human resource management in business essay

human resource management in business essay

The Importance of Human Resource Management in Business: A Comprehensive Analysis

1. Introduction to Human Resource Management

Traditional human resource management focuses only on hiring and managing employees, emphasizing personnel tasks. Today’s human resource management includes attracting corporate personnel, developing talented people, enhancing the quality of working life, and utilizing the workforce’s talents to match individual and collective objectives. Its responsibilities have expanded to include influencing the workforce, retaining people, performance management, training and career development, diversity, supporting the organization’s strategy, and ensuring compliance with labor laws, especially in a global context. Companies are embracing it in a quest for competitive advantage, emphasizing human resource management policies and practices. It is now part of every employee’s work role, the human resource activities that are generally performed, or at least have a real organizational impact. Of course, effective human resource management can make a major contribution to ensuring organizational success.

Humans are the most important asset in any business. Human resource management is the process of utilizing human resources to achieve corporate goals. It is essential in establishing the right corporate culture, which affects everyone’s work and happiness. An enterprise’s greatest asset is its employees, but it cannot survive without people. Human resource management consists of a series of management activities concerning the utilization of human resources. Today, the globalization of business has forced companies to do their best to discover, cultivate, and retain talented people. They must utilize these talented individuals as much as possible in order to become a productive and happy workforce, and to enhance their own welfare.

2. Key Functions and Roles of HR in Business

Selectivity is also the key to success in evaluating employee qualifications. One can no longer develop a talent pool through company training activities, falling back on promotion from within as openings occur. Training programs must now be far more selective and concerned with longer-range career development. Employment performance in the company should be related to identified manpower needs, and potential should be evaluated on the basis of these needs and the availability of other job opportunities resulting from promotion. Employee satisfaction today tends to be job-related and challenging human resource management to study job design to improve it. In effect, pluralism allows managers to take advantage of IT for controls while satisfying the need for job interest and challenge. Individually examining the needs of all people will not only allow better utilization of all of these people but will contribute importantly to their motivation. Satisfaction tends to assure that the company will have employees available for future requirements.

Attracting the best people to an organization must be a joint effort of the various personnel management functions. Management interests and initiatives in this area must be an integral component of the activities of the human resource management function to ensure success. Sophisticated management information systems can compare the costs and benefits of various staffing alternatives. Economic analysis, industrial relations experience, labor market information, legal knowledge, and sensitivity to equal employment opportunity all must be combined in a way that permits more effective and selective staffing. Applications for entry-level and executive manpower in the nineteen-seventies, the impact of the new anti-discrimination legislation, the resulting government requirements, and the impacts of proposed or potential affirmative action activity may provide direction for this effort.

3. Strategies for Effective HR Management

In sum, leaders and managers are responsible for managing employer and employee issues to enhance leadership capacity and foster relationship-building, not only in terms of economic and financial rewards, but based on the development of trusting relationships and organizational values that enhance workers’ satisfaction and motivation. For example, although incorporating information technology in innovative ways can have a direct impact on operations, the real challenge perhaps involves managing these new technologies while leading the organization with a human touch. In fact, although technology problems can directly lead to radical changes in corporate strategies, it is always the human choices that may actually determine a competitive advantage.

Employer and employee issues may initially seem to be conflicting. However, the use of the term “management” associated with human resources tries to refer particularly to the management of activities, policies, or decisions that affect the relationship between the worker and the organization. Therefore, the management of this relationship undoubtedly has an impact on the performance of workers. However, the term leadership refers to the nature of the relationship, or the behaviors of leaders that enhance organizational performance.

From an organizational perspective, the strategies to achieve these objectives point in two directions. These involve management of the employer and employee issues. They also require the leadership of human resource management.

Since people are a critical element in organizational success, capable human resources are a source of sustainable competitive advantage. As a result, more and more companies are devoting resources to acquire, develop, and retain talented employees. This move toward building a human capital advantage requires developing integrated human resource strategies. These strategies are integrated with organizational strategies and are designed to support the achievement of organizational objectives.

4. Challenges and Future Trends in HR

Dealing with talent management within companies by performing exemplary reward allocation decisions is a main key. The businesses that learn how to connect people’s hearts, bodies, and minds in daily endeavors have found that passion in their employees that is critical to productivity in the workplace. Companies that choose to manage passion build loyalty and long-term shareholder value. To be productive, they work more for less, also absorbed in the jobs and the companies that they like. Sharing a common sense of purpose in the company will make people so motivated. The business must give appropriate reward and recognition to the people who ensure that the right level of human performance is in place to meet the business objectives. High-performance are business-critical characteristics in today’s industry. Only people can achieve and maintain high-performance and this is so much evident in the fields, which are essentially human.

The change is happening continuously in the area of human resource management. The field of human resource management faces numerous challenges and an increased need for new and highly qualified people. In order to face the world of work and the workplace dynamics and the benefits of these changes, in managing individuals, in the organizations for the future, human resource management has to face several challenges. In the field of human resource management, subjects challenge the design and delivery of business programs.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations for Business Success

As a business invests in its production facilities, research and development, and branding, so it needs to invest in its human resources. The organization’s workforce can build personal relationships representing valuable assets to the business. If HRM discards these assets, the business may have to incur re-employment costs, damaging business reputation, as well as any indirect or direct training expenditures. There are, in fact, many measurable outcomes that are derived from effective HRM. For large, medium, and small businesses, some of the business success variables include high performance, high productivity, contented employees, turnover rates, good customer service and service quality, greater customer satisfaction, lower costs, increased revenue, high profits, good employer brand reputation, lower absenteeism rates, creative problem-solving work teams, good business results, and less litigation.

Human resources management (HRM) is an important and expanding function in a business. Many businesses and business owners stumble on the lack of importance given to these human assets. HRM may be a costly activity that many businesses may not believe that they can afford, particularly in the case of the small and medium-sized businesses. This chapter argues for the importance of HRM and provides a business case for its importance that applies to all businesses. The implementation of sound HRM is a significant activity that the small business owner must perform, either directly or indirectly. The business owner needs to gain expertise in HRM. HRM capabilities erect barriers to entry in the form of good communications between business employees and the business owner. The chapter concludes with key success factors and shows how major HR functions in a small business should be integrated into the owner or manager’s work life.