HRM and Personnel Management 2

8/6/2019 HRM and Personnel Management 2

1/5

HRM and Personnel Management

Filed under: Free Essays Tags: hrm essay, hrm papers, hrm research paper, hrm term paper,

management essays, personnel management essay, personnel management research paper,

personnel management term paper admin @ 4:52 am

The term human resource management has come into popular usage in recent years. It is widely

accepted in the workplace, and sums up the current state of play with regard to the management of

people with the current emphasis on links to business strategy and on the fact that human resources

are as important as any other resource and need to be managed carefully. One of the main

underlying themes in the philosophy of HRM is that human resource needs must be taken into

account in getting everyone to meet organisational objectives, and that this will be to the advantage

of everyone concerned. Hence people are important whether they are full- or part- time employees,

permanent or temporary, or contract workers who are actually employed by another company.

Increasingly, all the people who contribute in some way to the work of the organisation will expect

and demand some influence, and personnel management techniques in appraisal, training and jobevaluation can be applied only with the consent and support of employees.

Many of the traditional aspects of people management are now increasingly devolved to line

managers, so that in many modern organisations the human resource department exists to initiate

such involvement and discussion of human resource issues andto define policies and strategies so

that everyone can contribute to the organisations overall effectiveness.

Human resource management versus personnel management.

You will have noticed that so far we have referred to both human resource management and

personnel management. Many books and articles have been written about the differences and

similarities between these terms, and many erudite arguments have been made. We do not intend

to discuss these in detail, but at this stage we need to clarify our use of the two terms and our views

on the extent of the similarities and differences.

We have shown that both terms can be applied to a wide range of activities. Any difference must

therefore be in the approach adopted, rather than in the actual activities that are undertaken.

We have identified the following trends in the way the terms are used:

- the personnel approach tends to be tactical in its approach to activities; the focus of human

resource management approach is more strategic


2/5

- the personnel approach tends to be short-term and responsive to others demands; the HRM

approach is to think of the long term and initiate policies on major new initiatives

- the personnel approach tends to be a rather piecemeal way of tackling issues; the HRM approach

to the same issues is to place them within a clearly defined, integrated framework which has been

worked out to benefit the organisation and to which the HRM manager and other staff have

contributed

- personnel management tends to rely on traditional forms of communication; HRM tends to use a

variety of communication channels

- personnel management tends to operate in organisations where there are traditional ways of

working and where there is not much involvement of the workforce in decision making; human

resource management emphasises the importance of the involvement of everyone in teams or in

quality circles

- personnel management tends to work in traditionally unionised organisations; human resource

management tends to encourage single status agreements and de-emphasises the role of tradeunions

- personnel management tends to use traditional pay systems; human resource management

emphasises the need to manage performance and motivate people by the use of various payment

systems which are integrated with the organisations objectives

- the personnel management approach tends to reflect the status quo and resist change; human

resource management tends to encourage change and increased flexibility in ways of working

- the personnel management approach tends to operate from a pluralistic point of view where

different points of view are tolerated; the human resource management approach tends to operate

from a unitary perspective emphasising the need for everyone in the organisation to work towards acommon goal, so unions are not encouraged since they are not seen to be necessary

- personnel managements focus is therefore on getting the same conditions for groups; human

resource managers focus on individual contracts, payment and reward systems

- personnel managers may sometimes need to help individuals with their problems; human resource

managers feel individuals should be prepared to take responsibility for their own decisions and

actions

- personnel management is concerned with the needs of the workforce and with ensuring a supply

of employees who are happy and work well; human resource management is concerned with the

demand for labour from management and has more emphasis on planning, monitoring and control

to ensure the right number of people (not necessarily employees), with the right skills in the right

place at the right time personnel managers want a system that is fair for all and are keen to have

rules and procedures to encourage this; human resource managers tend to say that people have a

right to proper treatment at work and efficient management will achieve this


3/5

- personnel management is a special activity because of the difficulties of working with people;

human resource management says that managing people is much the same as managing any other

resource

- personnel management tends to specialise in most of the activities mentioned earlier; human

resource management tends to devolve many of these activities to line managers, concentrating

instead on developing policies, planning, monitoring and evaluating.

There is obviously much to admire in the human resource management approach to the

management of people, especially the emphasis on strategy, the links with values and mission,

teamwork and the integration of all the activities into a framework which integrates these. However,

some who call themselves personnel managers have also stressed the importance of acting

strategically. One of the elements that is often pointed out as making the difference is the level of

involvement of the function in the strategic decision-making of a company. One way of testing this is

to ask whether the head of the function carries the title of Director and whether he or she attends

board level meetings.

Even if this is taken as an essential difference between HRM and personnel management, it is clear

that only a limited number of managers can actually be operating at the strategic level. Most

practitioners must be operating at lower levels, contributing their ideas to the formulation of

strategy, but in the main implementing the decisions made at the strategic level. These include:

Director, Manager, Officer, Administrator. Most directors and many managers, whether they call

themselves personnel or human resource mangers, will be able to operate at a strategic level, but

most officers or administrators, and line managers performing personnel functions, are unlikely to

do so.

In other words, although involvement at the strategic level may be a key distinction between

personnel management and HRM, it is still important to examine the functions as they are

performed by managers throughout the organisation. We have proceeded from the premise that

managers involved in HRM and personnel perform similar functions, such as those listed earlier. The

difference between personnel and HRM lies in the overall philosophy that guides them in deciding

how to handle these functions.

Case 1

Susan works in a knitwear manufacturing company and much of her time is taken up in recruitment,

training and development. She has an assistant who helps in these areas and who does much of the

actual interviewing along with the line managers for the appropriate sections. Susan is also involved

in disciplinary situations. The line manager in the section issues the first warning, but later

disciplinary action is handled by Susan in the presence of the line manager and, of course, the shop


4/5

steward. Susan spends time negotiating with the trade union on a range of issues, but also likes to

find time to go around the factory each day to get to know the staff and their problems. She gathers

information about absenteeism from the mangers on her daily rounds, and this gives both them and

their staff a chance to approach her with any problems. Both she and her assistant often spend time

helping individuals who come to see them with problems.

Case 2

Paul works in a building society and has a small department of staff who work with him. The building

society is concerned to provide the best possible service for its customers, and this is stated in its

mission statement. Pauls boss is a Director and is concerned with strategic issues of employing

people. Paul has clear objectives which he and his department work towards, and one of these is to

reduce the levels of absenteeism by 5% in the next six months. They are also involved in new ways of

getting employees to work more efficiently and effectively, and Paul spends a great deal of his time

reviewing policies and procedures and getting his staff to work with members of the workforce in

the design of these. He is particularly interested in providing more effective ways of communicatingwith the workforce, and at present his department communicates with employees through weekly

newsletters and the internal e-mail system on computers. Paul tends to rarely leave his office and

most of his contacts are with other mangers in other specialisms. His personal computer provides

information about daily absenteeism levels, levels of labour turnover and other staff statistics. His

department will provide advice to line mangers and will coordinate recruitment campaigns and

advertising, but in general the line mangers are encouraged to take responsibility for their own team

from recruitment through to dismissal. There is no recognised trade union, but team working is

strongly encouraged.

Discussion of Activity

These two thumbnail sketches provide rather stereotyped views, with Susan operating in a manner

more typical of the personnel management approach and Paul in a waymore typical of human

resource management, but this may not be reflected in their job titles.

You will note that in suggesting how one might try to judge whether a given company is pursuing an

HRM approach or a personnel management approach, we talked about involvement in strategic

decision-making: we did suggest asking whether HRM or personnel management is used in the

relevant job titles. There does not seem to be any proven relationship between the chosen

nomenclature within companies and their approach to the management of people. In Activity 1.2,

we said both Susan and Paul may have the title of either Human Resource Manager or Personnel

Manager. Even the Institute of Personnel and Development can be cited as an example of the lack of

clarity that exists in the use of these terms. The IPD uses the words personnel and personnel

management in its name and in the name of its monthly journal (People Management: the

Magazine for Professionals in Personnel Training and Development), and has distanced itself to some

extent from the debate and from the term human resource management, which had been


5/5

Documents

HRM and Personnel Management 2