Human Resources Management (HRM)

Human resource management (HRM) is the practice of recruiting, hiring, deploying and managing an organization's employees. HRM is often referred to simply as human resources (HR). A company or organization's HR department is usually responsible for creating, putting into effect and overseeing policies governing workers and the relationship of the organization with its employees. The term human resources was first used in the early 1900s, and then more widely in the 1960s, to describe the people who work for the organization, in aggregate.

HRM is employee management with an emphasis on those employees as assets of the business. In this context, employees are sometimes referred to as human capital. As with other business assets, the goal is to make effective use of employees, reducing risk and maximizing return on investment (ROI).

The modern HR technology term human capital management (HCM) has been used more frequently compared to the term HRM. The term HCM has had widespread adoption by large and midsize companies and other organizations of software to manage many HR functions.

Objectives of human resource management

The objectives of HRM can be broken down into four broad categories:

1. Societal objectives: Measures put into place that responds to the ethical and social needs or challenges of the company and its employees. This includes legal issues such as equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work.
2. Organizational objectives: Actions taken that help to ensure the efficiency of the organization. This includes providing training, hiring the right number of employees for a given task or maintaining high employee retention rates.
3. Functional objectives: Guidelines used to keep HR functioning properly within the organization as a whole. This includes making sure that all of HR's resources are being allocated to their full potential.
4. Personal objectives: Resources used to support the personal goals of each employee. This includes offering the opportunity for education or career development as well as maintaining employee satisfaction.