Business 101: Principles of Management

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In this lesson, we will explore the role a manager plays in human resource management, including hiring and staffing. We will also look at the circumstances affecting employment decisions such as promotion, turnover, downsizing, job redesign and termination.

What Is Human Resources Management?

Human resources management is the management of the planning and staffing of intellectual and physical inputs, or people of different skill levels, needed for an organization to meet its objectives. This means hiring the right people for each job in the organization.

We will focus on various activities involved in hiring and staffing in an organization, like:

• Recruitment
• Promotion
• Turnover
• Downsizing
• Job redesign
• Termination

Recruitment

Recruitment is simply the process of attracting the right people to apply for jobs in an organization. Attracting the right people to apply for jobs seems pretty straightforward. A human resource manager can place a help-wanted ad in a local newspaper or on a job board. But the ad must be sure to attract not only the right people with the right qualifications - it must also attract enough people to select from.

There are several ways in which an organization can attract candidates for a job posting. A human resource manager can use either external recruitment or internal recruitment.

External Recruiting

External recruitment involves recruiting candidates who are not part of the organization. This can be done in several ways:

• Posting jobs in a local newspaper or job board
• Company website
• Employee referral
• Local unemployment offices
• College and university recruitment
• Employment agencies
• Temporary employment agencies

Job postings are a way to inform candidates that a job is available via print media. Job boards are websites where candidates can look for employment online. Employee referrals are recommendations made by employees on behalf of a friend or acquaintance who is interested in a posted job. Local unemployment offices are agencies where people who are unemployed visit to receive financial benefits and job skills training and placement.

College and university recruitment involves recruiting students who are about to graduate for employment in a specific field. Employment agencies are businesses that recruit and interview candidates, then recommend the candidates to companies offering jobs that match the candidates' qualifications and the employers' needs. Temporary employment agencies are businesses that recruit and hire employees to fulfill temporary positions at local companies for days, weeks or even months.

Internal Recruiting

Internal recruiting involves promoting existing employees into a new position within the organization. There are many benefits to recruiting from within the organization:

• Employees strive to advance to higher positions
• Employees do not need orientation into the company
• Employees are familiar with policy and procedures

There are a few disadvantages to internal recruiting:

• The promotion creates a gap in staffing
• The company does not benefit from new ideas or new ways of doing things

Staffing Tasks for Managers

Now that we've learned where to recruit the right people for the job, let's take a look at how The Downtown Hotel management team deals with the circumstances affecting decisions like promoting employees, turnover of staff, downsizing, redesigning jobs and termination.

Promoting employees involves moving an existing employee to a new position, generally with more responsibility and higher pay. Julie, human resource manager at The Downtown Hotel, abruptly lost their front desk supervisor. This left the front desk unsupervised and in disarray. Guests were not being checked in properly, the lobby was messy and guest requests were not being honored.

The decision to promote Katie, a front desk clerk, was the only option to get the front desk back in working order. Moving an existing employee to the supervisory position rather than externally recruiting meant that availability would be immediate, orientation was unnecessary and training would be minimal.

While the decision worked out well to fill the gap in supervision, it left a gap in another area of the operation. Since Katie knows how to do both jobs, the company decided it wasn't necessary to fill the gap. However, asking Katie to perform both jobs caused stress, which led Katie to quit her job. This resignation is known as turnover.

Turnover is a voluntary resignation from employment. Turnover of employees creates gaps in staffing, which has far-stretching consequences for organizational goals.

When Julie asked Katie to do the work of two people, Julie was downsizing. Downsizing is the planned elimination of jobs in an organization. Companies often downsize to save money on salaries and benefits. Julie, the human resource manager, thought downsizing the front desk would be a good idea. She wanted to save money on staffing, so she decided to eliminate Katie's former position as front desk clerk after she was promoted to supervisor. Unfortunately, downsizing rarely yields good results.

A better idea would have been to redesign Katie's job to combine some of her former responsibilities and some of her new responsibilities into a whole new job. This is known as job redesign. Job redesign is a restructuring of the tasks involved in a job to enhance the job, satisfaction and/or productivity. While redesigning a job sounds easy, there are decisions that must be made in advance of the redesign. Human resources managers must ask the following questions:

• Will productivity decrease as a result of the changes?
• Will customer satisfaction decrease as a result of the changes?
• Will the changes increase employee morale?
• Will the changes enhance the employee's work experience?

After Katie quit, Julie decided to redesign her position. Unfortunately, Julie bypassed this crucial analysis and designed a job that is impossible to accomplish by including both clerk and supervisory duties in the front desk position. Let's see how that turned out.

Julie hired Max. Max had the experience and education, was out of work so he was available immediately and also knew a few people who are employed at The Downtown Hotel. This sounded perfect to Julie, so Max began his new job!

Max was miserable within the first week. He could not keep up with the work. The redesign of the front desk tasks made the job impossible to perform by one person in one day. Max found himself working early morning until late in the evening, taking work home and even working in the car at red lights.

Max started making big mistakes, like giving new guests keys to occupied rooms, mixing up room service orders, and giving out incorrect change. He was miserable. Worse yet, the hotel lost guests and money. Julie had to make a tough decision: She could either re-train Max, terminate him or analyze the job. Max was terminated.

Termination is involuntary separation of employment. Max did not perform up to standards, and he had to be let go. Unfortunately, this brings Julie, the human resources manager, right back to the drawing board: recruitment. But this time, Julie looked more carefully at the design of the job to determine whether changes needed to be made.

Lesson Summary

In summary, human resources management is the management of the planning and staffing of intellectual and physical inputs, or people of different skill levels, needed for an organization to meet its objectives. This means hiring the right people for each job in the organization. It starts with recruitment.

Recruitment is simply the process of attracting the right people to apply for jobs in an organization. It can be done externally by recruiting candidates who are not part of the organization or internally by promoting existing employees into new positions within the organization.

Other important staffing decisions include promoting employees, analyzing turnover, downsizing staff, redesigning jobs and terminating employees.

Promoting employees involves moving an existing employee to a new position, generally with more responsibility and higher pay. Turnover is a voluntary resignation from employment. Downsizing is the planned elimination of jobs in an organization, often motivated by saving money on salaries and benefits. Job redesign is a restructuring of the tasks involved in a job to enhance the job, satisfaction and/or productivity. Termination is involuntary separation of employment.