HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

M2B

Montero, Joshua
Gonzales, Don Emmanwell
Macatangay, Jose Victorino
De Gui​ñ​o, Gian Carlo
Ramos, Jo Mariebeth
Introduction

Overview

Human resource is the department or division of a business, corporation, or organization that

manages all aspects related to its personnel, including recruiting employees, training and career
development, overseeing compensation packages, managing benefits plans, and other duties that serve
in order to maximize a company's business and its employees' morale with their jobs. Simply, the function
of the human resources industry is to produce competent and knowledgeable personnel to keep
employees productive. More than 800,000 people work in human resources and related fields today.

The HR department is a critical component of any business as they are the ones who are responsible for
a wide variety of functions. As a department, Human Resources is the part of the organization that deals
with employee relations. From a high level, the human resources department of a company deals with
payroll, benefits, hiring, firing, and regulations management. For businesses, in order for organizations to
stay in the game, they must be seasoned in recruiting and retention that is by hiring and keeping the best
employees, and they must be able to explain in a clear way their compensation and benefit packages that
come along with the respective positions they currently hold. For individuals, they must be able to find a
job that meets their specific skill sets and offer the best opportunities for career development and
advancement.

In summary, Human Resource is the department of a company responsible for overall employee
relations, and it is challenged with balancing the welfare of the employees as well as the company itself.

Background

The history of Human Resource Management (HRM) begins around the end of the 19th century, when 
welfare officers (also known as ‘welfare secretaries’) came into being. They were women and involved 
with the protection of women and girls. Their creation was a reaction to ​the harshness of industrial 
conditions​, ​pressures arising from the extension of the franchise​, ​influence of trade unions and the 
labour movement​, ​campaigning of enlightened employers​, often Quakers, for what was called ‘​ industrial 
betterment’. ​As the role grew, there was some conflict between the aim of moral protection of women 
and children and the need for higher output. 
 
By 1945, employment management and welfare work had become integrated under the broad term of 
what is called ‘personnel management’. Experience of the war had shown that output and productivity 
could be influenced by employment policies. The role of the personnel function in wartime had been 
largely that of implementing the rules demanded by large-scale, state-governed production. As a result, 
the image of an emerging profession was very much a bureaucratic one. 
 
Around the mid-80s, the term ‘Human Resource Management’ arrived from the USA. The term ‘Human
Resources’ is a fascinating one as it seemed to suggest that employees were truly treated as an asset or
resource-like machines, but at the same time HR also appeared to emphasise employee commitment,
motivation and morale. At Consensus HR, it is always highlighted to clients the importance of making the
most of one of your most important business assets and resources: your people.

Body

Traditional view vs. 21st Century view of Human Resource Management

According to an article from ‘HRM Process: A Traditional view’, It is a continuous process in

which it tries to maintain the institute with right people in their corresponding positions. In addition to that,
there are different kinds of decisions that’s similar to one another and take in regard their workers. It is
also planned to empower the bosses and their workers to be efficient that would touch the outcome of the
organization. In comparing the differences between the Traditional view of HRM and the 21st century
view, the traditional view is consisted of limited skills and has less experience that shows that they weren’t
that much capable in joining today’s generation. And according to what I have read, they focused
primarily on paper works and only maintained the organizational records and not the organization’s
business processes itself. As a result, the workers weren’t able to enhance their skills and improve their
jobs because they only stayed in a certain spot and didn’t noticed that they were lacking experience and
improvement of their skills. That proves that they cannot get along to the generation’s today when it
comes to experience and enhancement of their skills.
In comparison to that, the 21​st century view is more enhanced and can work better because they
share their ideas towards their co-workers which would build a proper decision making and equally
divided tasks. It is also said that the organizations nowadays expect that their employees would work with
a group and shall take part in various types of management of firms. Their skills and broad understanding
would help them fulfill their duties and tasks well that is what the association expects. As of today, the
companies focus primarily on the abilities and skills of their employees to be able to stay productive to
achieve success in their own goals.

Industry Analysis
i
In this part, we look at the management of human resources in the Asia
Pacific region in order to know how do industries in certain countries utilize their human resources for
them to reach economic success .

It is necessary to make some important points about the extent and coverage of the Asia
Pacific region. The region to be included are the North East
and South East areas of Asia, but not South Asia (eg Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka). Even this more constrained region is still a very large, disparate area of vast
Contrasts. The internal variations include each country’s size and types of geography, natural resources,
politics, history and demographics as well as patterns of development, FDI (both as senders and
receivers)
and MNC operations, and so on. For instance, in terms of size of labour force (2006),
countries range from 2,238,000 in Singapore and 11,288,000 in Malaysia to 24,341,000
in South Korea, 36,136,000 in Thailand, 45,628,000 in Vietnam and 66,361,000 in
Japan through to 110,432,000 Indonesia and 789,652,000 in China (ILO, 2007b). The
difference here is essential as variables shown above impact differentially on countries and hence their
HRM. The physical size of countries and the number of people who live in them is of
great importance; China is the world’s fourth-largest country in total area (after Russia,
Canada, and the US); has a good share of the planet’s natural resources; and has almost a quarter of its
population. Hong Kong and Singapore, by contrast, have only a
tiny land area by comparison. Such size differences can determine how the country modernizes, its
balance between coastal interior development and its transportation
networks and so on.

Country Population Population GDP (PPP) Per Capita Life

Growth Income (PPP) Expectancy
(Years)

China 1,313,973,713 0.59% $8.883 trillion $6,800 72.58

Hong Kong 6,940,432 0.59% $234.3 billion $34,000 81.59

Philippines 89,468,677 1.80% $412.5 billion $4,700 70.21

Indonesia 245,452,739 1.41% $869.7 billion $3,600 69.87

Japan 127,463,611 0.02% $4.70 trillion $31,600 81.25

Malaysia 24,385,858 1.78% $287 billion $12,000 72.50

Singapore 4,492,150 1.42% $126.6 billion $28,600 81.71

South Korea 48,846,823 0.42% $1.101 trillion $22,600 77.04

Taiwan 23,036,087 0.61% $640 billion $27,500 77.43

Thailand 64,631,595 0.68% $550.2 billion $8,600 72.25

Even so, strategic location can be important, as for example in the cases of Hong
Kong and Singapore which are only small city-States, but which have very high gross
domestic product (GDP) per capita, as can be seen in the figure above. In the Asia Pacific
region, perhaps large cities may be as important as many other small countries in
terms of their wealth and resources. The size of the Chinese labour force is certainly a
significantly important natural asset and a source of cheap labour. On the other hand,
if a country’s labour force is highly educated as, in the case of Japan and South Korea,
this may be a compensating factor. Human capital may thus be a vital asset in development and cannot
be emphasized strongly enough. In the developed economies, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,
highly sophisticated HR has evolved. These nations have highly educated labor forces, prominent
influence of large MNCs and knowledge-based industries (Rowley/Warner 2004). In the developing
economies, such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, we find another type of HR regime
(Rowley/Abdul-Rahman 2008). In these settings, investment in HR is fast-growing; here we find a
‘dual-sector’ economy, with MNCs providing the lead but with a large number of small businesses with
less sophisticated practices (Rowley/Warner 2007). In the transitional ones, such as China and Vietnam,
we find nascent labour markets developing and HR practices appropriate to them. Here, the State-owned
enterprises (SOE) with their ‘iron rice bowl’ (tie fan wan) practices, epitomizing a kind of lifetime
employment as was the case in Japan for many workers, are diminishing in importance and HRM in any
recognizable form is replacing the old status quo, at least in large semi-privatized corporations, as well as
in Western joint ventures (JVs) and wholly owned foreign enterprises (WOFEs).

When it comes to the local view of HRM here in the country, HRM as a specialized and systematic
business function is a relatively new field in the Philippines. In the 1950s, human behaviour in
organizations was a neglected issue because companies focused on work simplification and
methods improvement. In the 1970s, personnel management still rated low in the priorities of
organizations, often only operating as a subunit of the finance or the manufacturing department. Lately,
many companies have begun to reassess their corporate philosophy in favour of regarding people not as
a cost but as an investment and assets, professing a belief in HRM. In the case of San Miguel
Corporation (SMC), the food and beverage conglomerate which is historically the largest listed company
and biggest employer in the Philippines, it was the founder himself (Don Andres Soriano) who led the way
to modern HRM. The development of an institutionalized philosophy in people management took several
generations, but the HRM function has always enjoyed the status it deserves in SMC. Since 1990, SMC
has built two training centres to provide highly popular courses in marketing, finance, operations
management, leadership, communication skills and foreign languages.

The Philippine Labour Flexibility Survey (PLFS) can serve as an example of how HRM is practised in the
country. The PLFS was a national survey of a random sample of 1,311 industrial firms, including
construction, trade and manufacturing companies (Standing, 1992).It was found that in most industrial
sectors a slight majority of firms had ​less than 10% share of total employment​ that was non-regular:
that is, casual or temporary labour, contract labour, unpaid labour and subcontracting. Such a limit was
not evident in the industrial sectors of construction, wood products and food processing. On job rotation,
about​ 24% of firms followed such a policy regularly​ and ​13% applied it
occasionally​. In response to the question of whether there was gender preference in the recruitment of
production workers, ​over 56% of the establishments preferred men ​and only about ​12% preferred
women​. However about a third of the organizations’ stated recruitment practices were indifferent to the
sex of the applicant, presumably indicating a non-discriminatory stance.

In comparison to managers from other Asian countries (Singapore,Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia),

Filipinos expressed high fulfilment in social needs. The collective identity so central to the Filipino psyche
operates through the informal, fluid, and interdependent personal networks within the larger
organizational and social systems. Filipinos working in groups produced higher morale, lower
absenteeism, and lower turnover. The camaraderie and loyalty of pakikisama within the group is a
primary motivation in Filipino organizations.

Current major skills demanded by companies

The current major skills that are demanded by companies are mostly:
1) ​Competitive Strategies​, as workers we should be competitive to be able to achieve or meet the
required standards of the people with higher positions.
2) ​Business Analysis​, this is one of the most necessary skills that one should have in order to create a
solution to one’s problem, we should know how to analyze and know the causes to the problem that
would help us formulate possible ways to fix it.
3) ​Translator​, one must have this kind of skill because this would broaden our understanding in terms of
deepening the thought of something or expanding what was meant by someone or something.
4) ​People Management​, it is in our hands on how we can be better individuals or workers to our own
companies by learning on how to engage and motivate ourselves that will result to motivating other
people as well. In fact, if we’ll be able to have this skill, we have a higher chance of being an effective and
efficient employee that can result to sustainability.
5) ​Analytic Reasoning,​ this is part of decision making that most of the business workers need because
we don’t always ask everything to our superior but we should think of the best possible solutions that
creates a rightful decision.
6) ​Learner​, as part of one’s organization, our decisions and skills are sometimes not appropriate to one’s
thing that means, we, as employees should be open to new learnings or understandings that shall help us
develop the things that we lack that we should focus on.

When it comes to the Human Resource Management specific skills, A blog posted in Oxbridge Academy
(​https://www.oxbridgeacademy.edu.za/blog/4-skills-demand-hr-industry/​) states that there are 4 skills in
demand in the HR industry. These skills include the following:

1. TALENT MANAGEMENT SKILLS

- Talent management is an important skill, because it deals with being able to attract skilled 
professionals and integrate them into the workplace, as well as being able to retain and 
develop current workers.

2. PAYROLL SKILLS

- I​f the payroll system is not managed properly, it could lead to negative consequences, such as 
employees not being paid on time, or company payments not being made. 
 
3. DATA ANALYTICS SKILLS

- This particular skill can help them to gather and analyse data so that they are able to use it to 
support their strategies and initiatives for achieving their goals.

4. ADAPTABILITY

- HR professionals who are able to adapt to changing circumstances are able to shift and alter 
their strategies when changes happen so they can better serve an organisation, its employees, 
and external parties involved in the company.  
 
 
 

Current issues affecting/improving the HRM field

  

(HRM) Human Resource Management has a huge part in the success of a business, it is a huge help to a
company because it is where the recruitment and the hiring process starts, that in the future would give
an edge to a company by selecting and having an effective unit of people in the workplace. But despite of
this, there are still issues arising in the workplace that affects the HRM field and according to Atlas
Staffing’s blog the challenges that the Human Resource are facing. 1) Management Changes, in a
growing business, strategies are being change overtime to have an effective changes to the business that
would allow the company to grow, with that, the employees would have poor productivity, to avoid that,
HR manager should educate his employees about the benefits that these changes could give the
company in the long run, he should also have regular meetings to talk about things to be implemented
and what changes could be done, so in that way employees could cope up with the changes that the
company have asked them to do so that they could perform well. 2) Adapting to Innovation, technology is
changing constantly, and as we all know, businesses who performs well in the marketplace are being run
down by high technology, so to avoid being left in the dust by other companies, they should be provided
with training programs or seminars that would help them to learn the use of new technology. 3) Recruiting
Talented Employees, recruiting employees is a challenging task for an HR Manager, because they have
to find the best applicant that could fit in and perform his/her duties productively, with this an HR Manager
should know what exactly the type of employee a company is looking for and could be a perfect fit for the
job, so that it could save him time and effort by going through a lot of applicant forms. 4) Leadership
Development, it is a challenge that the HRM are facing, because some companies don’t have a
leadership development practices to keep their employees motivated. Leadership Development is very
necessary in a company to make your employees active and engaged to activities that your company are
doing. It would also allow them to be ready to do various responsibilities, aside from that it would allow
them to know more about their strengths and how to use them effectively with the tasks that are handed
on to them, it would reflect on how they would perform in the workplace and on how they lead others
which would show a productive result to the company.
Productivity – high productivity level should be maintained by the HR Manager, he should know how to
analyze the problems in the workplace, so that he could easily provide solutions to those problems and in
order to determine those, HR Manager should do a Time and Motion Study (T&M) is used to reduce the
ineffective movements to be able to redesign it and do it effectively.
Discipline – in choosing a worker an HR must look for someone who is disciplined, because it would allow
him to hand out tasks to those workers who are willing to do the job, also when a worker is disciplined
he/she would do his work efficiently and avoid affecting other employees in the workplace.
Payroll – HR should see to it that employees gets the salary and other benefits that belongs to them.
Because sometimes the payroll system that the company uses are breaking down and that results to
employees getting the wrong sum of salary they are supposed to receive. So, to avoid that they should
look for a reliable payroll system that would give the employees assurance of the salary they are
supposed to get based from the work they have done.
Retention – Retaining employees is a lot harder task for an HR Manager than recruiting new talents, the
HR should be able to handle his/her employees well, an HR should provide incentives to each employees
to keep them satisfied. Also by giving the employees the right amount of salary they deserve from the
service and work they are providing the company. The employees must be satisfied for them to stay in the
company. But the HR must keep in mind that by satisfying the employees he/she should not compromise
the interest of the company.

Bibliography
https://www.atlasstaffing.net/blog/10-todays-common-human-resource-challenges
https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/employees/recruit/pages/7-steps-recruiting-right-people.aspx
https://www.hrzone.com/community/blogs/jamessheehan/top-10-issues-for-hr-teams-how-to-fix-them
https://www.villanovau.com/resources/hr/human-resource-management-challenges/
https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/45673_1.pdf
https://www.citeman.com/5208-hrm-process-a-traditional-view.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/the-25-most-in-demand-technical-skills-of-2019-according-to-linkedin-.
html
https://www.marketresearchreports.com/human-resources
https://www.vault.com/industries-professions/industries/human-resources​https://www.hrzone.com/commu
nity/blogs/jamessheehan/top-10-issues-for-hr-teams-how-to-fix-them
http://consensushr.com/the-history-of-human-resource-management-hrm/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46526721_The_Management_of_Human_Resources_in_the_A
sia_Pacific_Into_the_21st_Century
https://www.oxbridgeacademy.edu.za/blog/4-skills-demand-hr-industry/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240237855_Pinoy-style_HRM_Human_Resource_Management
_in_the_Philippines

Conclusion
 In conclusion, Human Resource Management has a history of being looked down upon and has
worked its way to a higher level of respect as generations go by. HRM was seen as a side option in the
past but now it is considered as one of the key aspects in the success of an organization. Although HRM
is now being utilized as a weapon of great power in businesses, it does not mean that organizations use it
the same way as the other. Each has their own way of managing their human resources and in turn also
managing the success of the organization as a whole. As the saying goes “No man is an island”, making
and maintaining good relationships are truly considered a success not only in an individual’s life but
especially to an organization. Thus, having the right skills and talent is necessary to work in the HRM
department as it will be dealing with the most valuable asset of the entire organization which is its people.
Lastly, issues in life will always be there to exist as long as someone draws breath and it is the same with
an organization specifically the HRM department as what it is said earlier, it deals with people, and people
as we all know have a lot of issues that could set up a conflict in the department. But a problem exists
only because it has a solution and these issues could always be resolved one way or the other resulting
for further improvement in the department.