HRM: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Your Text:

“an integrated set of processes, practices, programs, and systems in an organization that
focuses on the effective deployment and development of its employees.”

Broder View:

- Understanding the employees as a whole person

- Driving toward outcomes beyond performance.

The Evolution of HRM

Industrial Revolution -> Taylorism -> Psychology & Human Relations

1800’s Industrial Revolution:

Farming/ household work:

- Autonomy
- Self-management
- Flexible work hours
- Work at home in small groups
- Household income

Factory work:

- No autonomy
- No self-management
- Commute to large spaces
- Individual income
o Reduced value on childcare responsibilities

1900’s Industrial Relations: (Start to move towards Taylorism)

- Close monitoring (are you doing the job well)

- Motivation through extrinsic reward and punishment (workers motivated by money)
- Owners have qualities that make them particularly suited to lead the workforce.

Taylorism: (Focuses more on getting the work done)

- Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) (Aimed to be as precise as possible)

- Effort to systematize management
- “One Best Way” (Test out different ways to find the best way)
- Standardization of tasks
 - Workers are motivated by money! Managers know best.

1930’s Human Relations (Beginning of understanding people are different e.g. skills, abilities,
drives, etc. How do we select the right people for the job?)

- Psychological differences
- Acknowledgement that workers have different skills
- Job satisfaction is important
- Group dynamics matter
- Importance of fairness and justice

Elton Mayo (1880-1949) (Developed the Hawthorne Theory) (Ford Motors adopted the Elton
Mayo practices and gave its workers days off to recuperate and relax)

- Response to Taylorism (pay more attention to the people and observe how they
respond to situations)
- Importance of group dynamics
- Communication: bidirectional
- Leadership as a practice/skill

4 Waves of HRM

1. Administrative work
2. Functional expertise
3. Strategic HRM
4. HR as a competitive advantage

Goals of HRM

1. Foster employee engagement

2. Maintain standards of performance (One way to do better is to engage with the
workplace)
3. Legal requirements (What are suitable questions, opinions, and decisions)

Where are we now?

- People are our competitive advantage

- Thinking about the complete person: work-life balance
- Diversity
- Contextual factors: workforce characteristics
- External forces: technology, globalization
- Social movements: CSR

Demographics
 - Aging workforce
- Increasing workforce diversity
o Shifting social norms

Technology

- Deskilling
- Creation of knowledge worker
- Distributed work
- Communication & power distance

Globalization

- Outsourcing & offshoring

- Global workforce
- Global careers

Work after COVID-19?

- Acceleration of e-working trends

- Increased automation & AI; decrease in low-wage jobs
- Need to transition to job requiring higher skills for higher wages

What does this mean for HRM?