximize return on investments, worker satisfaction programs started to be introduced. Furthermore, factory labor conditions brought worker safety and rights to the forefront of legal attention.

Early HR departments within organizations in the 20th century were often known as personnel management departments. The personnel management departments dealt with legal compliance and employee-related issues, and also implemented worker satisfaction and safety programs within the workplace. Following WWII in the United States, personnel management departments looked to the Army's training programs and started to make employee training a point of emphasis.

HR departments started to assume the name of "human resources" in the 1970s. The primary factor that differentiates HR from personnel management is the technological enablement of better communications and access to individual employee information.

HRM trends

Job opportunities for careers in human resource management remain strong. The Wall Street Journal, in an analysis of data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), ranked the "HR manager" job title as the 35th (out of 800) most promising prospect, based on median salaries in 2018 and projected job openings in 2028.

Generally speaking, human resources as a field is on the upswing. Companies are increasingly recognizing the strategic difference a good HR department can make and are investing in them accordingly. As a result, HR jobs are growing in demand. There is expected to be a 7% growth in HR manager job titles alone within the United States from 2018 to 2028. Furthermore, salary prospects remain strong, with the median HR manager salary currently sitting at around $113,000. For HR specialist positions, median salaries sit at around $60,000.

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Posted by: Lucid Content Team

HR might be the most confusing department in your whole organization—everyone knows they’re important, but very few employees know why. 

So what does HR do? 

There’s a massive difference between a healthy human resources department that contributes to the growth of the organization and a distant HR that exists somewhere near the basement archives and only pops up once a year for the company holiday party. 

Here’s an in-depth description of what the HR department does (or what they should be doing) to meet the needs of employees. 

What is an HR department?

In simplest terms, the HR (Human Resources) department is a group who is responsible for managing the employee life cycle (i.e., recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and firing employees) and administering employee benefits.

What does human resources do?

Ask any employee what an HR department is, and you’ll get an answer that primarily deals with the most uncomfortable aspects of work: HR violations, layoffs, and firing. But the truth is that human resources is there to support employees. It’s quite literally a resource for humans. 

Here are some of the tasks your HR department is busy completing every day.

1. Recruit candidates

HR needs to understand the organization’s needs and make sure those needs are met when recruiting for new positions. It’s not as simple as just throwing an ad up on Indeed: you’ll need to analyze the market, consult stakeholders, and manage budgets. 

Then, once the role is advertised, more research needs to be done to make sure that the right candidates are being attracted and presented. Recruiting is a massive—and costly—undertaking; the right candidate can revitalize an entire organization, but the wrong candidate can upend operations.

Plan a more effective recruitment process with these 6 essential steps.

Human resources is in charge of arranging interviews, coordinating hiring efforts, and onboarding new employees. They’re also in charge of making sure all paperwork involved with hiring someone is filled out and making sure that everything from the first day to each subsequent day is navigated successfully.

3. Process payroll

Payroll is its own beast. Every payday must have taxes calculated and hours collected. Expenses need to be reimbursed and raises and bonuses need to be added in as well. If you think it’s a chore doing taxes just once a year, imagine what it must be like to be in HR and make sure they’re properly deducted every pay period. 

4. Conduct disciplinary actions

This responsibility may be why HR tends to get a bad rap. When navigated inappropriately, disciplinary actions can lead to the loss of a valuable employee and can even result in litigation or a poor reputation. But when handled appropriately, disciplinary action can result in the success of an employee.

For instance, if a company notices that a particular employee is routinely late and continues being late even after the employee has received several warnings, HR could step in and investigate the reason for the tardiness. It may be an opportunity to extend benefits such as counseling to the employee or offer additional resources to help the employee learn to be on time. Instead of taking on the cost of firing and then recruiting a replacement for that employee, it could be a learning opportunity that could enhance that employee’s career.

On the other hand, sometimes disciplinary action isn’t the best course to take and an employee should be let go. The best human resources departments know when an employee isn’t the right fit for a company and would be happier somewhere else. It’s up to HR to develop a strong enough relationship with managers and employees alike to identify the cohesiveness and health of a team.

Learn how to give consistent warnings and feedback to improve performance.

Policies need to be updated (or at least examined) every year as the organization changes. It’s HR’s job to make official updates to policies and to suggest changes to policies when they no longer serve the company or the employees. Sometimes a policy should be updated as a reaction to an occurrence. HR should always be included in and consulted with regarding these decisions.

6. Maintain employee records

Maintaining HR records is mandated by law. These records help employers identify skill gaps to help with the hiring process and to analyze demographic data and comply with regulations. They also contain personal details and emergency contacts for each employee. 

7. Conduct benefit analysis

Staying competitive is of prime importance when trying to attract the best talent. A promising recruit may choose a different company with lesser pay if the benefits are more attractive. HR should routinely investigate similar companies to see if their benefits are competitve.

How does HR support employees?

Besides the seven examples above, which are mostly operational responsibilities, HR provides less quantitative functions: It exists to help employees thrive. 

After all, employees are the single biggest asset to any organization. It follows, then, that protecting their well-being is of utmost importance. Here are four ways HR helps support the emotional and career needs of employees:

1. Providing career growth

Stagnation is bad for business, and it’s smart to keep your best employees with the company. HR can provide career paths to help guide each employee to a long future within the company. HR can then check in periodically to further guide employees on their career paths. 

2. Offering continuing education

Sometimes the career growth mentioned above requires additional training. Your organization may provide educational assistance, and HR can help determine which classes and training programs would be best for an employee on his or her designated career path. HR can also work with managers to ensure that the employee’s work schedule is flexible enough to allow the employee to attend classes.

3. Training and supporting managers

Managers aren’t born. They’re created. HR can help provide management guidance to managers, making sure that department and teams are as healthy and functional as possible. This may include periodically sending managers to formal trainings and retreats.

4. Supporting health and wellness

It’s important to remember that employees are people. They’ll need help weathering mental illness, health issues, debt, pregnancies, adoption, and myriad other life occurrences. HR can help support employees through any of these and other circumstances.

When to contact human resources

An HR department that never interacts with employees isn’t doing its job. While you’re developing an onboarding procedure, educate new employees on when to reach out to HR and what resources HR has to offer. The HR department should regularly schedule one-on-one interviews with employees to check in on their career progression, comfort in their roles, and any other issues the employee may be having. 

Considering these responsibilities, employees should feel comfortable reaching out to their HR departments in these, and similar, situations:

• When you (or a co-worker) experience harassment or discrimination from your colleagues, including your manager
• When you have questions about benefits, including company-provided health insurance or rights guaranteed by law
• When your personal circumstances change (e.g. having a child, needing to reduce your hours, needing accommodation for a disability)
• When you have questions about advancing at the company, including opportunities to shadow other employees or participate in additional training
• When you need an objective third-party to work through a work-related issue

Building the best HR department 

The human resources department heavily contributes to a company’s culture. If HR genuinely cares about the well-being of employees, the culture will be one of openness and growth. 

Looking to evolve your HR department? Find out how HR can be more agile.