History, Evolution and Development of Human Resource Management

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’

20^th 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Personal Management (PM)

Personal management is a part of management that deals with the recruitment, hiring, staffing, development and compensation of the workforce and their relation with organization objectives. The primary functions of of the personal management are divided in to two categories.

•          Operative Functions

The activities that are concerned with procurement, development, compensation, job evaluation, employee welfare, utilization, maintenance and collective bargaining.

•        Managerial Function

Planning, organizing, directing, control and coordination are the basic managerial activities performed by the personal management.

Personnel management was becoming human resource management, representing a change towards the integration of personnel functions, strategically focused on overall organizational effectiveness. Significantly, it was enhanced by industrial relations changes, including award restructuring and enterprise agreements, increasing employment legislation, and economic realities such as declining trade with Britain and Europe and increasing opportunities in the Asia Pacific region. (Ogier, 2003)

Human Resources Management (HRM)

According to the Armstrong (2014) A strategic integrated and coherent approach to the employment, development and well-being of the people working in organization can be defined as Human resource management. Also distinct from personal management, is the emerging philosophy that people need to be viewed as an asset rather than a variable cost (Beer et al, 1984)

HRM is an art of utilizing the human resources of an organization, in the most efficient and effective way.

Different between Personal management (PM) and Human Resource management (HRM)

Although both PM and HRM focus on people management, If we examine critically, there are many difference between them. Some are listed below. 

Characteristics	Personnel management(PM)	Human resource management (HRM)
1.       Strategic nature	·         Predominantly dealing with day to day issues ·         Ad hoc and reactive in nature ·         A short term perspective rather than strategic	·         Even dealing with day to day issues, proactively in nature and integrated with other management functions. ·         A deliberately long term strategic view of human resource.
2.       Psychological contract	·         Based on compliance on the part of the employee	·         Based on seeking willing commitment of the employee
3.       Job design	·         Typically Taylorist/Fordist	·         Typically team based
4.       Organizational structure	·         Hierarchical ·         Tendency to vertical integration	·         Flexible with core of key employees surrounded by peripheral shells ·         High degree of outsourcing
5.       Remuneration	·         Collective base rate ·         Pay by position ·         Any additional bonuses linked to Taylorist work system	·         Market based ·         Individual and/ or team performance ·         Pay for contribution
6.       Recruitment	·         Sophisticated recruitment practices for senior staff only ·         Strong reliance on external local labour market for most recruitment	·         Sophisticated recruitment for all employees ·         Strong internal labor market for core employees. Greater reliance on external market  for non-core employees
7.       Training and development	·         Limited and usually restricted to training non managerial employees. Narrowly job related. Management development limited to top executives and fast track candidates	·         Transformed in to a learning and development philosophy transcending job related training. An ongoing development role for all core employees including non-management. Strong emphasis on management and leadership development ·         A learning organization culture

8.       Employee relations perspective	·         Pluralist, Collectivist, low trust	·         Unitarist, Individualistic, High trust
9.       Organization of the function	·         Specialist/ Professional ·         Separated from line management ·         Bureaucratic and centralized	·         Largely integrated in to line management for day today HR issues ·         Specialist HR group to advise and create HR policy.
10.       Welfare role	·         Residual expectations	·         No explicit welfare role
11       Criteria for success of the function	·         Minimizing cost of the human resources	·         Control of HR cost, but also maximum utilization of human resources over the long term.

Source: adapted and developed from Guest (1987)

Video clip :

Evolution of Human resource management;

Conclusion

HRM has come up with an extension over PM, which eradicated the shortcomings of the PM. It is quite essential in this era of intense competition where every organization have to put their manpower and their need first.

Nowadays, it is very challenging to retain and maintain good employees for a long time as they are fully aware of their rights and any organization cannot treat them likes machines. Hence HRM has been evolved to unite the organization with their employees for the attainment of a common goal.

Reference

Armstrong, M. (2006) A hand book of Human Resource practice, (10th ed)
Colling, D G & Wood G (2009). Human Resource Management: A critical approach (pp. 1-16)
Donkin, R. (2001) A quiet revolution in human resource management.
Erwee, R.(2003) Integrating diversity Management initiatives with strategic human resource management.