What is Human Resource

The term human resources is used to refer to the people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, or an economy. The term is often synonymously used in place of human capital. However, human capital is usually referred to as the resource that resides in the knowledge and skill set of the people (the economic value of the knowledge the individuals embody). Because of how employees use these resources to contribute in form of labour to an organisation, human resources play a key role in developing and making of a company or an organization.

Also, the term human resources is used to describe the department or support systems within the organisation responsible for managing resources and issues related to the workforce of the organisation. These may include hiring, applicant tracking, skills development and tracking, payroll issues, insurance, benefits and taxes, and it is responsible for staying up-to-date on legal issues affecting employment within the jurisdiction.

The Human Resources Departments is a unit in an organization formed to organize people, reporting relationships, and work in a way that best supports the accomplishment of the organization’s goals. The Human Resources department carries out all managerial functions regarding the organization of work, development and exit of people in the organization and ensures that their skills are maximised in order to achieve corporate objectives. This article will be focusing more on human resources as a unit within an organisation.

Advantages of Human Resources in an organisation

Enhancement of Performance –

By organising work plan and defining job schedule for employees, the human resources department can assign jobs to individuals according to their expertise, thereby maximising their skills. Also through sophisticated performance management systems, employees’ performance can be measured and those whose performance falls below the expectations can be identified and trained or reassigned and where necessary disengaged, this enhances general performance.

Employees Training and Development –

Human resources department conducts needs assessments to determine the type of skills training and employee development that is required to improve the skills and qualifications of the organisation’s current workforce. Also, training of new employee and giving them orientation is an indispensable duty of the human resource department to help in forging a strong relationship with the employees and the employer.

Recruitment –

the human resource department of an organisation determine the most effective methods for recruiting applicants, including assessing which applicant tracking systems are best suited for the organization’s needs. They manage the employment process from screening resumes to scheduling interviews to selection and to processing new employees.

Budget Control and Cost Savings –

Human resources help to reduce organisation’s running cost including workforce management costs in various ways. One of such ways is ensuring a competitive and realistic wage-pegging based on findings from the labour market, employment trends and salary analysis on similar job functions particularly within the same industry and location.

Impact of ICT on Human Resources Management

Due to the increasing dominance of digital technologies across the globe, the world has experienced cultural, societal and economic changes. This is why our generation is referred to as the “digital age”. The human resources management is not exempted from this wind of digital revolution. Across all industries, human resources (HR) is said to be one of the departments that are most affected by digitization because of the big data analytics, social networks or mobile solutions. Information and communication technologies have affected both the lives of employees and human resource management (HRM) in so many ways. Digital technologies are deeply changing the way in which employees and prospects connect and communicate with organizations.

Types of Human Resources Information System

There are so many types of human resources management software in existence; some are developed for a specific purpose such as performance measurement, recruitment processing etc. while others are designed to perform most of the functions of human resources management, in other words they automate human resources management processes.

Examples include:

PerformancePro

by HR Performance Solutions is web-based, comprehensive performance appraisal software for HR professionals. Performance Pro is entirely customisable, making it simple to keep employee focus on a company’s strategic goals. The system can automate the entire process, from ongoing check-ins to standard appraisals. It comes complete with all the tools management needs to administer simple and effective evaluations. It also comes with a 14-days free trial before billing.

Workforce Ready

by Kronos is a human resources (HR) platform that offers enterprise-class human capital management (HCM capabilities). The software is a cloud-based solution that incorporates recruiting, on boarding, performance management, compensation planning, time and attendance, scheduling, absence management, payroll etc. Workforce Ready provides a single employee record shared across all applications, which makes it possible for all employee data to be maintained in a single database, with a single user interface to pull reports and launch workflows for the entire organization.

The advantages of the HR software are enormous, these may include cost saving, ease of reporting, administrative efficiency, ease of recruitment processes etc. Most of the HR software vendors offer a free trial before billing.

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Hansica Kh.

Hansica Kh. is a content strategist with a proven track record for editorial innovation and a passionate marketer with over 6 years of experience. Holds a Master's degree in Human Resources Management.