Personnel management and human management


Human Resources and Personnel management, Human Resources is always represented to a broader extent than Personnel management. Human Resources, it is said, embodies and elaborates tasks of Personnel management, and at the same time, creates and develops teams of employees for the advantage of the company. One of HR's primary goals is to provide a suitable environment for employees to fully utilize their skills, and work at maximum efficiency levels.

The tasks that are common within Personnel management, include the traditional, routine duties; thus, it is generally described as reactive, i.e. only responding to demands as they arise. Human resources, on the other hand, involves continuous innovation and strategizing to manage a company's workforce more efficiently. It is, therefore, generally considered proactive. There's an ongoing development of policies, functions and skill assessment,s all aimed at improving the company's workforce.

While Personnel management is often not considered to be influenced by the organization, HR is generally considered as an integral part of the organizational functions. Personnel management duties are solely the domain of the Personnel department. However, with regards to HR, most of the company's senior level employees (managers) are somehow involved, and a key goal may be to engage the managers in the skills development processes needed to accomplish personnel-related duties.

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In terms of performance, motivation and rewards, Personnel management typically endeavors to reward and motivate employees with salaries, bonuses, compensation and a standard paid annual leave, in order to derive employee satisfaction. For HR, the primary motivators are seen as job creativity, work groups and efficient strategies to meet challenges.


Personnel management is more concerned with payroll and similar tasks, while HR is concerned with the overall management of a company's workforce.

Personnel tasks are reactive, while HR tasks are generally proactive, and continuous.

Personnel management is considered independent from organizational influences, while HR is dependent on input from some employees, like senior management.

Human resource management has become increasingly complex. The heritage and growth of the human resource management profession is closely linked to people's attitudes about work, the evolution of employment-related laws and sociological trends. The HR field today recognizes the dynamic relationship between strategy, people, technology and the processes that drive organizations.

i) The Beginnings:

One could argue that the HR field dates back to the first working arrangements between master craftspeople and their apprentices. Apprentices were often required to live in the shop or home of the master craftsperson. If an apprentice was injured or sick, the master's family was responsible for restoring the young worker's health and welfare.

ii) The Industrial Age:

In one powerful stroke, the notion of work moved from guilds and home shops to steam-driven factories..

Assembly line production required that large numbers of people come together for work, but these workers were interchangeable and, to some extent, expendable, because few skills were required for most factory jobs. Employers' attentions focused on consumer demands and concerns that were sometimes placed well ahead of the needs of employees.

iii) The Personnel Administration Movement:

By the late 1800s, people problems were a very real concern in the workplace. For the average blue-collar worker, most jobs were low-paying, monotonous and unsafe. Some industries experienced difficulty recruiting and retaining employees because of the poor working conditions workers were exposed to. Concerns grew about wages, safety, child labor and 12-hour workdays. Workers began to band together in unions to protect their interests and improve living standards

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the personnel profession that grew out of concerns about employee absenteeism and high turnover attempted to solve worker problems with such basic personnel management functions as employee selection, training and compensation.

iv) Early Personnel Management Departments:

It's believed that the first personnel management department began at the National Cash Register Co. (NCR). NCR faced a major strike at the turn of the century but eventually defeated the union after a lockout in 1901. After this difficult union battle, company President John H. Patterson decided to improve worker relations by organizing a personnel department to handle grievances, discharges, safety and other employee issues.

v) Industrial Giants' Realization:

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Henry Ford experienced employee turnover ratios of 380 percent in 1913; in 1914, the company doubled the daily salaries for line workers from $2.50 to $5, even though $2.50 was a fair wage at that time to keep his employees motivated and loyal.

vi) Introduction of Taylor's Scientific Management:

Although industrial giants were beginning to understand that they had to do more than just hire and fire if they were going to meet consumer demands for products, most of the objectives of early personnel professionals were one-sided. Business leaders still viewed the work itself as infinitely more important than the people doing it, and production rates remained the top concern. Because employers believed employees would accept more rigid standards if they received extra pay and benefits, most employer-sponsored business solutions were aimed at making employees more efficient. From this mind-set grew scientific management approaches based on the work of Frederick W. Taylor and other experts whose goal was to get people to perform as efficiently as machines.

vii) "Yellow-Dog" Contracts:

To counter the growing strength of the labor movement, some employers hired strikebreakers or kept blacklists of union members. Others made workers sign "yellow-dog" contracts -- agreements that they would not join unions.

viii) Stepping in of the (US) Government:

Government stepped up to help those who were less fortunate through reforms of work hours, new laws governing the work of children and workers' compensation laws aimed at protecting employees injured on the job. In Congress created the U.S. Department of Labor "to foster, promote and develop the welfare of working people, to improve their working conditions and to enhance their opportunities for profitable employment."

ix) World War I:

The Labor Department grew rapidly during World War I as the war effort became a national priority. By the war's end, the Labor Department -- through the War Labor Administration (WLA) -- had set numerous policies to ensure that wage, hour or working condition problems did not hinder the war effort and industrial growth

x) The Great Depression of 1929:

In 1929, the onset of the Great Depression drastically changed the rules of business. With profits dwindling, employers first eliminated voluntary welfare program, then jobs. The government led by President Franklin Roosevelt, provided some assistance by creating jobs through the "Civil Works Administration" and "Works Progress Administration". New social programs, including old-age pensions, labor standards and minimum wages for some industries, were developed.

xi) The Norris-LaGuardia Act:

Unions established strong roots in many industries and gathered political clout with Congress. The Norris-LaGuardia Act changed the rules of the game in labor-management relations by making "yellow-dog" contracts unenforceable and severely restricting the use of federal court injunctions in labor disputes.

x) National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935 (Wagner Act.)

Union organizations grew in power after passage of the National Labor Relations Act

The NLRA signaled a change in the federal government's role in labor-management relations, giving employees the right to organize unions and bargain collectively, while prohibiting employers from engaging in certain unfair labor practices

xii) Emergence of Personnel Managers:

As employers began to understand the need for professionals who could play a middle role between employees and employers, the personnel manager's role emerged. It was during this first movement that employers began to truly understand that employees were more than machines with interchangeable faces.

xiii) Human Relations Movement:

The field of human relations -- or industrial and personnel relations -- that emerged in the 1920s provided a new focus for the profession. In an effort to increase productivity, personnel programs expanded to include medical aid and sick benefits, vaccinations, holidays, housing allowances and other new benefits. New personnel roles emerged as unions began challenging the fairness and validity of Taylor's scientific management theories.

xiv) Elton Mayo and Hawthorne Studies:

The human relations movement provided new insights derived from studies that linked improved productivity to management philosophies emphasizing employee communications, cooperation and involvement. This new thinking about employee cooperation grew from the works of Elton Mayo -- known as the Father of Human Relations -- and from the Hawthorne Studies, an important series of illumination experiments conducted between 1924 and 1932

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For the first time, productivity research put forth the controversial proposition that workers' feelings were important. Mayo's work propelled further developments in HR management

xv) World War II

The concept of employee motivation increased in importance in the 1940s. When World War II ended the nation's economic drought and brought full production and full employment to the industrial giants, labor was again in short supply. As men were called to serve their country, shortages emerged, and women and teens were called on to keep the engines of industry rolling. For the first time, people of color took jobs previously not open to them. Expanded job growth also meant expanded roles for the personnel manager recruiting, testing, training, mediating, and keeping an eye on employee morale and production efficiency.

Non-monetary rewards became an important supplement to monetary rewards for motivating employees. New theories on the benefits of improving the relationships between management and employees abounded.

xvi) Anti-Union Sentiment and 1947's Labor-Management Relations Act:

Union membership had grown from about 6 percent when the NLRA was passed to about 23 percent in 1947. Strikes became more frequent and union tactics in some cases more militant.

Strong anti-union sentiment emerged and against this backdrop Congress overrode President Truman's veto of the 1947 Labor-Management Relations Act, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. The new law banned the use of "closed shops," which required workers to join t he union to be hired.

xvii) 1940's Human Resource Movement:

A new class of college-educated managers emerged with a greater sense of social responsibility than their predecessors.

xviii) The 1960s and 1970s:

As the 1960s and 1970s unfolded, a more personable group of managers emerged, and their interests in people and feelings influenced all facets of business, including the growth of market research, communications and public relations.

xix) The new laws of the Great Society:

The new laws of the Great Society sprouted from this social foundation -- laws that protected employees from unsafe jobs and from violations of basic civil rights. Personnel and human relations managers were now responsible for motivating people and helping their organizations navigate a maze of regulations, executive orders and court decisions.

As time progressed, the nature of work continued to change.

These people wanted more than an occupation; they wanted jobs that were challenging and interesting. Employees of this era began to view themselves as stakeholders in their company's' enterprises.

xx) The New Generation of Baby Boomers: Baby boomers are also heavily influenced by psychology and other behavioral sciences. Dedicated to making work meaningful, enriching the work environment, communicating and imaging by objectives, this generation seeks to tie the goals of individuals with the goals of the organization

xxi) A new Century:

Today, the human resource professional is charged with optimizing employee skills, matching people to jobs and maximizing the potential of employees as valuable resources. Many challenges remain for the HR profession.

P:2 Assess the role, tasks and activities of the human resource practitioner


Its features include:

Organizational management

Personnel administration

Manpower management

Industrial management




P:3 evaluate the role and responsibilities of line manager in human resource


Until fairly recently, an organization's human resources department was often consigned to lower rungs of the corporate hierarchy, despite the fact that its mandate is to replenish and nourish the company's work force, which is often cited legitimately as an organization's greatest resource. But in recent years recognition of the importance of human resources management to a company's overall health has grown dramatically. This recognition of the importance of HRM extends to small businesses, for while they do not generally have the same volume of human resources requirements as do larger organizations, they too face personnel management issues that can have a decisive impact on business health. As Irving Burstiner commented in The Small Business Handbook, "Hiring the right people and training them well can often mean the difference between scratching out the barest of livelihoods and steady business growthâ€¦. Personnel problems do not discriminate between small and big business. You find them in all businesses, regardless of size."



