Human Resource Management developed from the practice of Personnel Management, and so this begs the question: what do we know about the origins of personnel management and its current standing?

Before answering this question, a definition of personnel management would be useful. Personnel management assists with the management of people in an organisation. It is concerned with establishing, maintaining and developing systems that provide the framework of employment.

These systems operate throughout an employee’s membership of the company, starting with the system for entry (recruitment and selection) through the management of the employment relationship (reward, appraisal, development, industrial relations, grievance and discipline), finishing with the termination of the relationship (retirement, resignation, redundancy or dismissal). Ideally this management process is reinforced by the drive for efficiency and equality of opportunity.

Human Resource Management can be viewed as an approach to management that considers people as the key ‘resource’, although many professionals do not see people as resources in the same way as materials or equipment.

It subscribes to the notion that it is important to communicate well with employees, to involve them in what is going on and to foster their commitment and engagement with the organisation. In addition, a strategic approach to the acquisition, management and motivation of people is heavily emphasised. Fair and ethical treatment of people is combined with a determination to enhance organizational performance.

Historical influences

Phase 1

From the second half of the 1800s to early 1990sWelfare Personnel was applied in industrialised countries, such as the UK and USA, by family businesses, for example, Cadbury’s and Rowntrees in the UK and Kellogg’s in the USA.

 Basically, welfare personnel included schemes related to subsidised housing, sick pay and unemployment. Some people felt that the development of welfare personnel management was a reaction to the harshness or severity of capitalism at that period of time. Others felt that some industrialists adopted welfare personnel as a substitute for the payment of realistic wages, and to keep trade unions at arm’s length.

Welfare personnel survived as a noticeable practice until World War 2 in the 1940s. But there were later manifestations of it, such as the provision of workers canteens and outings or trips for employees. Even today we can see some manifestations of welfare personnel in health insurance cover and crèches’ for employee’s children.

Phase 2

During this phase, welfare personnel made its presence felt, but between the 1st and 2nd World wars there was a particular emphasis on Personnel Administration as well.

 This consisted of management support in the areas of recruitment, discipline, time-keeping, payment systems, training, and keeping personnel records.

As companies grew in size, another activity entered the frame and that was industrial relations.

One should add, around the time of the 1st World War, assessment centres were introduced for the selection of army officers and subsequently extended in a modest scale to other organizations.

Phase 3

This phase covered a period roughly from the 1940s to the 1950s when personnel management embraced a wider range of services in salary administration, training, and maintaining personnel records.

This amounted to building on foundations started in the previous phase. But the main focus was tactical rather than strategic.

Yet again the growth in the size of organizations was a factor in the expansion of industrial relations. There was a notable development in collective bargaining that switched from industry level to company level and this resulted in the introduction of the role of the industrial relations specialist within the personnel management function.

Phase 4

This phase spanned the 1960s and 1970s. During this period we witnessed the growth in the number of staff doing personnel work, influenced to a certain extent by an increase in the amount of employment legislation and also the growth of the economy.

In conditions of full employment up to the early 1970s there was evidence to indicate that personnel management experienced a lot of activity connected with recruitment, selection, training and payment systems. This was influenced to a certain extent by shortages in the supply of labour.

As a result of this situation, employers were taking action to hold on to skilled workers and to improve the skills of existing worker. We then witnessed the development of planned and systematic training prompted by the establishment of the Industrial Training Boards in the UK in 1964, which in turn lead to an increase in the number of training specialists within the personnel function.

The emphasis on training lead to associated developments, such as performance appraisal linked to Management by Objectives (MBO), management development, and the forecasting of manpower needs (manpower planning). Also, the bargaining power of the trade unions in the workplace seemed to be growing in strength. This was matched by an increase in the workload of personnel specialists, and signalled the involvement of the personnel function in matters related to industrial relations, productivity deals, and so on.

The growing involvement in matters related to industrial relations was expected to acquire greater proficiency with respect to exercising negotiation skills, as well as a better understanding of remuneration systems.

Phase 5

In the 1980s the actions of the UK conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher had an impact on employment. In the early part of that decade there was an economic recession. The impact of the recession was felt in a surplus of labour due to the growth in unemployment and the start of the decline in the power of the trade unions. The threat of strike action became less effective as companies could replace workers more easily.

In addition, there was a development worthy of note. That was the introduction of employment legislation by the government, such as the ending of the closed shop, and changing the rules governing the balloting of members to authorise industrial action, as well as tackling the issue of secondary picketing. No doubt this had an effect expressed as a decline in trade union influence.

During this phase there were a number of consequences, many related to the dwindling power of the trade unions. For example, take note of the following:

• Collective bargaining and conflict management became less elaborate or not as omnipresent as previously.
• There were faster negotiated wage settlements. Generally, negotiations to conclude wage settlements were conducted in a relatively calm industrial relations setting.
• Since there was less time spent on negotiations between personnel specialists and trade union representatives, the time saved was devoted to creating and managing redundancy programmes.
• Organizations were better able to alter work practices, and this resulted in increased productivity and a reduction in the numbers employed.
• Personnel practices changed. For example, due to the enlarged pool of labour, the emphasis was put on selection rather than recruitment (attracting candidates).

Personnel management in the 1980s entered what has been described as the “entrepreneurial stage” Professor John Hunt of the London Business School remarked in the mid-1980s that personnel management was undergoing fundamental change.

The entrepreneurial phase of personnel management could be described as the start of HR. There was a firm belief that organizational advancement and survival depended on adopting a business orientation as well as cultivation of high-performance corporate cultures. During this phase it was not unusual to find senior personnel executives in a number of companies making a contribution to discussions at a senior level about the company’s future direction and the suitability of existing commercial or business objectives.

This was an era that put the spotlight on the management of change, the development of an enterprise culture, the acceptance of Japanese industrial relations practices, such as single unions to represent a company’s workforce, and Japanese management practices in the form of Quality Circles (QC) and Total Quality Management (TQM).

 A notable contribution around this time was the publication of a classic practitioner’s book titled “In search of Excellence “by Peters and Waterman”. In that book there was a commentary on management and organizational practices associated with successful company performance. The attributes of excellence mentioned were decisive managerial action; customer orientation and sensitivity to customer needs; autonomy and entrepreneurship; treating people with dignity and respect and offering support for their development; hands-on management and visibility; stick to businesses where one’s competency lies; simple organizational forms and lean staff; and avoid tightly controlled organizational design.

There are criticisms of this work, particularly of the research methodology used. But it had value and significance as a bird’s eye view on practice. As Professor David Guest of London University once remarked, this work has significance in promoting an attitude change in favour of the husbandry of human resources in organizations.

I feel it could be considered a landmark in the development of HRM and a useful contribution to our understanding of the association between corporate culture and organizational performance.      

Phase 6

This phase started in the 1990s and was referred to as the post-entrepreneurial stage. It was felt that HRM would take over from traditional personnel management. There was a noticeable tendency to emphasise the importance of obtaining the consent of workers before various initiatives are adopted.

Also, there was a tendency to stress the value of teamwork and cooperation, as opposed to individualism and greed. It would appear that teamwork and team-building in organizations grew as a consequence.

Another characteristic that received much attention was ‘high commitment’ It was considered essential to solicit high commitment from core workers within the organization. These workers would be expected to be flexible as to working hours, and to work beyond what the job description required. Wages were to reflect market rates, rather than to be determined by agreements with trade unions. The number of part-time workers increased, as did fixed-term contract workers.

As we entered the 2000s it was apparent that HRM, as propounded by influential academics (e.g. Guest, Boxall and Purcell in the UK and Ulrich, Beer, Becker, Holbeche, Huselid, in the US), was taking root. It will be considered in more detail later when focussing on organizational success.

Policy with respect to employment practices in the UK and other member states of the European Union was influenced by provisions in the Social Chapter of the European Union’s Maastricht Treaty. Briefly, the factors of relevance to HRM worthy of consideration are: improve working conditions; provide equitable remuneration; provide equal opportunities; permit the free movement of labour; encourage union representation; provide information to workers and encourage their involvement at work; and adopt measures to protect the health and safety of workers.

The environment in Europe differs from that in the USA, where HRM had its beginnings. In Europe collectivism, protection of worker’s rights, social responsibility, importance of community, and industrial democracy shape the form HRM takes.

By contrast, in the US where individualism and unitarism is more likely to prevail, the practice of HRM could be determined in a different way. For example, in the US the performance-reward equation appears to be of paramount importance, unlike Asia with its tendency towards centralisation and family business ethos. In the UK some commentators in the recent Referendum campaign highlighted the compression of wage rates in some areas of employment due to the EU’s free movement of labour policy.

Features of HRM

There was passing comment earlier on some characteristics of HRM. Now we will take a broader view of the terrain occupied by HRM. Scholars (e.g. Beer, Guest, Legge, Sparrow and Ulrich) and progressive practitioners have identified a number of factors or conditions, such as the following.

• It is commonplace for organizational and management systems to respond to new conditions in a rapidly changing environment that is characterised by increased competitiveness, an emphasis on quality across the board, flexible ways of operating, and the need to adapt to change.

Examples of organizational and management responses are: increased decentralization to facilitate a more rapid and better reaction to market conditions, greater autonomy and accountability to departments for the efficient use of resources, more flexibility in the roles played by members of teams, and getting employees to adopt a wider range of skills (multi-skilling).

• A basic tenet of HRM is that people are valued assets of the company and that power ought to be distributed throughout the organization, rather than be centralised, so as to promote trust and collaboration between competent employees. In this respect, where practicable, employees should be given the opportunity to participate in decision making affecting their area of work.

• The interests of all stakeholders (employees, shareholders, and customers) should be harmonised.

• There should be interplay between a strategy for human resources and the main strategy for the business. HRM is charged as an integrative system to bring people issues into line with business issues and in the process adopt a problem solving approach and a determination to create a collaborative organizational system with the accent on employee development.

• The internal coherence of HR techniques, where interplay and reinforcement exists, is advocated, but this could be challenged in particular circumstances. As an example, take a large company with a well-developed divisional structure where authority is delegated to divisional units with a high degree of autonomy. The HQ may centralise overall control but the divisions may vary in the way HRM is implemented. With the absence of firm guidelines from the HQ, there could be a lack of consistency in the way HRM is implemented.     
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• Top management are expected to be active in setting the agenda for change and development. In this respect effective leadership and vision are important. So imaginative and transformational leadership could be considered important. 

• It is suggested that line managers should adopt HRM thinking and practice whilst fulfilling their normal management role. Ideally this should span the whole range of people-centred activities. Some would argue that this would be difficult to achieve to any reasonable level of sophistication, and if it were to be achieved could give rise to overload.

• Corporate culture, no doubt influenced in some way by national culture, should be supportive, and should be managed in such a way so as to be compatible with the requirements of corporate strategy. One should note that if culture is too rigid it could undermine flexibility. IBM and Apple are examples of companies with a flexible culture.

• Seeking the commitment of employees is of paramount importance, because it binds employees to the organization. But one has to acknowledge that people have other commitments as well - to the family, trade union or professional body, etc. - and these have to be reconciled to the commitment to the organization and its values.

• Commitment could also be considered a part of the “psychological contract”. That is an unwritten contract between management and employees, whereby management offers equitable remuneration and satisfactory conditions, including career opportunities, in return for an acceptable contribution to the company by the employee.

• To activate commitment, the principle of mutuality is advocated. That becomes operational when HRM policies promote mutual influence, mutual responsibility, and mutual respect. One way to foster mutuality is through the development appraisal in the performance management process.

• The Harvard model of HRM is referred to as embracing high commitment and involvement. It is considered to be unitarist rather than pluralist, and is considered idealistic from a European perspective. The traditional industrial relations system in the UK and some other parts of Europe fits the pluralist perspective, where interests of management and workers don’t always coincide and conflict can be an issue. 

• Another tenet of HRM is to promote the use of “common interests”, a feature of the Harvard model mentioned above. That refers to the common interests of management and employees in the profitability and survival of the enterprise. But this could be difficult to achieve in practice, particularly when management feels it necessary to undertake severe cost cutting to enhance the company’s competitiveness or survival.

• In recent years the concept of the business partner has been advocated. In this role the HR specialist operates as a business partner for senior managers by providing specialist knowledge and guidance on technical HR issues. In addition, one would expect the HR specialist to provide an input of knowledge and experience when corporate strategy is formulated.

HR techniques and Activities

HR techniques are at the disposal of HRM in the planning and implementation stages. They consist of HR planning, recruitment and selection, performance management, reward management, training and development, employee relations, and employee records. My intention at this stage is to reflect briefly on them.

HR Planning

HR planning has a legitimate interest in the evaluation of the potential of employees to cope with future conditions, such as entry to new markets, the development of new products, and how to react to new competitive pressures.

Human resource planning is concerned with matching the demand for the quantity and quality of employees with the available supply of labour. The HR planning exercise could be very useful when providing an input to other activities or techniques, such as selection, training, and rewards.

HR planning is now commonly referred to as talent management, which is concerned with identifying and nurturing employees who can make a significant contribution to the value of the company because of their specialized knowledge, ability to take a lead in managing change, and their good relationship with key clients.  Proctor and Gamble developed a much admired talent management scheme in order to build an internal leadership pipeline – one that produced numerous potential CEO candidates.     

With regard to HR planning, questions that might be asked are: Has the organization the capacity to react quickly to expand or contract the workforce? Is succession planning or talent management and management development of sufficient quality to support the long-term corporate strategy? How easy is it to tap the external supply of labour when needed?

HR planning must display an awareness of the business context and the overall strategy of the organization as well as managing the internal supply of labour, and have an active presence in the external labour markets.

Also, one has to accept that many companies operate in a network with other organizations in order to facilitate a sub-contracting service or alternatively strike a partnership in order to satisfy new demands for labour. 

Recruitment and Selection

The process starts with job analysis that can result in a flexible job description and a job specification or what we expect the ideal job holder to achieve (key results).This can form the basis of an information packs available to potential applicants. Then various recruitment activities prior to selection take place. These are referred to as sources of recruitment, frequently aided by the use of the internet. It is not unusual for some companies -e.g. Google and Virgin- to create an image about their distinctive products or services. This sends a powerful message to employees and external applicants interested in positions within the company.

 The final stage is the choice of appropriate selection devices, for example, references, the interview, work-based tests, and psychological tests, and assessment centres. The reliability and validity of the techniques used is an important consideration. Apart from the well known selection devices, internships or work placements are becoming increasingly popular. In the spirit of HRM it is important to attract and select high calibre applicants.

Performance Management

The objectives of performance management are to review performance in relation to targets or expectations, set targets or expectations for the forthcoming period; provide feedback (knowledge of results) to appraisees; identify training and development needs and specify corrective action; identify appraisees that have potential to advance within the organization and provide an input to succession planning or talent management.

One should draw a distinction between the evaluative appraisal and the development appraisal. The ‘evaluative’ appraisal is geared towards the determination of rewards whereas the development appraisal is concerned specifically with the development of the individual. It is important that the appraisal process is conducted in an honest and fair way, Also , performance management if implemented properly could throw light on the effectiveness of the selection process, training that has already taken place, and the quality of management.

Various techniques are at the disposal of the appraiser, such different types of rating scales, the 360 degree approach, balanced scorecard, and assessment centres.   

Apart from the customary techniques, key performance indicators (KPIs) are important and should be considered.

Reward Management

Total rewards - ranging from wages/salaries, commission and bonuses, to performance-related pay- should be implemented so as to maximise the employee’s attachment to the organization and to actively engage with the organization’s objectives.

The part played by reward systems is paramount in HRM, particularly when the organization wants o change the culture into a strong performance- oriented culture.

Reward management could also be used to encourage the development of new skill to meet the organisation’s needs and send a signal to performance management. The type of rewards referred to are extrinsic rewards, but there are other rewards often based on job design called intrinsic rewards.

Reward management is crucial in attracting the human resources the organization needs to achieve its objectives and when effective has a beneficial effect on motivation and commitment.

 Training and Development

Training and development are the processes of investing in people with a view to equipping them with the knowledge and skills to perform well. We need to develop employees so that they are better equipped to make the best use of their abilities in contributing to the organization’s objectives and to progress their careers. It is said that managers have a key role to play in the implementation of HR policies, and therefore should receive appropriate training so as to be better able to fulfil their responsibilities.

There are a variety of approaches to training, such as lectures, case studies, e-learning, shadowing, secondment, coaching, mentoring and action learning. Ina CIPD  survey report it was mentioned that 40% of managers admitted that they were not very effective in supporting learning and development in employees because either they themselves were not given sufficient training or they were too busy to help workers improve their skills or further their careers.   

Employee Relations  

This activity incorporates collective bargaining, employee participation, employee voice, grievance procedures and employment legislation.

In collective bargaining it is the HRM manager or specialist, who normally prepares and presents the employer’s case in the negotiations with the employees representatives (trade union officials).

As to grievance procedures, the HR manager or specialist could be actively involved in preparing and implementing them. He or she could be involved in efforts to settle disputes that fall outside of collective bargaining, which is a group-based activity, as opposed to an individual-based activity in the resolution of grievances.

The HRM specialist, if appropriately qualified or experienced, may be called to give advice on employment legislation, particularly the practical implications of that legislation.

Employee Communications and Engagement

Employee communications relates to a variety of ways to communicate with employees, and that includes ways in which employees communicate with the company (e.g. suggestion schemes).

Employee engagement is a bedfellow of commitment, the psychological contract, motivation and job satisfaction. It comes into existence when the behaviour of organizational leaders expressed in their attitudes, words and actions appeal to staff and in turn they commit themselves to the organization. Mutual trust between management and workers is also a key consideration.

 Personnel Records

They are centrally filed and contain information associated with the original application and subsequently updated to reflect additional qualifications, experience and potential. This could be a useful record to facilitate HR decision making.

Reflection on HR Techniques

A critical question is are HR techniques good enough to attract the right calibre and mix of people, to develop employees, and to ensure working relationships and rewards or incentives are of the required standard or quality, so that employees are well equipped in the implementation of a realistic corporate plan.

In the debate about the application of HR techniques, the principle of Coherence is continually emphasised. Where coherence exists it is noticeable that there is a firm interrelationship between and reinforcement of a battery of HR techniques that are mobilised to meet the company’s objectives.

The opposite situation is where HR techniques are applied in an isolated fashion, as if to indicate that the HR practitioner is narrowly preoccupied with his or her cleverness rather than tackling real organizational problems.

One should make the point that in practice it may not be easy to develop a consistent and integrated set of HR techniques because to do so would require perseverance, managerial competence and a HR function that possesses appropriate attitudes and behaviour with a feel for commercial considerations.

Strategic HRM

It amounts to putting people management at the centre of strategic planning as advocated by the Michigan School of HRM. Here the organisational strategy is set and then a HR strategy is set to support the corporate strategy. For example, a mobile phone company might devise a strategy for making its products more attractive through technological innovation. HR Strategy could respond by recruiting highly skilled professionals and offering attractive reward packages. Also, training and development may be mobilised to enhance the competency of existing workers and adjustments can be made to the design of jobs to encourage freedom to innovate.

In the debate about the future of strategic HRM the implementation stage is considered problematic. There is a view that line managers and senior executives may take over from the HR professionals, with the managers in a leading role, but the HR professionals would still be influential.

Models of Strategic HRM

1. Best Fit

This perspective pays particular attention to the links between HR practices and organisational effectiveness. The best fit model involves relating corporate strategy to strategic human resource management in areas such as employee resourcing and development, organisation structure and culture.

The best fit model would be subject to variation, depending on national cultures. For example, there would be a difference between an Asian manufacturing company and a US service company.

The best fit model, also known as the matching model, is concerned with fitting HR policies and practices to the specific business context in which the company finds itself.

A best fit situation could vary depending on the maturing of the business. At a start-up stage there would be a firm need for flexibility in order to encourage entrepreneurialism and growth.

 At the mature stage in the growth of the business SHRM has to be concerned with flexibility and the responsiveness of the business to its environment, and be vigilant when it comes to cost minimisation.

 In the next and final stage, the decline of product or business, SHRM has to address the consequences of downsizing such as handling redundancies.

2. Competitive Advantage Approach

This model of SHRM offers suggestions about the most appropriate HR policies and practices to fit corporate strategies connected with cost reduction, improving quality, and innovation that could be linked to the strategic direction of the business.

It is agreed that economic performance of the organisation will improve when HR practices are in harmony with each other as well as complementing each other in the service of the chosen strategy for the organisation, in this case to enhance competitiveness.

For example, if cost reduction was the organisations primary concern, the appropriate HR strategy would be to focus on promoting efficiency and rationalisation in the form of head count reduction or modification to jobs or structure.

On the other hand, where the focus of corporate strategy is quality improvement and innovation, then HR strategies would address practices such as selection and training. The major issue here is that HR practices ought to be supportive of the behaviour required of the employee.

As you might expect, the model bears the hallmark of rational decision making, which is difficult to achieve in practice, due to political and other forces, such as negotiating, bargaining, and lack of consistency in effort put into the various processes.

Also, there could be a certain incongruity between strategic HRM and corporate strategy. For example, the corporate plan suggests cost minimisation through cuts in labour costs following cost consolidation, but taking such action could involve making people redundant, and this runs counter to the HRM principle of employee commitment.

The next exercise of trying to match corporate strategy and HRM strategy might end up with the structure and processes that are more inflexible than those of the company’s competitors. This runs counter to the need for flexibility in pursuit of organisational effectiveness.

This model assumes that the organization has a capacity to change certain situations reasonably quickly, but one has to accept that reducing numbers of people employed may not be without difficulty because of the need to alter employment contracts and other conditions.

3. Best Practice Model (High Commitment)

This model stresses the importance of gaining employee commitment to the implementation of a set of HRM best practice, such as

• Good selection practices
• Secure employment and opportunities to progress in the organisation
• A climate of sharing information, with employee involvement coupled with freedom of expression.
• Active encouragement of learning and development in a well-resourced training programme.
• Reward systems firmly related to performance.
• A reduction of status differentials among employees.
• Promoting teamwork, and making good use of self-managed teams.

The central thrust of the best-practice model is that HRM has universal appeal and it tries to influence senior management to implement a bundle of best practice techniques.

High Performance workplace practices (HPWPs), meaning good employee involvement/commitment practices and a belief in progressive reward systems are a good example of the best practice approach.

Progressive HRM working hand in hand with HPWPs can be a powerful influence on motivation of workers and performance because it provides workers with the autonomy and discretion to cope with the demands of the modern workforce.

High Performance through People: SHRM and Organisational Performance

The research evidence suggests that it is the adoption of HPWPs, which include increasing employee knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), that empower employees to act and make use of their KSAs for the organisation’s benefit, and this increases their motivation.

The outcomes are said to be greater job satisfaction, low employee turnover, higher productivity and better decision making, all of which increases organisational performance.

HPWPS also include the provision of good incentives (rewards) and training, as well as employee participation and flexible working arrangements. Academics, such as Walton, refer to factors that result in an improved commitment and performance associated with an increase in economic performance, and can be universally applied, as:

1. Team working and the provision of enriched jobs, rather than fragmentation of tasks with high levels of specialisation

2. Agreed objectives that stretch employees

3. Flat organizational structures that lead to reduced supervision and situations where there is much involvement and sharing of team goals, coupled with conditions where coordination and communication is fuelled by mutual influence.

4. A priority on training and development

5. A joint problem-solving approach to employee relations.

Other academics, such as Huselid and Pfeffer, stress the need to:

• Improve recruitment and selection as a means to secure the services of people with potential.

Ideally the skills sought in ‘selective hiring’, apart from the appropriate job-specific skills, could include an ability to use initiative, good judgement, adaptability, and ability to learn. Of course specific interpersonal skills (e.g. proficiency in imparting knowledge, empathy and listening) could also be considered.

• Improve training and development so as to increase the quality of the contribution current employees make to the organization.

• Put in place effective reward systems if possible so as to obtain the right application of knowledge and use of skills.

• Recognise that extrinsic rewards by themselves are not enough. Intrinsic rewards have also to be considered and the right motivational disposition is dependent on how people feel about the fairness of the performance appraisal process. Arbitrary treatment by management may have a negative effect.

• It is crucial to understand the nature of organizational objectives and cultivate the sharing of information. But the establishment of trust is vital in this respect.

• Strive to dilute status differentials among the organization’s employees

A criticism of Best-Practice model, with its adherence to high commitment, is that it supports unitarism. In effect this ignores pluralist values and tensions which are present in many organisations.

4. Resource-Based Model

This model attracts our attention to the internal resources of the company. Its focus is on resources that can be found within the organization, and therefore the organisation is well placed to respond and exploit opportunities in the external environment.

The approach is to fully understand the distinctive competencies of the workforce, which competitors would experience difficulty in imitating. This would be achieved through a process of analysing capabilities, knowledge and skills at the disposal of the organisation. The logic of this is to develop a sustainable, competitive advantage for the organisation. This exercise ought to be complemented with competencies associated with HR specialists.

But if some of the competencies are no longer needed in the light of what is required to achieve departmental and organisational objectives, it may signal a need for retraining, possibly re-deployment. If no suitable arrangement exists, then it would be a matter of redundancy.

If the organization does not have the necessary skills, or developing internal resources is not an option, then the real alternative would be to buy-in the required resources.

In discussions of the resource-based model the principles of value, rarity, and inimitability are mentioned

Value: We should always be on the look out to create value through improved efficiency, nurturing existing clients and acquiring new ones, and meeting customer’s needs.

Rarity: For example a good recruitment and selection system would be advantageous in attracting good candidates who are interested in our business, and when they join the organisation they should be groomed and adequately rewarded and motivated to give of their best.

Inimitability: Another aim is to develop characteristics of the organisation that cannot easily be imitated by competitors. One such characteristic could be a particular organisational culture.

The culture of Southwest Airlines, a budget airline in the US, supported good selection processes, as well as encouraging excellent performance.

It also developed a tolerance for making mistakes, and this was viewed as a learning experience.

The empowerment principle was applied, and there was a culture of fun, good relationships, and mutual trust.

Other companies, such as Apple, have a distinctive culture that supports product innovation, and providing value that may be difficult to copy.

Organisation: Ideally one should have HRM practices that are horizontally integrated and complement each other. But that is not always the case as in many cases HR techniques, such as employee resourcing, employee development, performance management, reward management and employee relations have evolved in isolation.

Finally, the resource-based model of SHRM should be actively influencing the future by identifying and developing competencies for competitive advantage.

5. Process Approach  

This focuses on the way things happen and as such shines a light on aspects of strategy. It seeks to emphasise the involvement of the employee.

 In the traditional selection and recruitment process, for example, there is an attempt to match candidates to what the job requires and this appears in the job specification.

But in the processual approach selection is viewed as a two-way negotiation in which potential employees can make an input to the design of the job. Therefore through a process of informal and open discussion in which candidates and the organisations get to know each other and understand what are the possibilities and limitations of a match between the attributes of the applicants and the job requirements

Therefore, both parties have a choice on whether or not they take matters further in formal recruitment and selection process.

 One advantage of this approach is that it increases the amount of information held by both the employers and the potential applicant about each other, but it could create a situation whereby the organisation could incur considerable cost because the employer will have to spend time with perhaps the majority of candidates who will not become employees.

Critics of the processual approach say it operates as “a doing” rather than a visionary strategic exercise, and is reactive rather than proactive.

Also critics would say that too much freedom would be given to managers, in which case there is potential for lack of consistency and the introduction of unfairness in the application of HR Policy. For example, if variation (lack of consistency) is permitted in the making of selection decisions, the end result could be the unfair treatment of job applicants. Hence, need for consistency.

Finally, in examining the evidence of the link between HRM and performance, Prof David Guest makes the following pertinent observations.

‘After 20 years of extensive research we have accumulated much knowledge of the HRM-Performance link. However, we must have a much better idea of the implementation of HRM practices, and the line manager’s involvement in the implementation process. Also, one should communicate the purpose of HRM policy and practice as well as its content.

There is a need for more complex research methodology and statistical analysis, good access to research sites, more major studies, and dissemination of research findings in suitable form for practitioners’.   

                Role of HRM Specialist

• Involvement at strategic level where policies are formulated

• Advisory service to line managers across the spectrum of HR techniques.

• Produce relevant documentation (e.g. job specification, or ‘key results’).

• Join the line manager on interview panels etc.

• Allow manager a high degree of autonomy in HR activities close to his or her area of responsibility (e.g. selecting staff)

• Obtain services of outside consultants as appropriate to compensate for expertise not available internally.

• Handle information technology proficiently and use computer-based HRM system.

• Act as a change agent, but he or she must develop a competency in managing and implementing change.

• Develop sufficient expertise to act as a business partner of the line manager particularly senior managers and assist the managers to develop competencies required to perform his or her HRM tasks.

• Develop negotiation skills

• Use outsourcers as a means to reduce costs in connection with running HRM systems.

• Develop competency in designing HRM systems to collect knowledge and encourage knowledge sharing.

• Develop awareness of relevant knowledge/research.

• Feel the pulse of the organisation by accessing the opinions of employees and monitoring the outcome of decisions already made.

• HR specialists should have the breadth of expertise and influencing skills in relation to helping line managers and others to do what it takes to transform the company.

• Issue contracts of employment, and other HR-oriented documents.

• Support line managers or supervisors at the lower level of the organisation, that is those who are actively involved in selective HR activities.

References

Guest, D E (2011). Human Resource Management and Performance: Still searching for some answers. Human Resource Management Journal, 21, pp3-13.

McKenna, E and Beech N (2014). Human Resource Management – A concise analysis.Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.