What is Personnel Management?
Definition:
Personnel management refers to the functions that many employers now refer to as Human Resources. These are the functions that Human Resources staff perform relative to the organization's employees and include recruiting, hiring, compensation and benefits, new employee orientation, training, and performance appraisal systems.
Personnel management also includes developing and implementing policies and processes to create an orderly, employee-supportive work environment. It is an older term that is falling into disuse in modern organizations.
Personnel management is a term that is still used in many government agencies, and primarily in the nonprofit sector, to describe the function that deals with the employmentof people within an organization. When I think of it, though, I tend to think of the more transactional and administrative aspects of the HR management functions, but others still use the term to refer to the whole gamut of HR responsibilities and services.
Additionally, the term, personnel management, brings forth images of employee unions, strict job classification systems, and established pay gradesthat leave line management with few management options.
The major problem with the personnel management view is that it leaves out the strategic componentsof the potential HR role. It may include responsibility for training and organization development. But, in my experience, these are not included in personnel management. Nor is the performance management system approach to developing employees and their careers.
Personnel management is the specialist branch of management which is responsible for matters related to the employment and regulation of employees and workers. According to the Institute of Personnel Management, personnel management is "that part of management concerned with people at work and with their relationships within an enterprise." Personnel management involves three distinct activities: employee resourcing, employee development and employee relations. Taking these in turn, employee resourcing is concerned with how people are recruited and then used by the employing organisation, and thus involves activities such as recruitment and selection , drawing up contracts of employment, arranging or advising on working patterns, including flexible working patterns , job analysis, health and safety, equal opportunities and the termination of the employment contract. Resourcing thus involves knowledge of employment legislation, as well as the staffing needs of the organisation.
Employee development is principally concerned with the training of employees, including managers; such training programmes may be run in-house - employee induction, for example - or externally. Performance appraisal and assessment are also part of the employee development function. Finally, employee relations is concerned with consultation and negotiation with employees and their representatives, principally trade unions where these are recognised.
Personnel management in large organisations is now considered to be a highly professional activity, and would generally be carried out by a specialist personnel manager or department. In smaller companies in the private sector, however, these activities may be left to line management. Many personnel managers, especially in large companies, tend to have professional qualifications, for example, membership of the Institute of Personnel Management; however, it is not known what proportion of personnel managers in Ireland have this or equivalent qualifications.
In some organisations, the task of personnel management has become known ashuman resource management(HRM); there is considerable debate about the extent of any difference between HRM and personnel management.
Please note: the European industrial relations glossaries were compiled between 1991 and 2003 and are not updated. For current material see the European industrial relations dictionary.
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