How Can Small Businesses Effectively Manage HR Tasks Without Full-Time Help?

Human Resources Management

The Human Resources Management (HRM) function includes a variety of activities, and key among them is deciding what staffing needs you have and whether to use independent contractors or hire employees to fill these needs, recruiting and training the best employees, ensuring they are high performers, dealing with performance issues, and ensuring your personnel and management practices conform to various regulations. Activities also include managing your approach to employee benefits and compensation, employee records and personnel policies. Usually, small businesses (for-profit or nonprofit) have to carry out these activities themselves because they can't yet afford part- or full-time help. However, they should always ensure that employees have -- and are aware of -- personnel policies that conform to current regulations. These policies are often in the form of employee manuals, which all employees have.

Note that some people distinguish a difference between HRM (a major management activity) and HRD (Human Resource Development, a profession). Those people might include HRM in HRD, explaining that HRD includes the broader range of activities to develop personnel inside of organizations, including, e.g., career development, training, organization development, etc.

There is a long-standing argument about where HR-related functions should be organized into large organizations, e.g., "should HR be in the Organization Development department or the other way around?"

The HRM function and HRD profession have undergone tremendous change over the past 20-30 years. Many years ago, large organizations looked to the "Personnel Department," mostly to manage the paperwork around hiring and paying people. More recently, organizations consider the "HR Department" as playing a major role in staffing, training and helping to manage people so that people and the organization are performing at maximum capability in a highly fulfilling manner.

Hi Deepti,

I think the article was very good. But, I want to ask you one thing. Is HRD a part of HRM or is HRM a part of HRD? According to me, HRD is a part of HRM. HRM encompasses the entire HR process, with HRD being one of the processes focusing on development. Therefore, OD falls within HR. OD is not a routine day-to-day process, so this department can be outsourced easily with only one or two OD executives in the department. OD focuses on people changes, making HR's role crucial. Companies opt for OD when growth is slow or when a need for change is identified. Hence, it is not a daily activity.

That is what I feel. I look forward to your response.

Thank you.

Hi,

More or less similar views but a little crisper - Welfare -> Personnel Management -> HR/M -> HCM/SHRM, etc. As it stands today, Personnel Management and HR are still used by organizations. When the function deals more with adhering to the law (reading required information in a traditional setup), it is Personnel Management. In more modern setups where modern practices and strategic initiatives are used, it is HR/M.

It is important to note that increasingly the function is discovering itself and moving up the value chain. We will thus find Personnel Management Departments changing to HR departments not in the very far future. HRD is a very specific term dealing with skill gaps, availability and development, migration, geographical concentration. All this is based on the current market conditions and the socioeconomic scene at a corporate, local, state, national, and international level.

HR as a function and HRM as a practice are all-encompassing for the moment. HCM and Talent Management fall within Strategic HRM.

Hi ManageHR,

First, welcome to the forum. I think you have started your path of contributing well to the forum, and I believe you will continue to do more in the future.

Then, you did not address the OB and HR relation question? What is your view on that topic?

Hi, Sreenivasan,

OD and OT to me refer to Organisational Design and Theory. This is a strategic role of which HR is a part but not the whole. I base this on my learnings during my MBA. These are not defined as functions but involve strategists across functions.

Organisational development is another term for Training and Development, I assume. However, by the term, it seems to go beyond that. I am not very sure about the scope of the term. It can be all-encompassing, which may not aid in the discussion.

You mentioned OB in your last email - are you referring to Organisational Behaviour? Yes, this does fall into the purview of HR in almost every aspect of work, be it Recruitment, Coaching, Feedback, or Interviews. I would consider it a subset within HRM.

What do you do?

Cheers,
Sankalp

Hi Sankalp,

I wanted to clarify that OD stands for Organisational Development. In Deepti's first post, she asked about the relationship between OD and HR. I don't think OD is solely related to Training and Development (T&D); T&D does play a significant role in OD, but OD encompasses much more than that.

I didn't discuss OB, which stands for Organizational Behavior, in my previous post. Perhaps you mistook my reference to OD as OB.

I am currently pursuing an MBA in HR and Marketing from IIPM in Delhi, India. Although I am studying both HR and Marketing, I consider myself more focused on HR than marketing.

Thank you.

Hello Group:

Typically, we find that OD refers to Organizational Development—a "catch-all" term, generally defined by the group with which we're consulting. HR generally believes it falls within their domain, but Strategic Development also claims it, as well as Corporate Governance, in some cases. I've even had consultations where Marketing, in its efforts to define the "thought processes," laid claim to OD.

In recent years, I've actually used it in seminars I've conducted, as well as in classes I've taught and consultations I've done, and have defined it as any interaction between the client and any of the client's departments which represent a human element interface. That takes care of most departments within a group and seems to satisfy most.

One area in which no one seems to disagree—it's a hot career choice.

Alan Guinn, Managing Director The Guinn Consultancy Group, Inc.