Name: Argie G.

Catambacan (2-BSBM) Class Code: HRM 2232(3-106)

Learning Activity #2: Introduction to HRM

Know and understand the following: Research on the following concepts and submit
your assignment.
1. Human resources
- The term “human resources” (HR) describes the people who make up the
workforce of a company or organization. In the business world, human resources
are the department responsible for recruiting and training staff, developing
workplace policies, administering employee benefits, and motivating employees
to stay with the organization.

2. Human Resource Management

- Human resource management is a management function concerned with
hiring, motivating, and maintaining the workforce in an organization. It deals with
issues related to employees such as hiring, training, development,
compensation, motivation, communication, and administration. Human resource
management also ensures the satisfaction of employees and a maximum
contribution of employees to the achievement of organizational objectives. In
other words, HRM is a process of making the efficient and effective use of human
resources so that the set goals are achieved.

3. History of Human Resource Management

- According to Matthew Pinto-Chilcott (2015), the history of Human Resource
Management (HRM) begins around the end of the 19th century when welfare
officers (sometimes called ‘welfare secretaries’) came into being. They were
women and involved with the protection of women and girls. Their creation was a
reaction to the:
 Harshness of industrial conditions.
 Pressures arising from the extension of the franchise.
 Influence of trade unions and the labor movement.
 Campaigning of enlightened employers, often Quakers, for what was
called ‘industrial betterment.
- As the role grew there was some tension between the aim of moral
protection of women and children and the need for higher output.
20th century developments
 - The First World War accelerated change in the development of personnel
management. Women were recruited in large numbers to fill the gaps left by men
going to fight. This meant reaching agreement with trade unions (often after bitter
disputes) about ‘dilution’– accepting unskilled women into craftsmen’s jobs and
changing manning levels.
- During the 1920s, jobs with the titles of ‘Labor Manager’ or ‘Employment
Manager’ were introduced to the engineering industry and other industries where
there were large factories. The role involved handling absence, recruitment,
dismissal, and queries over bonuses. Employers’ federations, particularly in
engineering and shipbuilding, negotiated national pay rates with the unions, but
there were local and district variations and there was plenty of scope for
disputes.
- During the 1930s, the economy was beginning to pick up. Big corporations in
these newer sectors saw value in improving employee benefits as a way of
recruiting, retaining and motivating employees. But older industries such as
textiles, mining and shipbuilding were hit by the worldwide recession. These
sectors did not adopt new techniques, seeing no need to do so because they had
no difficulty in recruiting labor.

- The Second World War brought about welfare and personnel work on a full-time
basis at all establishments producing war materials. The Ministry of Labor and
National Service insisted on it, just as the Government had insisted on welfare
workers in munitions factories in the previous conflict. The Government saw
specialist personnel management as part of the drive for greater efficiency. As a
result, the number of people in the personnel function grew substantially; there
were around 5,300 in 1943.

Reaping the rewards of HR

- By 1945, employment management and welfare work had become integrated
under the broad term ‘personnel management’. Experience of the war had shown
that output and productivity could be influenced by employment policies. The role
of the personnel function in wartime had been largely that of implementing the
rules demanded by large-scale, state-governed production. As a result, the
image of an emerging profession was very much a bureaucratic one.

- Following the development of poor industrial relations during the 1960s, a Royal
Commission under Lord Donovan was set up. Reporting in 1968, it was critical of
both employers and unions; personnel managers were criticized for lacking
negotiation skills and failing to plan industrial relations strategies. At least in part,
Donovan suggested, these deficiencies were a consequence of management’s
failure to give personnel management sufficiently high priority.
 - In the 1960s and 1970s employment started to develop significantly. At the same
time personnel techniques developed using theories from the social sciences
about motivation and organizational behavior. Selection testing became more
widely used and management training expanded. During the 1970s, specialisms
started to develop with reward and resourcing, for example, being addressed as
separate issues.
- Around the mid-80s, the term ‘Human Resource Management’ arrived from the
USA. The term ‘Human Resources’ is an interesting one; it seemed to suggest
that employees were an asset or resource-like machines, but at the same time
HR also appeared to emphasize employee commitment and motivation. At
Consensus HR, they always emphasize to clients the importance of making the
most of one of their most important business assets and resources which is their
people in the company.
Today’s HR activities
In today’s HR world, it covers several specialist disciplines, including:
 Diversity (plus other aspects of employment law)
 Reward (including compensation, benefits, pensions)
 Resourcing (such as recruitment, disciplinary and redundancy processes)
 Employee relations (including performance and absence management)
 Organisation development and design
 Learning and development
 Correcting systems, policies & procedures

4. HRM in the Era of Globalization, Internet, and Electronic Technology

Impact of Globalization on HRM
Globalization symbolizes free flow of technology and human resources
across national boundaries presenting an ever-changing and competitive
business environment. Globalization is a process that is drawing people together
from all nations of the world into a single community linked by the vast network of
communication technologies. This aspect of globalization has also affected the
HRM in the business world of today. That’s why, HR managers today doesn’t
need to rely in a small limited market to find the right employees needed to meet
the global challenge, instead they can now recruit the employees from all around
the globe.
The future success of any organizations relies on the ability to manage a
diverse body of talent that can bring innovative ideas, perspectives, and views to
their work. Thus, a HR manager needs to be mindful and may employ a ‘Think
Global, Act Local’ approach in most circumstances. Many local HR managers
 have to undergo cultural-based Human Resource Management training to further
their abilities to motivate a group of professionals that are highly qualified but
culturally diverse. Furthermore, the HR professional must assure the local
professionals that these foreign talents are not a threat to their career
advancement. In many ways, the effectiveness of workplace diversity
management is dependent on the skillful balancing act of the HR manager.

Impact of ICT on HRM

Nowadays, entrepreneurs with business acumen have acknowledged the
power of information technology (IT) tools for reaching business targets. Hence,
this idea will not only helps achieve the business goals but also optimizes the
work processes.
Human Resource Management (HRM) includes activities such as
recruiting, training, developing, and rewarding people in the organization aim to
achieve competitiveness in HR by providing ongoing education and training
programs for the personal and professional development of the organization's
employees. And so, it has been conventionally proved that Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), such as the Internet, mobile
communication, new media, and such in HR, can greatly contribute to the
fulfillment of the organization's personnel policies. For it allows the company to
improve its internal processes, core competencies, relevant markets, and
organizational structure. Hence, utilizing IT applications for database
management and advances recruitment systems will increase the efficiency of
the business.
HR Management process moving towards Technology.
Traditionally, HR was always viewed as a paper-intensive, non-innovative
area, where salary decisions are made, people get hired or fired and where team
building sessions are organized. But behind the scenes, the industry is changing
and incorporating technology at a rapid pace, even if it wasn’t designed for HR to
start with.
Technology can be seen as evolving over the past decades and has a
huge impact on day-to-day operations of an organization. Recruiting is one of
the main HR practices and it is also how companies attract the right candidate
with the right skills that meets their job requirement. In the 21 st century, there has
been an improvement and new ways of recruiting process introduced such as
online recruiting, and organizations has taken a hold of the recruiting niche of
corporate job with the use of website to host candidate. Rather than the
traditional way of handling the complex hiring process as a face-to-face method,
organizations has turn to Internet-enabled software to modernize the recruitment
 process. E-recruiting allows users to easily control the recruitment process from
a computer with a click of a finger. E Recruiting is not new; however, it is
increasing in popularity, and there are quite a lot of new developments that
influence the process. E-recruitment, also known as online recruitment, it’s the
practice of using technology and in particular Web-based resources, recruiting
managers use online recruiting for tasks that involves finding, attracting,
assessing, interviewing potential candidate for a job vacancy.
Thus, the advent of the internet technology has contributed significantly to
the change in the way that the HR professionals accomplish their tasks.

5. Goals and Emerging Challenges of HRM

OBJECTIVES OF HRM

A. Help organization in attaining its goal by providing well trained & motivated
employees.
B. Employed the skills and knowledge of employee efficiently and effectively.
C. Enhance job satisfaction & self-actualization by encouraging and assisting
every employee to release his potential.
D. Establish & maintaining productive, self-respecting & internal satisfaction.
Working relationship among all the member of organization.
E. Bring out maximum development of members of organization by providing
opportunities for training and advancement.
F. Develop and maintain quality of work line.
G. Maintain high moral & good human relation with the organization.
H. Help maintain ethical policies & behavior inside & outside the organization.
I. To recognize & satisfy individual needs and group goals by appropriate
monitoring and non- monitoring incentives.
J. To manage change to mutual advantage of individual, group, management,
society.
EMERGING CHALLENGES OF HRM
A. Handling Multicultural / Diverse Workforce.
- Dealing with people from (heterogeneous workforce) different personal /
individual characteristics such as age, gender, race, educational background,
location, income, parental status, religious beliefs, marital status and ancestry
and work experience can be a challenging task for HR managers (Ekta
Srivastava & Dr. Agarwal, 2012).

B. Technological advances.
- According to Srivastava E., Dr. Agarwal N., (2012), there is a big challenging task
of adapting a diversity of workplace, along with the rapid technological changes
which influence the nature of work and generate obsolescence. Advanced
technology has inclined to reduce the number of jobs that require little skill and to
increase the number of jobs that require considerable skill, a shift we refer to as
moving from touch labor to knowledge work. There is new-new working
technology. In this situation organizations must change its technology. New
technology creates unemployment, and, in another hand, there comes the
problem of skilled manpower. Moreover, advancing technology may result a
common fear which plagues the mind of many employees. Especially the ones
who consider change to be a threat and think that their roles within the company
will be replaced by a machine or computer that can do the job cheaper or faster.
Thus, technological change brings difficulties as well as it is also the challenges
to the organization.

C. Globalization.
- At a political and economic level, globalization is the process of denationalization
of markets, politics, and legal systems. Globalization refers to an extension
beyond national borders of the same market forces that have operated for
centuries at all levels of human economic activity (village markets, urban
industries, or financial centers). It means that world trade and financial markets
are becoming more integrated. Growing internationalization of business has its
impact on HRM in terms of problems of unfamiliar laws, languages, practices,
competitions, attitudes, management styles, work ethics etc. HR managers have
a challenge to deal with more functions, more heterogeneous functions, and
more involvement in employee’s personal life (Ekta Srivastava & Dr. Agarwal,
2012).

6. HRM and Management of Organization: Systems Perspective

- According to my research, there are (5) different perspectives of Human
Resource Management. These are the normative perspective, the critical
perspective, the behavioral perspective, the systems perspective and the agency
or transaction cost perspective of HRM. However, we only need to talk about the
systems perspective.
 The Systems Perspective of HRM.
The systems perspective, according to brighthubpm.com, describes an
organization in terms of input, throughput, and output, with all these systems
involved in transactions with a surrounding environment. The organized activities
of employees constitute the input, the transformation of energies within the
system at throughput, and the resulting product or service the output. A negative
feedback loop provides communications on discrepancies.
 As stated in the article, these are the role of human resource management
in the systems perspective:
1. Competence management to ensure that the workforce has the required
competencies such as skills and ability to provide the input needed by the
organization.
2. Behavior management through performance evaluation, pay systems, and other
methods to ensure job satisfaction, so that employees work according to the
organizational strategy, ultimately boosting productivity.
3. Setting up mechanisms to buffer the technological core from the environment in
closed systems.
4. Facilitating interactions with the environment in open systems.

7. The Future of HRM: Profession and Career

According to Brian Westfall and Sierra Rogers (2021), today’s HR department

is a product of the Industrial Revolution era. Back then, factories needed supervisors
to ensure that workers produced reliable, standardized results day in and day out.
But, in the digital age, technology has mostly taken over the responsibility of
producing standardized results. HR departments of today have a responsibility to
plan for a future of technology and humans working together to accomplish business
goals. This means thinking about how to best develop your workforce with both the
capabilities of your tech and employees in mind.
One of the trends that will change the global HR according to Asanify Blog
(2020) is the remote work practices. With an increase in remote working, the new
HR will have to adapt to the diverse work situation. Training and development
practices will become much more personalized and available through remote
devices. Slack and Microsoft teams will be used to increase productivity and
engagement. Remote work and HR Tech will go hand in hand. Secondly, the data
and AI. This is probably one of the biggest trends that will change the shape of
future HR. Despite concerns that AI is going to replace humans, HR will largely
benefit from this technology. Big data helps to increase the value and efficiency of
the CHROs. Also, HR Chatbots are becoming a vital part of the HR departments.
They can analyze and organize people-centric data for seamless attendance
management, pay slip generation through conversational interfaces.
 Lastly, the employee benefits will change. With an office full of people,
perks like commuter benefits, on-site daycare, free lunches, and a fridge full of
snacks are a great part of the employee value proposition (EVP). Now, as leading
corporations commit to a fully remote workforce and small businesses carry on with
over a third of their workers at home, the value of these benefits falls flat. More and
more organizations are switching up their benefits offerings to include things like
mental health support, home office equipment, and wellness programs.

FUTURE CAREER OPTIONS:

There are many sectors in which HR graduates can get highly paid jobs. They
may work for government sectors, private companies, banking sectors, educational
institutes, multinational companies, research, consultancies, and many more. They are
offered a pay scale based on qualification, geographical location, company profit, and
experience (Dilip Guru, 2021).
These are the various job profiles available to HRM graduates:
 Human Resources Manager
- Human Resources Managers get the opportunity to help the
employees by person-to-person interaction. They have a great direct
influence on others.
 Human Resource Generalist
It is an entry-level job offered to MBA graduates in HR, and they
have to handle multiple tasks simultaneously. They receive job
applications from the candidates, analyze their resumes, select the
documents, and organize recruitment projects. Their job profile involves
recruitment, handling payroll, attendance tracking, employee engagement
activities, induction program, and performance appraisal. HR generalists
create backend systems so that the basic needs of the employees are
met.
 Staffing Director
The staffing director makes all the necessary decisions and plays
an important role in a company. They are responsible for framing
recruitment policies, promotional policies, and policies related to transfer
and training.
 Director of HR Training and Development
The Director of HR Training and Development conducts training
programs for new employees in a company. It is their responsibility to
carry out training programs well so that employees can contribute to their
best level for the company’s success. They help in improving the skills and
careers of the employees. They organize classes, workshops,
conferences, training sessions, and gatherings.
  Employees Relations Manager
They listen to the employees’ complaints and grievances and thus,
act as a correspondence between them and the employers. To resolve the
disputes between the employers and employees, employee relations
managers arrange talks and discussions between them.

 Human Resource Consultant

Human Resource consultants work for employee incentives, reward
programs, company culture merge, employee motivation, retirement plans,
and outsourcing functions. They offer systematic recommendations to the
company to achieve bigger goals.
 International Human Resource Professional
International Human Resource Professionals recruit candidates for
global positions, train them according to international organizations’
regulations, implement benefit plans according to the national plans, and
regulate employee programs. It is the best career option for those who
want to travel, speak multiple languages, and adapt to different cultures.
 Human Resource Executive
Human Resource executives play a vital role in any organization. It
is their responsibility to device strategies, policies, systems, and goals for
the companies. They look after every aspect of a human resource
department, from recruitment to contract to sign to training and
development.

REFLECTION:
As I am doing this activity, I have learned that HRM is very important in every
organization. Because without human resources management, companies would not be
able to effectively recruit and retain employees and improve and enhance the
organization. Also, they wouldn’t be able to maintain a healthy, accepting workplace
culture and environment, which contributes to business growth without human resource
management. Apart from that, I also learned that the HR department is the heart and
soul of a business.
References:
Asanify Blog (2020). Future of HR 2030: What You Need to Know Today.
https://asanify.com/blog/human-resources/future-of-hr-2025-2030/
Asma Niaz (2020). Impact of Information Technology on Human Resource Management
https://www.profilesasiapacific.com/2020/01/21/information-technology-hrm/
Dilip Guru, 2021. Top 14 Career Options After MBA In HR [Trending in 2021]
https://www.upgrad.com/blog/career-options-after-mba-hr/
Elisabeth Natter (2019). Goals of Human Resource Management
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/goals-human-resource-management-21317.html
Five Different Perspectives of Human Resource Management.
https://www.brighthubpm.com/resource-management/76151-exploring-different-
perspectives-of-hr-management/
GLOBALISATION & HRM, https://spiritofhr.wordpress.com/globalisation-hrm/
Manish Patidar (2021). Functions of Human Resource Management
https://www.enotesmba.com/2014/11/functions-of-human-resource-management.html
Matthew Pinto-Chilcott (2015). The History of Human Resource Management (HRM)
https://consensushr.com/the-history-of-human-resource-management-hrm/
Srivastava E., Dr. Agarwal N., (2012). The Emerging Challenges in HRM: ISSN 2277-
8616 https://www.ijstr.org/final-print/july2012/The-Emerging-Challenges-In-HRM.pdf
The Impact of Technology on Human Resources Management Process.
https://ukdiss.com/examples/technology-human-resources-management-process.php
What is Human Resource. https://www.betterteam.com/what-is-human-resources