Human resource management is a broad term that covers numerous aspects of personnel function. In this discussion, the focus is on three main aspects that constitute human resource management.

• Personnel administration
• Human resource development
• Industrial relations

Personnel administration:

Employment and compensation are mainly dealt with in personnel administration. Although business firms in the corporate environment are in constant need of man power, finding the right person for the right job is always a challenging task for them. Right from job analysis to HR planning, recruitment, selection, placement, induction and orientation, it is the responsibility of HR department to define and develop these operative functions. Mere acquisition and absorption of human resource is not enough, the organizations have to move one step ahead by empowering their employees through competent training, motivation and improving their social relations.

Job evaluation has to be done for fixing compensation that includes wages and salary administration, incentives, bonus, fringe benefits and social security measures. The changing business environment and customer requirements are the driving forces that keep the organizations going and steer them to restructure and re-engineer their organizational functions. These moves can be viewed as strategic responses reflecting from all spheres of an organization, namely product, marketing, manufacturing etc., where people are the centre of focus and attraction.

Human resource development:

This is easier said than done. Firms are trying to evolve and employ various methodologies of training to enhance the performance levels to the desired standards. Performance cannot be achieved by coercion or bureaucracy, as the work force is protected by numerous enactment of labor laws enforced by various governments. Training and development is a separate entity by itself and is a continuous process that aims at the development of the organization as a whole and also facilitates employee career planning and development.

Industrial relations:

The following factors have to be scrutinized by the management to maintain good personal relations with the employees.

• Motivation
• Morale
• Job satisfaction
• Communication
• Grievance handling
• Discipline procedure
• Quality of work life
• Employee participation

All said and done, the organizational health can be measured by checking the effectiveness of HR management through aspects like HR audit and research that aid the firms to analyze and understand the extent to which they are efficient in utilizing the human resource for the benefit of their organization. The experience of a human resource manager comes in handy at situations like these, where he has to don different roles to suit the occasion.

• Personnel role-advisor for top management, policy maker, counselor to employees, spokesman of the company, change analyst, liaison
• Welfare role-researcher, catering man, motivator
• Clerical role-time keeping,wages and salary administration, record maintenance,human engineering
• Fire fighting legal role-negotiator, trouble shooter, peace maker, problem solver, grievance handling.

The management employs scientific, analytical, psychological and social techniques to build the business around human resource, who are the real value additions to the companies.