What Is Human Resource Management? What Does It Involve and What Skills Does It Require?

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Managing human resources effectively is a difficult problem for businesses large and small. It is not just a matter of managing headcount — it also involves managing the quality of the workforce, compensation and benefits, attendance management, and more. Especially in the era of the 4.0 technology revolution, HR management processes need to be more optimized and simplified than ever to save costs, time, and resources for the business.

The article below gives you an overview of employee management in the digital age, along with a curated list of the top 10 online HR management software solutions every business should know about.

What is human resource management?

Human resource management (HRM) is the management of an organization's or business's workforce. Within a company, resource factors such as investment capital, facilities, and technology can all be purchased, learned, and copied — but people cannot. For this reason, human resource management is considered essential to the survival and growth of any business.

Every organization needs an employee management function. Any department or management level with staff under it must have an HR management process. It is also one of the factors that shape company culture and determine business success.

What does human resource management involve?

So what does HR management actually do? To build a strong organization and keep the company running effectively, the HR department needs to focus on optimizing employee productivity and handling all people-related issues that arise.

In essence, the HR department is responsible for 7 core activities:

Recruitment

• Writing job descriptions (JD: Job description; JS: Job specification)

• Sourcing candidates

• Screening and selection

Salary, bonus, and benefits management

• HR and payroll planning: reviewing salary grades; managing attendance and leave; controlling and managing payroll calculation and payment.

• Workforce and social insurance management: declaring social insurance; tracking and handling maternity, sick leave, workplace accident, and retirement policies, etc.; finalizing and returning insurance books to departing employees.

Labor relations management

• Updating employee records in the company system; signing, storing, and managing labor contracts.

Labor law compliance

• Monitoring and ensuring the implementation of internal rules, regulations, and administrative documents.

Ensuring a good working environment for employees

• Receiving and handling feedback about the company, its policies, and the working environment.

Employee training

• Onboarding new employees

• Planning regular training

• Evaluating and improving the training process

Employee evaluation

• Building evaluation processes and criteria for employees

• Collecting employee evaluations

• Approving decisions on promotion, rewards, and disciplinary action

>>>> See also: 15+ Standard criteria for evaluating employees in HR management

What skills does HR management require?

HR management is not simply administrative or organizational work — it is fundamentally about managing people. Effective human resource management requires not only experience, analytical, organizational, and teamwork abilities, but also life experience, flexibility in handling situations, and psychological insight. Whatever the field or industry, every manager needs to continuously hone the following skills:

Professional skills

• Workforce planning and structuring: forecasting staffing needs; building recruitment processes and criteria; planning recruitment and employee training.

• Building HR management regulations: attendance rules; timekeeping; approving leave requests.

• Building employee evaluation processes and criteria: organizing appraisal cycles; collecting and consolidating evaluations; deciding on promotions, rewards, and penalties.

• Labor law compliance: managing records and contracts; handling administrative paperwork.

• Risk contingency in employee management: workforce fluctuations; internal conflicts; recruitment and training costs; legal risks in hiring, training, and terminating employees.

Communication and teamwork skills

The HR profession demands strong communication and teamwork skills. Managers must be perceptive and tactful in how they deal with others, understand each person's personality and work, always be ready to help, know how to listen, and convey messages effectively to other employees across the company.

Negotiation and persuasion skills

Alongside communication, negotiation and persuasion are vitally important skills every HR manager must develop. They are indispensable for resolving internal conflicts and maintaining a healthy, friendly working environment. They are also very useful in recruitment, when HR negotiates salary and position with candidates.

Psychological and emotional insight

Reading people is not an easy skill to acquire. If you have it, it is not only an advantage when interviewing and screening candidates, but also helps HR managers easily approach and understand employees' thoughts and aspirations. This, in turn, helps retain employees and reduce job-hopping.

Situational problem-solving skills

In the course of their work, HR teams must resolve many conflicts between employees as well as tensions between employees and the company. HR needs to find ways to solve these difficult problems without offending either side. Therefore, HR professionals need to handle situations flexibly, perceptively, and objectively.

Remote HR management skills

As technology advances, remote working is becoming more common. Space limitations at the workplace, office rental costs, and above all the pandemic situation have also driven the shift toward employees working from home. In this context, HR management styles need to be renewed to supervise employees more effectively. Specifically, HR must know how to manage people remotely through online management software and keep in regular contact to track performance and stay up to date on each employee's situation.

Top 10 HR management software for businesses

HR management is always a hard problem for businesses, because the workforce is a factor that constantly changes — in quality or in scale, however slightly. Besides equipping themselves with skills, HR teams also need a comprehensive solution to manage human resources while saving time and money. The optimal solution chosen by many businesses is online HR management software.

Today there are many free and paid online HR management solutions. However, choosing good software with strong information security is not easy. To select the right HR management software for your business, consult the following Top 10 HR management software list:

Odoo ERP

Odoo is an open-source ERP software used by many businesses. Simply put, ERP is a suite of software solutions that manage a company's overall operations and connect its business processes to run the organization, with the goal of making maximum use of the company's resources.

As an open-source solution, Odoo ERP not only ships with default modules such as HRM, CRM, POS, and Sales, but also lets you easily customize and develop new applications to serve your business needs.

With Odoo ERP, businesses have many options for carrying out in-depth HR operations through built-in modules such as Employees (employee management), Recruitment (hiring management), and Appraisals (employee evaluation management). These applications let the business fully manage information about employees and departments, updating it into the system and making storage and information retrieval extremely easy and convenient.

Odoo ERP's advantages include:

• High information security with flexible permission management.

• A friendly, easy-to-use interface.

• Easy customization, suitable for every business.

• Free use of the HR management software (permanently free for 1 application, plus a 15-day free trial for 2 or more applications), with reasonable deployment costs.

>>>> See also: Employee Management with Odoo: Easy, Effective, Professional

BerniePortal

BerniePortal is a software solution whose features and pricing suit businesses from small and medium-sized up to large enterprises. In the Core HR Software category, BerniePortal is highly rated by both users and experts.

BerniePortal streamlines HR professionals' management workflows for tracking candidates, onboarding new employees, running payroll, managing benefits, and other common HR functions.

SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors is a cloud-based HR management solution built on the SaaS (software-as-a-service) model. It is designed with outstanding strengths to improve human capital management and optimize real-time analytical reports, helping businesses make better business decisions. SAP SuccessFactors supports most HR operations, including record management, recruitment, training management, payroll, performance, and benefits management, as well as goal and performance management.

Zoho People

Zoho People is a simple platform that helps users manage employee activities, including record management, attendance, and leave. This HR management software is designed to be used out of the box, without extensive customization.

In addition, through the software, employees can access the information they need via a self-service portal. The developer also offers a 15-day free trial if you want to test the software's features before deciding whether to subscribe.

Gusto

Although the software was mainly built for payroll management, Gusto HR also provides fairly effective human resource management tools for businesses. It integrates essential HR functions such as employee onboarding and training, time tracking, and attendance management, and lets businesses create an org chart and employee handbook for comprehensive management — simplifying workflows and tightly connecting team members.

Apptivo

One of the top free employee management software solutions of 2019, Apptivo is an HR management solution for businesses of every size. Developed as cloud software, Apptivo offers many practical features such as recruitment management, attendance and leave tracking, while making it easy for staff across departments to communicate with one another.

Apptivo has no user limits, but its data storage is limited: 500MB for free accounts and 3–5GB for upgraded accounts. The free version is also limited in that there is no app or direct mobile access — a drawback that makes remote HR management difficult for administrators.

BambooHR

BambooHR is an online human resource management software for small and medium-sized businesses. It helps users easily transition from spreadsheets to a human resource information system (HRIS) to meet most of the company's business needs.

HR professionals can use the solution's HRIS features and applicant tracking system (ATS) to manage employees with ease. The software also gives HR managers deep analytics on strategic factors such as employee retention and improving sales.

In addition, BambooHR supports collecting, storing, and displaying all employee information in a single database. It also lets HR managers easily track job applications, approve leave requests, evaluate performance, and more.

Zenefits

Zenefits is software designed to help small and medium-sized businesses with payroll, benefits management, and other HR-related processes. As a payroll platform, Zenefits is also highly systematic in managing all kinds of benefits.

Zenefits links everything that needs managing together in one system: timesheets, shift schedules, health benefits, payroll changes, taxes, and deductions. It also lets employees track their own working time on mobile devices, including clock-in/clock-out hours, overtime, sick leave, and vacation.

OOC digiiHR

OOC digiiHR is a multi-functional integrated software with automated reporting, intelligent management, a minimalist design, and a high degree of customization. Based on industry databases and business models, companies can even design their own management systems with OOC digiiHR.

OOC includes HR functions such as organizational structure, employee information, competency management, KPIs, work, and compensation. Notably, OOC digiiHR supports businesses in building KPI evaluation systems for their departments. On that basis, the HR team can plan strategies to improve workflows and train employees systematically and effectively.

Cezanne HR

Cezanne HR is an excellent solution that saves your business working time. The software lets you manage administrative files and analyze and report data through detailed charts and tables. All HR activities, including leave requests, are handled in a flash through Cezanne HR.

Cezanne HR's standout features include: automatic schedule reminders; performance tracking; and management of attendance, payroll, bonuses, and insurance processes.

Summary

As society develops, businesses are paying more and more attention to managing people. Along with technological advances, HR management in the 4.0 era has become much easier thanks to HRM software that automates and simplifies the processes and operations of human resource management.

We hope this article has given you an overview of employee management as well as the essential information about today's best human resource software. Don't forget to leave a comment below if you have any questions!

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