A Beginner’s Guide to Effective Human Resource Management

What is Human Resource Management?

Human Resources (HR) Management is both an administrative and strategic role that plays a crucial part in the success of an organization. More than just recruitment and firing of employees, HR management has evolved over the years from its usual administrative purpose to strategic functions. It is the process of developing policies from hiring, management of human assets, and making strategic plans to compensate, motivate, and retain the employees.

5 Steps for Effective Human Resource Management

Here are the steps on building an efficient HR management process that is essential to the success of any organization or enterprise:

Step 1: Build a human resource management system

As your organization grows, so is the need for skilled human resources. Identifying the specific tasks of human resources is the first key step in pursuit of an effective HR management mechanism.

Determine the needs. Besides managing internal policies and all employee-related concerns, the role of HR in some instances extends to presiding over healthcare benefits, endorsing employees to insurance brokers, and even managing payrolls.

Attribute tasks. As a manager, you can start assigning the tasks as soon as you have identified the roles you want your HR to fulfill.

Indicate policies and procedures. In order for the HR department to function efficiently, there is a need to lay out the procedures for each task to the HR staff. Establishing procedures will help the entire organization harmonize its work discipline and ethics.

Step 2: Build a smart recruitment process

Be wise in choosing staff for your HR department and the entire company. It may sound easy but it requires strategic planning and a systematic recruitment process. Creating a smart recruitment process provides a pool of prospective and qualified candidates from which to choose based on merit and capabilities that best suit your organization’s goals, values, and principles.

Step 3: Clearly describe the job and assign appropriately to each employee

The purpose of job description and specification is to accurately determine and reflect the tasks the employees actually perform in their positions. It will lay the foundation for recruitment, development, and retention of employees and sets the expectations through clarification of duties and assessment of performance. Describing and assigning the job should be delivered in a manner that all components are accurately stated to provide the employee a clear understanding of his/her role.

Step 4: Set work goals and have performance evaluation standards

It is important for business leaders to meet with the HR department on a regular basis and set new goals and expectations for the company, employees, and themselves. Also called performance appraisals, performance evaluation, on one hand, is a process that allows feedback to be given in regards to an employee’s performance within a specific time period.

Step 5: Evaluate work efficiency.

It is important to have a retrospective and determine what functions over the past have worked well and what could still be improved. Evaluation should encourage better performance, work attitude, and behavior. It is also a way to satisfy the employee’s awareness of their performance in the workplace. Lastly, it can provide a basis for a salary increase, promotions, and even legal disciplinary actions.

4 Basic Skills Essential to HR Management

As we defined above, effective human resource management is the backbone of a thriving enterprise. That is why human resource managers should have at least these four must-have skills to run a successful HR department.

Planning and strategy for future development

As business growth changes, whether it be reorganization or repositioning of the management committee, you need to be prepared for this inevitable development. Future planning can help you identify the crucial roles in the company and which employees are most flexible to assume these posts in case of a vacancy.

In addition, you may directly involve your employees in making a future development plan. It is also important to keep your employees on board with any changes and developments that your company will undertake. Say, transparency will save your employees from anxiety and overthinking of negative reasons that cause the changes.

Skills in management training and personnel development

Supervision is among the crucial tasks of a professional HR manager. The role of HR management in hiring and monitoring job performance is basically the basis of the development of every employee.

The central goal of management training is to keep the employees competitive. This will be achieved in the process of providing orientation and training, skills and performance evaluation, and in preparing employees for the company’s future developments.

Employee communication skills

For companies seeking to become agile, it is imperative for HR managers to acquire good communication skills. Your HR manager should have the ability to listen critically and comprehend other people’s points of view to be able to manage day-to-day conflicts and troubleshoot problems. More importantly, reliability and trustworthiness have been identified as among the key attributes of a good HR.

Simply put, HR managers should practice discretion especially involving basic information and personal issues faced by the employees. This is part of creating a safe space in work areas wherein employees are comfortable to discuss their concerns and that these are kept private at all times.

Problem identification and problem-solving skills

Precise problem identification and effective problem-solving skills allow the HR manager to define, examine, evaluate, and figure out solutions for the company.

Defining the problem is simply the first step in order to have an overview of the situation. After the problem and its cause have been defined, the second step is to propose solutions. You may come up with as many solutions as possible, not for the purpose of solution selection, but for you to have time to sort out any solutions you may find overlapping or those you deem irrelevant to the cause.

Once you’ve chosen the right solution, the next step is to implement it. Carrying out these actions is not the final step, an evaluation must always take place after every problem-solving process to identify the shortcomings and strengths that could be prevented and optimized in the future.

These are the crucial skills that every HR professional should have in order to effectively guide the organization, its manpower, and the management committee.

Human Resource Management is therefore not only essential but crucial to the growth and success of the organization.