Human resources (HR) is the set of people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, industry, or economy. A narrower concept is human capital, the knowledge and skills which the individuals command. Similar terms include manpower, labor, labor-power, or personnel.
Staffing is the process of finding the right worker with appropriate qualifications or experience and recruiting them to fill a job position or role. Through this process, organizations acquire, deploy, and retain a workforce of sufficient quantity and quality to create positive impacts on the organization's effectiveness. In management, staffing is an operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills and knowledge before offering them specific job roles accordingly.
Recruitment is the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs within an organization. Recruitment also is the process involved in choosing people for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists, and recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases, public-sector employment, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies such as Executive search in the case of more senior roles, are used to undertake parts of the process. Internet-based recruitment is now widespread, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer's strategic objectives. Human resource management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems. HR departments are responsible for overseeing employee-benefits design, employee recruitment, training and development, performance appraisal, and reward management, such as managing pay and employee benefits systems. HR also concerns itself with organizational change and industrial relations, or the balancing of organizational practices with requirements arising from collective bargaining and governmental laws.
Job analysis is a family of procedures to identify the content of a job in terms of the activities it involves in addition to the attributes or requirements necessary to perform those activities. Job analysis provides information to organizations that helps them determine which employees are best fit for specific jobs.
Workforce management (WFM) is an institutional process that maximizes performance levels and competency for an organization. The process includes all the activities needed to maintain a productive workforce, such as field service management, human resource management, performance and training management, data collection, recruiting, budgeting, forecasting, scheduling and analytics.
Recognition of prior learning (RPL), prior learning assessment (PLA), or prior learning assessment and recognition (PLAR) describes a process used by regulatory bodies, adult learning centres, career development practitioners, military organizations, human resources professionals, employers, training institutions, colleges and universities around the world to evaluate skills and knowledge acquired outside the classroom for the purpose of recognizing competence against a given set of standards, competencies, or learning outcomes. RPL is practiced in many countries for a variety of purposes, for example an individual's standing in a profession, trades qualifications, academic achievement, recruitment, performance management, career and succession planning.
Competence is the set of demonstrable personal characteristics or KSAOs that enable job performance at a high level with consistency and minimal difficulty. Competency in human resources is an organizational criterion for excellence that encompasses the behaviors, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable employees to perform their roles effectively and reliably.
Office administration is a set of day-to-day activities or tasks that are related to the maintenance of an office building, financial planning, record keeping and billing, personal development, physical distribution and logistics, within an organization. An employee that undertakes these activities is commonly called an office administrator or office manager, and plays a key role in any organisations infrastructure, regardless of the scale. Many administrative positions require the candidate to have an advanced skill set in the software applications Microsoft Word, Excel and Access.
A person specification describes the personal attributes desired in a potential employee. It is a companion document to a job description, describing the personal attributes being sought from applicants to ensure that they are suitable for the role. These attributes include qualifications, skills, experience, and knowledge, and sometimes personal attributes which a candidate needs to possess in order to perform the job duties. The specification should be derived from the job description and thus help form the foundation for the recruitment process. Person specifications are also good for helping potential applicants understand the job's requirements and self-select accordingly.
Competencymanagement systems are usually associated with, and may include, a learning management system (LMS). The LMS is typically a web-based tool that allows access to learning resources. Competency Management Systems tend to have a more multidimensional and comprehensive approach and include tools such as competency management, skills-gap analysis, succession planning, as well as competency analysis and profiling. The CompMS tends to focus more on creating an environment of sustainable competency in addition to entering and tracking learning resources in software. However, conceptually, there is no reason why a CompMS or LMS could not be manual and indeed learning management systems are as old as learning institutions.
Talent management (TM) is the anticipation of required human capital for an organization and the planning to meet those needs. The field has been growing in significance and gaining interest among practitioners as well as in the scholarly debate over the past 10 years as of 2020, particularly after McKinsey's 1997 research and the 2001 book on The War for Talent. Although much of the previous research focused on private companies and organizations, TM is now also found in public organizations.
An application for employment is a standard business document that is prepared with questions deemed relevant by employers. It is used to determine the best candidate to fill a specific role within the company. Most companies provide such forms to anyone upon request, at which point it becomes the responsibility of the applicant to complete the form and return it to the employer for consideration. The completed and returned document notifies the company of the applicant's availability and desire to be employed as well as their qualifications and background so that a determination can be made as to the candidate's suitability to the position.
E-HRM is the planning, implementation and application of information technology for both networking and supporting at least two individual or collective actors in their shared performing of HR activities.
A competency architecture is a framework or model of predetermined skills or "competencies" used in an educational setting. Competency architectures are a core component of competency-based learning.
A competency dictionary is a tool or data structure that includes all or most of the general competencies needed to cover all job families and competencies that are core or common to all jobs within an organization. They may also include competencies that are more closely related to the knowledge and skills needed for specific jobs or functions.
Competency-based recruitment is a process of recruitment based on the ability of candidates to produce anecdotes about their professional experience which can be used as evidence that the candidate has a given competency. Candidates demonstrate competencies on the application form, and then in the interview, which in this case is known as a competency-based interview.
Human resource planning is a process that identifies current and future human resources needs for an organization to achieve its goals. Human resource planning should serve as a link between human resource management and the overall strategic plan of an organization. Ageing workers population in most western countries and growing demands for qualified workers in developing economies have underscored the importance of effective human resource planning.
Potential analysis describes the structural examination of specific characteristics and competencies. Potential analyses provide information about abilities of employees, future events, methods or organizations. Due to that the analysis of the branch of production, the financial sphere, the research & development and the human resources is differentiated.
A human resources management system (HRMS), also human resources information system (HRIS) or human capital management (HCM) system, is a form of human resources (HR) software that combines a number of systems and processes to ensure the easy management of human resources, business processes and data. Human resources software is used by businesses to combine a number of necessary HR functions, such as storing employee data, managing payroll, recruitment, benefits administration, time and attendance, employee performance management, and tracking competency and training records.
