The human element is the most important resource for any organization at all administrative levels. The human element is the one who sets goals, plans, and provides the financial and material resources necessary to carry out the various tasks, as well as the one who determines the organization’s values ​​and culture, analyzes problems, and makes decisions regarding them.

What is human resources management?

Human resources management (HRM) is the practice of recruiting, hiring, deploying, and managing an organization’s employees. HRM is often referred to as human resources (HR). An organization or organization’s HR department is normally accountable for creating, placing into impact, and overseeing policies governing people and the relationship of the organization with its employees.

When did human resources management start?

Human sources management was first used in the early 1900s, and became more extensive in the 1960s, to manage the people who work for the organization.

The importance of human resources management:

The importance of human resources management lies in the importance of the human resource itself. The quality of management is related to the effectiveness and efficiency of people’s operations, starting from the selection and qualification process to the processes of calculating wages, reward, promotion, and accountability, as all factors interact together and directly affect the human being, his emotions, his orientations, and his productivity at work.

Objectives of human resource management:

The role of HRM can be categorized into four main objectives:

• Societal objectives: Taking the necessary measures towards meeting the social needs of both the organization and its employees in light of legal framework and social and cultural determinants, as well as facing the challenges associated with them, such as the minimum wage.

• Organizational objectives: The Human Resources Department works within the determined framework by the organization’s leaders, which helps to achieve organizational goals such as work teams or hierarchical organization, including the powers, channels of communication, and chain of command, which places the responsibility of the Human Resources Department to address the description of each job, tasks, and responsibilities, as well as channels of communication, as well as selection criteria of employees.

• Functional objectives: The functional objectives of the Human Resources Department are represented in the operational processes that it undertakes, which are:
  • Selection and recruitment
  • Induction and qualification
  • Career path planning
  • Follow-up and evaluation
  • Promotion and reward
  • Wage determination
  • Accountability and investigation

These functions cover the basic operations of human resource management and draw up guidelines to maintain the effectiveness and efficiency of employees to achieve the objectives of the organization.

• Personal objectives: The human resources department also adopts personal goals for employees and creates the environment that helps to achieve them.  There are many and varied personal goals for employees related to the job, social and financial status, as well as the culture and values ​​of society, which leads to employees’ stability at work.  This makes the continuous monitoring of the human and professional needs of employees on the list of priorities for successful human resources management because of its impact on the stability of both the organization and individuals and their sense of justice.

Functions of human resources management:

1. Planning
2. Staffing
3. Developing
4. Motivating
5. Managing change
6. Maintaining relationships
7. Evaluating
8. Appraising

1- Planning:

• Analyze objectives:

Planning is a continuous process carried out by the organization to achieve goals, as the processes of setting goals and planning are inseparable, as goals cannot be achieved without a plan and planning cannot be done without a goal.

The objectives of human resource management fall within the main goals of the organization, as they must be consistent with them to become applicable. Therefore, the human resources department must study and analyze the organization’s goals to determine its role in achieving those goals, whether by attracting new workers, laying off some workers, modifying some jobs, or training workers in skills required to implement the organization’s plan.

• Analyzing current human resources:

One of the most important steps of the planning process is to assess the current situation of human resources to determine the capabilities and factors of strength, weakness, and deficiencies in the concerned organization at present or in the future, where knowledge of these data helps in the process of proper planning and efficient and effective implementation.

• Forecast demand:

Demand forecasting helps to know the organization’s future needs of human resources in terms of number, qualifications, and specialization to achieve the necessary competence and efficiency to achieve the tasks. There are a set of statistical methods that organizations use to forecast demand, such as:

-Projection

-Average

-Regression analysis

• Estimate gaps:

The gaps are identified by comparing the results with the goals, which is one of the recent trends called (OKRs) or Objectives and Key Results through which the results are compared with the goals and then identifying the gap between reality and desired results and developing solutions to solve that problem.

• Formulate plan:

This step comes after completing the previous steps and collecting sufficient information to make the right decision when making a comparison between the proposed alternatives.  Where the plan must be a reflection of the organization’s goals, as well as be efficient in terms of using the available resources and managing them effectively.

• Implement plan:

Plan implementation comes after completing the previous steps and collecting sufficient information to make the right decision when making a comparison between alternatives.  Where the plan must be a reflection of the organization’s goals, as well as be efficient in terms of using the available resources and managing them effectively. Therefore, goals must be turned into numbers and a time frame has to be set for effective monitoring of the plan’s implementation.

• Monitor, control and feedback:

It is the process of monitoring and identifying deviations in addition to identifying the problems by periodically comparing the actual performance with the standards and developing fundamental solutions to them.

The monitoring and control process can be clarified through the following steps:

2- Staffing:

It is intended to supply the organization with employees through the following:

• Determining the required jobs
• Setting standards for each job
• Determining the necessary skills and previous job experiences to perform the job
• Determining the academic and educational requirements
• Determining the selection criteria among applicants
• Placing the job in the appropriate salary structure.
• Drafting the job offer and negotiating with the selected applicant.

3- Developing:

The tasks of human resources management extend to developing the skills of employees, whether technical or administrative, to keep pace with the state of development that occurs in the business environment.  The Human Resources Department is also concerned with developing the basic skills of employees, which include:

• communications skills
• Teamwork / team building
• Crisis management
• problem solving and decision making
• Information security
• Dealing with work stress and job burnout
• Embracing diversity

along with formulating development strategies to build the capacity of the human capital and prepare leadership cadres such as:

• Job enrichment
• Empowerment
• Organizational commitment
• Organizational learning
• Self-managed work teams
• Career path planning
• Talent acquisition
• Innovation management
• intellectual capital management
• Transformational leadership

4- Motivating:

Motivation plays a great role in supporting the organization’s employees and urging them to make efforts to achieve the desired goals.  Therefore, the Human Resources Department plays an important role in motivating the employees and taking the necessary measures for this through continuous evaluation of employees’ performance and recognition of extraordinary efforts to determine the persons worthy of reward and recognition.

5- Managing change:

Change in the simplest form is to move from the current situation in which we live to a future situation that will be more efficient and effective. There is no doubt that the world today is in constant conflict with the desire to bring about change, as a result of the tremendous progress in science and technology and the resulting economic, social and cultural change, until we now live in the information era after we lived in the industrial and agricultural eras. Change has become a reality in the life of societies and organizations, and managing the change process has become one of the most important tasks undertaken by the manager in modern organizations, meaning that shaping the future has become mainly dependent on making the change on an ongoing basis.

The importance of change management:

• Maintaining the effectiveness of the organization
• Developing the desire and ability to innovate
• The need to make compatibility with the environmental variables surrounding the organization
• Reaching a higher degree of strength and performance in the organization

The main factors that lead to change (the force of change):

The forces of change may come from within the organization (internal pressures) and may come from outside the organization (external pressures).

Internal pressures:

• Dissatisfaction with the performance of the various activities or the level of service provided.
• The desire to improve the organizational efficiency of the organization.
• The need to fulfill the increasing human needs of individuals within the organization.
• There is underemployment in the organization and the need to re-plan the workforce and training.

External pressures:

• Economic conditions.
• Social conditions.
• Technological development.
• Political circumstances.
• The legal frame.
• Cultural variables.

In addition to other contemporary international concerns such as the pandemic, which in turn may lead to the need to change the policies of the organization.

The process of change management:

The Unfreeze Phase:

This is when the organization feels that there is a need for change. This stage is the preparation for the change process, thus senior management seeks at this stage to provoke individuals to feel and realize the need for change, and here establish strong relationships with them, as the planned change will not have a chance of success in the long run unless there is a review of trends and behaviors (the old behavior) and at the same time there is a willingness to work differently from this old behavior. There may be differences in visions and ideas, which requires a method that helps employees to get rid of old habits to other alternatives that are more positive in performing the functions entrusted to them.

The Changing Phase:

At this stage, the change process is initiated, where the senior management initiates the change process through the components of the organization (the human element – tasks and competencies – organizational structures – modern technology) and that is after an in-depth diagnosis of each of these problems and identification of possible alternatives that can be chosen to bring about the change process.

Some organizations try to speed up the change process, however, they end up failing because the employees did not feel the need for change, and therefore they create an opposite reaction that results in resistance to change, due to their ignorance of the elements of the change process or the speed in achieving change.

Refreeze Phase:

This step represents the final stage of the change process when the organization seeks to stabilize and maintain the change that has been reached in (behavior or trends) while creating the appropriate conditions for the continuity of change for the longest possible period, and the change that has been achieved can be maintained through performance reward, support for the desired behavior and positive feedback.

6- Maintaining relationships:

Employee relationships can develop between coworkers as well as the employee and the organization. This relationship can boost their productivity due to a positive relationship as there is a correlation between productivity and the work environment.

How does HRM manage employee relationships?

Human resources management is entrusted with all necessary means to motivate, capacitate and enhance people’s productivity therefore there are a set of actions that can be taken to maintain employee relationships namely:

• Coworkers relationship:
  • Building work teams
  • Encourage social interactions
  • Support team building activities
  • Enabling means of communication
  • Take advantage of informal organization

• Employee – organization relationship:
  • Holding meetings either one on one or group
  • Monitoring employees’ satisfaction
  • Adopting the policy of engagement and accountability for actions

7- Evaluating:

The Human Resources Department is entrusted with evaluating the plan that has been developed, whether to recruit a competent workforce or to make optimal use of the available human resources or to develop and raise their efficiency, through key performance indicators (KPIs) that are determined in advance for the periodic measurement of the department’s ability to implement the plan and commitment to the schedule. The evaluation is based on data collected by one or a combination of the following methods:

• Observation
• Checklists
• Surveys
• Focus groups
• Usage data
• Interviews
• Documents and records

HR KPIs reflect organizational performance for HR, as they are described primarily based on the HR results that are applicable to acquire the organization’s goals.

1. Absenteeism Rate: Evaluate the engagement of your employees
2. Overtime Hours: Monitor your employees’ workload in detail
3. Training Costs: Analyze the investments in your employees
4. Employee Productivity: Track the overall effectiveness of your workforce
5. Talent Satisfaction: Ensure your employees are satisfied in the long run
6. Cost per Hire: Analyze what it takes to find the perfect fit
7. Recruiting Conversion Rate: Find the best recruitment method
8. Time to Fill: Monitor how long you need to find a new employee
9. Talent Rating: Assess the quality of your employees
10. Employee Turnover Rate: See how your retention efforts work
11. Talent Turnover Rate: Evaluate how many talents you continually change
12. Dismissal Rate: Find out if you’re recruiting the right employees
13. Female to Male Ratio: Understand the gender diversity in your company
14. Part-Time Employees: Watch the evolution of part-time workers over time
15. Average Time Stay: See how long your employees stay in your company

8- Appraising:

Performance appraisal is the ordinary assessment of an employee’s job performance and contribution to a company. Also acknowledged as an annual review, overall performance assessment, or evaluation. An overall performance appraisal evaluates an employee’s skills, achievements, and growth according to assessment criteria developed by the human resources management.

Modern methods of performance appraisal:

1. Self-assessment: Individuals rate their job overall performance and behavior.
2. Peer assessment: An individual’s workgroup or coworkers evaluate their performance.
3. 360-degree feedback assessment: Includes entry from an individual, supervisor, and peers.
4. Negotiated appraisal: A modern trend that tries to average performance critiques by permitting the employee to present first. Also focuses on what the individual is doing properly before any criticism is given. This structure tends to be useful during conflicts between subordinates and supervisors.

Way forward: Human resources strategy:

Human resource strategy maximizes the benefit of the organization’s human capital to achieve its goals.  For this reason, organizations seek to move from traditional or transitional management to strategic management, which poses a challenge to some organizations and individuals alike, and by taking into account the advantages of strategic management, it is necessary to adopt methodological steps for the strategic management process to manage those challenges and take advantage of the benefits.

What is a human resources strategy?

The human resource strategy is the guide for dealing with the organization’s challenges related to the human element, as well as seizing opportunities in light of the organization’s strengths and weaknesses.  In addition to creating new approaches and methods to acquire skills and competencies to be in the organization, as well as enhancing the efficiency of management and employees.

Conclousion.

The human resources department plays a vital role in any organization as it is concerned with managing the most important resource of any organization through a set of functions that ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and continuity of the employees in the organization as well as motivating them, planning their career path and training them in line with technological and administrative development, in addition to drawing up the strategy that determines the future goals of the organization, as well as it’s future needs of people and skills that are indispensable, no matter how the style of work develops and evolves.