HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT as the current key-asset

William R. Tracey, defines Human Resources as: “The people that staff and operate an organization … as contrasted with the financial and material resources of an organization. The organizational function that deals with the people …”. I am going to deal with Human Resources topic in this post because of two reasons: because is one of my favorite subjects and also because I have chosen this Knowledge Area to make my TFG.( Trabajo fin de Grado) in order to complete my degree in Deusto University.

Human Resources have enormously developed in the last three decades; from “personnel as the field beyond paying employees and managing employee benefits” statement. The evolution made verbal the fact that people are an organization’s most important resource. People are an asset that must be hired, satisfied and developed.
Even the long used term itself (Human Resources), relegates humans to the same category as financial and material resources, we can foresee that human resources will be replaced by more people and organization friendly terms in the near future, because they are becoming more and more important in the Company’s performance.

Relayed to human resources, three main fields are typically considered:

1. Demography: the characteristics of the workforce (Population), for example, age, gender, culture, race or social class.

2. Diversity: The variation within the population/workplace. Changes in society now mean that a larger proportion of organizations are made up of “baby-boomers”, women at any level of responsibility or older employees in comparison to thirty years ago.

3. Skills and qualifications: As industries move from manual to more managerial professions the need for more highly skilled graduates arise.

4. Management system: Human resources management method has noticeably changed as we can appreciate in the illustration bellow. The mission/focus has changed from the Control/Alignment to Speed/Customers and the HR’s function is by far different to this that rules nowadays.

Globalization shaped the world for almost three decades starting from the end of the 1970’ technologies have developed remarkably, the world has expanded continuously, the current system require many diverse professions and the need for human resources at all sides has increased : in the quantity and the quality aspects.
Starting from the last quarter of 2008 however the world economy entered a dramatic Crisis Period and Here is where the HR are playing a key role in the Companies, it has turn into an strategic Asset; when precisely the main part of the other assets have decreased swiftly.

Strategic management of Human Resources has an increased interest and this interest has resulted in various organizational functions becoming more concerned with their role in the Strategic Management Process (SMP). Strategic management is “the art and science of formulating, implementing, and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable organization to achieve its objectives” (David, 2007). Strategic management process has been developed since 1950’s, and this process is still in practice today in the business world especially during uncertain economic environments, like the one we are suffering now.

On top of that, this technique is being so successful that has been designed with the acronym: Strategic human resources management SHRM “is the organizational system designed to achieve sustainable competitive advantage through people. SHRM involves the development of a consistent, aligned collection of practices, programs and policies to facilitate the achievement of the organization’s strategic objectives” (Mello, 2002:100). The main concept of SHRM is that all initiatives which entail how people are managed need to be aligned with and in the employees support.

To conclude, as a consequence of the ever-increasing greedy competition in that Globalized world and the economic plight we are immersed in, competitiveness of the organization is the basic condition for their survival and Human Resources seem to be the key to achieve this state.

1-Ender ASYALI, Yusuf ZORBA, A.Güldem CERIT, O.Kamil SAG,Global economic crisis and the impact on human resources
Strategies for seafers:

Click to access showcontent0007.pdf

2-Human Resources web-page,retrieved 5-12-12:
http://www.humanresources.com/

These are very well-written blong I have inspired on:

3-Elena Méndez Díaz-Villabella, Escrito el 3 mayo 2012 en Mercado laboral, Política de RRHH, Retrieved 4-12-12:: http://humanresources.blogs.ie.edu/

4-Alberto Andreu en el 7 diciembre 2011, Retrieved 4-12-12:
http://humanresources.blogs.ie.edu/2011/12/07/dirigir-con-valor-y-con-valores/#comment-1018

“Globalization is a fact of economic life” Carlos Salinas de Gortari

The real meaning of globalization is and how thas this conect with economic globalization and what the effects of such a terrible change will be for human societies in a near future.

Globalization presumes sustained economic growth. Otherwise, the process loses its economic benefits and political support” Paul Samuelson