As a field, human resource management is undergoing significant transformation. Human Resource Management (HRM) is designing management systems to ensure that human talent is used effetely and efficiently to accomplish organizational goals. Weather employees are in a big company or small employees must be recruited, selected, trained and managed effectively. They also must be adequately and competitively compensated, and many will be given a range of benefits. Additionally appropriate and legal HR systems are needed to comply with numerous legal requirements. In an environment in which the workforce keeps changing, laws and the needs of employers are changing too. Therefore HR management activities continue to change and evolve.
Models of HRM
Human resource management can be developed in so many ways, the major and more in practice models are;
Harvard's mapping model (Soft)
Michigan's matching model (Hard)
Harvard's mapping model (Soft)
The Harvard model provides a Strategic map intended to guide all managers in their relations with employees. It is also called as Mapping model or Soft model of HRM. It emphasises the human or soft side of human resource management, featuring
Motivating people by involving them in decision making
Developing an organizational culture based on trust and team work
The Harvard approach is rooted in the human relations tradition, and supports the view that people can influence the outcomes of strategy. It employs the multiple stakeholder models. Employees are seen as having interest along with other stakeholders such as shareholders, management, unions and government. HRM has four policy areas which must be addressed
Employee influence
Reward systems
Work systems
Human resource flows
Human resource floes involve managing flow of people
Into the organization (recruitment, selection)
Through the organization (placement, appraisal, promotion)
Out of the organization (termination)
HR policy must ensure that right mix and number of staff resourcing and developing employee competences. Reward systems cover pay and benefits to attract, motivate and keep employees. Employee influence is concerned with controlling level of authority, power and decision making. Work systems involve defining and designing jobs, so that the arrangement of people, information and technology provide the best outcomes. These policies are designed to achieve the crucial goals of;
Commitment
Congruence
Competence
Cost effectiveness
Michigan's Matching Model (Hard)
Michigan's model is also called as matching model or hard model of HRM. Michigan's model focuses on harder resource side of human resource management. This model emphasises that people should be managed like any other resource. They should be;
Obtained cheaply
Used sparingly
Developed and exploited fully
The model applies to all people who resource the organization, including contractors and temporary workers. Human resource policies are designed to obtain a tight fit or match between human resources and business strategy. As a result, this is something described a Matching model because of its central theme of "matching available human resources in the organization". The purpose of HRM in this model is to ensure that business strategies are realised, for example through;
Structural reorganization
Performance related pay
Reducing staff numbers
It embodies a comparatively low trust management approach towards employees, unlike the high trust elements of Harvard model, such as commitment.
Guest model of HRM
David Guest's (1989, 1997) model of HRM has 6 dimensions of analysis:
HRM strategy
Financial outcomes
Performance outcomes
HRM outcomes
Behaviour outcomes
HRM practices
Drawing in part on the Harvard model, David Guest has outlined a framework for assessing the effectiveness of organizations, based on the testing of propositions such as strategic integration, quality, flexibility and commitment.
Phases of HRM
Acquiring
Maintaining
Developing
Each of the three phases of HRM consists of a number of related activities.
Acquiring
Acquisition includes planning as well as the various activities that lead to hiring new personnel. Altogether this phase of HRM includes five separate activities
Human resource planning: determining the firm's future human resource needs
Job analysis: determining the exact nature of positions
Recruiting: attracting people to apply for position
Selection: choosing and hiring the most qualified applicants
Orientation: acquainting new employees with the firm
Maintaining
Maintaining human resource consists primarily of encouraging employees to remain with the firm and to work efficiently by using a variety of HRM programmes includes,
Employee relations: increasing employee job satisfaction through satisfaction surveys, employee communication programmes, exit interviews, and fair treatment.
Compensation: rewarding employee effort through monetary payments
Benefits: providing rewards to ensure employee well being
Development
The development phase of HRM in concerned with improving the employee's skills and expanding their capabilities.
Training and development: teaching employees new skills, new jobs, and more effective ways of doing their current job
Performance appraised: assessing employee's potential and current performance levels
Indian labour market
Most of the common hypotheses about Indian labour market are out dated and invalid. Differences between the Indian labour market and labour markets in developed countries are not essence but only of degree. The Indian labour market is believed to be exceptionally imperfect. Actually labour markets everywhere are more or less imperfect because of the popularities of labour that the degree of imperfection should be rather more in a large underdeveloped country with pronounced socio cultural differences between different regions to be expected. On the other hand the historical tendency for geographical wage differentials to narrow ad the evidence of gradual breaking of the barriers to geographical mobility suggests evaluation of a national labour market.
An example of the study of demand for labour and supply of labour is the study provable catchment area for industrial expansion of Vapi Industrial Estate by GITCO. It projected the labour requirement due to expansion of the estate on the basis of the present share of surrounding areas in labour supply and demographic structure of surrounding areas. The question weather institutional training and apprenticeship can improve matching function in relation to skilled labour demand has been discussed by Thakur with reference to the labour market of India.
Employee contract
A contract of employment is a legally binding agreement between an employer and an employee. Between every employer and employee there is a contract of employment weather a written has been signed or not. A contract of employment is also known as contract of service. The law of contract applies to such agreements. The contract of employment contains the rights and duties of individual employees and employers. The rights and duties of employers and employees are unlikely to be found in a single document. However it is more likely that these rights and duties will be determined by a number of different sources.
Express terms of contract
An express term is one that is actually written or spoken into a contract. Express terms in a contract of employment are usually few, and may include hours of work, uniform and pay. Express terms of contract are more likely to occur since the passing of workplace relations act 1996. This act introduces agreements that can be made collectively or individually. An agreement is only binding when signed by an individual employee and thus is really an individual work contract.
Implied terms of contract
An implied term is a promise that is binding on the parties to the contract put in the contract by the law. It is binding even though the parties to the contract have never discussed it. The common law implies terms into the contract of employment. These terms form some of the rights and duties of employers and employees.
The statement should contain certain details at least refer to other documents so that employees are aware of their existence and know where they may examine them. The details to be made explicit in the statement are;
The names of the parties to the contract
Date of commencement of employment
Date of commencement of period of continuous employment
Hours of work
Location of workplace and an indication if there could be requirement to work elsewhere
Details about pay rate of pay or how it is calculated; frequency of payments
Job title or a brief description of the duties
Holiday entitlements
Arrangements about sick pay and sick leave
Details about company pension plan
Entitlements to receive notice of termination of employment and obligation to give notice
Date employment ends if contract is for a fixed term
Any terms of a collective arrangement that affect working conditions.
Employees are entitled to be notified in writing of any changes to be made to any of these terms.
Conclusion
In this report we have discussed about hard and soft models of HRM, and what are the key concept underlying these models. We also discussed about different phases in developing HRM. We also discussed about Guest model of HRM which is a blend of soft and hard models of HRM. Indian labour market is a very wide and diverse especially in developing countries. We discussed about the supply demand and skilled and unskilled labour in India and how it is affecting Indian economy and Industrial market in India. Employee contract is an important thing for any employment, the employer take a lot of care about this contract. In this report we discussed about employee framework what it consists of and the framework be done.
