Development of Human Resource Management †Myasignmenthelp.Com

Question: Explain Of Development of Human Resource Management? Answer: Introducation is a structured and thorough approach that aims at managing the human element of an organisation to optimise their performance. Human resource management approach aims at developing better relations between employees and employers and improving the work conditions in order to increase the performance levels of the employees. It uses functions like career development, training and development, performance management, etc. to achieve its aims and objectives (Armstrong Taylor, 2014). The concept of human resource management has greatly evolved since the industrial revolution and human resource managers of present day are coming up with new thinking patters and learning styles to discover unique and effective management practices that can help their organisations in achieving greater market competencies. Therefore, in this report, we will be discussing some new thinking patterns about human resource management and strategic human resource management. Evolution of human resource management The concept of human resource management has evolved over a period of time. In the earlier times or during the period before industrial revolution, the society was primarily dominated by agriculture and had limited production. The channels of communication were limited and specialised crafts were limited to a small number of people in villages and communities. During the industrial revolution, the society made a great shift from agriculture to industry. The channels of communication increased and it was during the industrial revolution that the first department was set up, which was responsible for looking into the wages and welfare of the workers. Another important event in the industrial revolution was the growth of labour unions. It was only after the industrial revolution, or around 1850s, when the concept of human resource management saw a major revolution (Vani, 2011). A number of experiments and researches, such as Frederick W. Taylors principles, Hawthorne studies, McGregors Theory X and Theory Y, etc. were conducted by pioneers in the field of human resource management and the concept achieved new meaning and importance. After these studies became famous and their validity got proved time and again in business organisations, human resource management started gaining a lot of importance and companies started to set up separate departments that were solely responsible for managing the human resources of a company. As of today, human resource management is considered to be one of the key functions of an organisation that helps them in achieving their goals and objectives. Business organisations are spending billions of dollars every year to ensure proper management of their human resources as they are largely relying upon their human resources to achieve market competencies in tough market situations. Latest thinking in human resource management Due to the spread of globalisation, the entire market situation has changes throughout the world. Business organisations are now facing a market situation where their vulnerability to external and internal environment factors has increased and it is becoming very difficult for them to sustain in the market and achieve competencies. As a result, business organisations are now looking forward to their human resources for helping them out to sustain in the market and achieve market competencies because all other resources or processes are being easily duplicated. The reliability of business organisations on human resources is bringing about a lot of changes in the way in which everyone sees human resource management. A number of latest thinking patters in the field of human resource management are discussed below: A shift from human resource management to strategic human resource management In the past, human resource management was just an approach that was aimed at achieving better performance levels by managing the work conditions for employees but a latest trend in the field has been forcing business organisations to now switch to strategic human resource management, which aims at strategically managing the workforce in such a way that the management of workforce makes it easier to achieve organisational goals and objectives. In other words, strategic human resource management aims at aligning the management of human resources with the overall strategies of an organisation (Agarwala, 2008). Strategic human resource managers aim at identifying key human resource areas where a strategic prospect can be applicable for a longer period of time so that an overall improvement in the employee motivation and productivity can be achieved. Where human resource management is only concerned with the internal human resource issues in a company, strategic human resource management aims at implementing human resource programs that are in alignment with the organisational strategy and can ensure higher chances of organisational success. The importance of human resource management, from a strategic point of view, has reached such a level that human resource managers are consulted in each and every business because business decisions made by keeping a check on the condition of a companys human resources increase the chances of success. Human resource departments are no longer a group of people that ensure smooth working conditions and better labour relations from behind the scenes. The role of human resource management departments is becoming more upfront and their presence can be felt in almost all business decisions. Human resource managers are playing an important role in deciding employee benefits, improving company branding, conducting workforce planning and providing training and development programs to the employees. Workforce planning Another important concept that has been emerging in the field of human resource management is workforce planning. Workforce planning is a concept that allows business organisations in analysing workforce data from the past and present and forecast workforce data for the future. Workforce planning is a concept that is somewhat related to economics as it aims at forecasting the human resource demand of a company in the near future and identifying the best techniques to fulfil the forecasted demand (Weiss, 2015). The latest trends in strategic human resource management have been greatly laying a large deal of focus on workforce planning as a tool to assist business organisations in achieving market success and long term goals. Where earlier, the human resource managers were only concerned with recruiting a fixed number of people, the latest trends in human resource management involves a thorough workforce planning that aims at identifying the human resource needs, the skills and competencies required in the future workforce and recruiting the right talent to help an organisation meet its future strategies. In other words, the concept of recruitment and selection has become more future oriented and is getting into deeper details to align human resource management with the strategies of an organisation. Companies are now using technological solutions to conduct workforce planning with a greater efficiency. Human resource managers are using social media to keep a track on all their employees. Boomerang employees is a new category that has been incorporated in the strategic planning of workforce. A boomerang employee is a one who leaves an organisation for some opportunity, family matters, compensation, etc. but then later on joins the company back (Snyder Stewart, 2015). The new trend in hiring boomerangs in order to satisfy the human resource demands is becoming so popular that the re-hiring rates of employees has gone up to 76% from 48% in the past year. Thus, the changing trends give out a clear picture of the strategic important that the concept of workforce planning has started playing in business organisations. Performance management Performance management is another core functional area in human resource management that is aimed at planning, monitoring and assessing the performance levels of individuals and appraising them accordingly. In a tough market situation, performance of employees is given a lot of important and companies are in constant look for measures that can help them in fostering a better performing environment in the workplace. Performance ratings, performance appraisals, rewards, comparisons, performance objectives, etc. are few out of many terms that are related to performance management and are used by a lot of professionals in their day-to-day management practices (Goodall Buckingham, 2015). The latest thinking patterns of human resource managers, in the field of performance management, are also undergoing a major change. In the past few years, a number of famous multinational firms have started redefining performance management, which is one of the most important core functions of a human resource management department. Deloitte, a multinational company that has a global presence, brought about some important changes in its performance management system, which was followed by companies like Accenture. The change in market situations and trends have lead the experts to think that almost all performance management systems are dysfunctional and are failing in what they are supposed to do from a business point of view. Designed and implemented to help an organisation in optimising the performance of its workforce, performance management systems have now become dysfunctional because of the negative behaviour and feelings that they can foster in the minds of the employees. Ac centure, one of the top multinational companies in the world, dropped its performance management plan because it realized the negativity that it was fostering in the minds of the employees. According to the management at Accenture, the employees were disappointed with the system of performance management because it failed to made an assessment about where they were performing right or wrong and whether they were making a progress in the right direction or not. The employees did not want to wait for an annual cycle to receive their performance feedbacks and that too when the feedbacks were compared with one another and were most of the times forced. As of today, the company is using a performance management system which is totally different from performance ratings. The new or the future market trends are expected to undergo even more changes as the system of performance management will change. Even though it will still be important to measure the performance of individuals, but a new concept of performance consultation is likely on the cards, which will aim at assessing individual performances and helping them out in getting a deeper insight and understanding about how to train, what to train and why they should train in a certain way. Companies like Deloitte and Accenture have already made bold statements by saying that rating individuals on the base of a performance scale and that too after an entire year is not something that would sit well with the long term objectives of the company and have been shaping a new era of performance management. As the time progresses, there has been a shift from orthodox performance management systems to new performance management systems where a greater emphasis is laid upon the development of an employee and his career. Further, organisations like Deloitte and Wal-Mart are coming up with new ways to manage the performance of their workforce. These companies are providing a greater degree of control in the hands of the employees so that they can take their own decisions and can become better performers because of autonomy and independence (Hearn, 2016). Training and development Training and development is an approach that helps business organisations in designing and implementing special learning programs that are aimed at increasing the skills and competencies of the workforce. Training and development is also an important core function of human resource management as it helps in increasing the competencies of the workforce. Every year, business organisations are spending billions of dollars in the training and development of their staff so that they can have a competitive edge in the market because of a large competitive workforce (Ford, 2014). Even training and development has been undergoing a great deal of change in the past few years. In the past, human resource managers used to link training and development with performance management because performance management allowed to assess the training need of an entire workforce by looking into the weak performance areas. Today, the changing employee expectations, new technologies and increased globalisation is forcing the companies to shift to some new ways of training and developing their employees. A latest thinking in the field of training and development has been to shift the focus from organisation to individual. In such a competitive time, engaging and retaining employees is not just a challenge but has become a strategic priority. In order to retain and engage employees, companies have started focusing on individual learning needs and have also started to increase their budget for learning. Another major change in thinking in relation to training and development is t he shift to a mobile learning environment. Companies have started implementing mobile learning solutions for their employees so that they can learn new skills and technicalities using mobile based applications. Even though there have been certain barriers to mobile learning, but the thought of mobile learning solutions is positive and will render positive results in the future. Another latest thinking in the field of training and development is adaptive learning. Adaptive learning is a process that aims at letting the employees learn at their own pace. Inspired from adaptive teaching (where a teacher gathers data about individual students in order to gain a better understanding of what needs to be done to improve learning) adaptive learning is an organisational concept that aims at assessing the learning needs of individual employees. adaptive learning techniques are helping organisations in keeping their employees engaged and also in retaining them. It is also playing an important role in dealing with the new recruits as it provides them with better opportunities to increase their skills and learn in a better way (Kraiger, 2014). Some top level multinational companies are totally changing the thought process of experts in the field of training and development. Some companies have started empowering the employees to take decisions about their training and development needs on their own. Human resource managers are allowing their employees to assess their own training needs and also to find learning programs that would help them in acquiring new skills and competencies. Even though the company pays for one employee learning programs in a year, empowering them to assess their own training and development needs and finding out different ways to fulfil these needs themselves, allows them to have a better control over their career development and helps in engaging and retaining them for a longer period of time. Role of technology in human resource management Technology has brought about a lot of changes in the business world and is also having an impact on human resource management. Technology has been redefining the role of human resource all around the world. A major trend in the area of human resource management has been the increased usage of social media as a powerful tool to reach out to the candidates. Dozens of employers are relying upon social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn to recruit staff. Furthermore, human resource managers are also using social media to ensure high levels of job engagement amongst the employees. Companies are using social media websites to post organisational related information and attracting potential candidates through it. Another technological trend in the field of human resources is the use of wearable devices in the workplace. As the millennials are more and more into wearable devices, such as Fitbit, Apple Watch, Samsung gear, etc. these wearable devices can be used to track the health and fitness of the employees. Using information from the wearable devices of the employees, it can become easier for the managers to check their stress levels and use this data for planning retention strategies for these employees. The trend of wearable devices is now spreading like fire and the wearable device market for enterprises is expected to grow to 18 billion by the end of 2019, which will definitely bring about some major change in the field of human resource management too. Virtual technology is also having an impact on the latest thinking patterns in the field of human resource management. Some companies, like Microsoft, have already started to design their own virtual reality technology, which they will be using in the management of their employees. Suing virtual reality, it can become easier for the managers to pass digital information or instructions to the employees in real time. Further, virtual reality can also be used for training and development of employees as it would allow the employees to undergo off-site assignments and corporate training while on their jobs (Bodi, n.d.). Conclusion The management of human resources is one of the most important functions of an organisation because human resource has been considered to be the lifeblood of business. The concept of human resource management has greatly evolved since its beginning and is still evolving because of the direct impact that market conditions and environment are having on the business organisation. The changing needs of the employees, customers and of the market have been shaping the way for change in human resource management trends in various functions, such as performance management, workforce planning, training and development, etc. Further, even technology has started playing a major role in the management of human resources. Thus, business organisations are now making a transition from their orthodox human resource management practices to newer ways of human resource management so that the management of human resources can play a greater strategic role from a business point of view. 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