HR Basics is a series of short courses, designed to highlight what you need to know about a particular human resources management topic. In Today's Human Resource Basics, we define human resource management with a simple model.

Before we explore the model, let's define human resource management. Human resource management includes the formal systems designed to manage people in an organization. To better understand human resource management, we will review a brief history, understand the roles that human resource management plays in organizations, and examine a model for best organizing the functional areas of human resource management.

What we call human resource management today has evolved significantly since its beginnings around 1900. Personnel services, which emerged as a clearly defined field in the 1920s (at least in the United States), were primarily concerned with largely technical functions. What began as a primarily administrative operation in large companies dealing with payroll and employee records began to face changes with social legislation in the 1960s. HRM developed in response to the he increase in the number of competitive business organizations experienced in the late 1970s due to deregulation and rapid technological change. In the 1990s, globalization and competition forced human resources departments to become more concerned with costs, planning, and the implications of various HR strategies for organizations and their employees.

The role of human resources management professionals has evolved considerably over the years. If an organization has a formal HR group (perhaps a department), that group can typically play three different roles in the organization.

The strategic role connects the steps of human resources to the organizational mission and the work of people within the organization. The operational role manages functional human resources activities and serves as an “employee champion.” And the administrative role provides record keeping, process administration, and compliance efforts.

The pinwheel model of human resource management suggests that human resource management in an organization is focused on eight key functional areas. These functions constitute a set of specialized work in human resources management. For each functional area, human resources professionals are responsible for key activities.

This human resources model should give you the context needed to understand and apply the important role that human resource management plays in today's organizations.

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