Introduction to Personnel Management

Personnel management is concerned with the effective use of the skills of people. They may be salespeople in a store, clerks in an office, operators in a factory, or technicians in a research laboratory. In a business, personnel management starts with the recruiting and hiring of qualified people and continues with directing and encouraging their growth as they encounter problems and tensions that arise in working toward established goals.
In addition to recruiting and hiring, some of the responsibilities of a personnel manager are:
1.To classify jobs and prepare wage and salary scales.
2.To counsel employees.
3.To deal with disciplinary problems.
4.To negotiate with labor unions and service union contracts.
5.To develop safety standards and practices.
6.To manage benefit programs, such as group insurance, health, and retirement plans.
7.To assist individuals in their efforts to develop and qualify for more advanced jobs.
8.To plan and supervise training programs.
9.To keep abreast of developments in personnel management.
To understand the personnel manager's job think of how you would deal with the following examples of challenging employee situations:
The firm's employees - especially the most qualified ones - can get comparable, if not better jobs with other employers.
The cost of hiring and training employees at all levels is increasing, for instance, several thousand dollars for a salesperson. A mistake in hiring or in slow and inefficient methods of training can be costly.
Human resource management is a balancing act. At one extreme, you hire only qualified people who are well suited to the firm's needs. At the other extreme, you train and develop employees to meet the firm's needs. …