Personnel vs Line Management - Example

Title: Personnel Vs Line Management Student’s Name: Institutional Affiliation: Date submitted: Personnel Vs Line Management Management is the act of organizing people and systems with the aim of accomplishing desired objectives and goals more effectively and efficiently. This act comprises planning, controlling, staffing, organizing and directing people or entities towards goals achievement (Mejjia et al 2008). There are various areas where management is applied. These include personnel, finance, line, production, quality control and marketing among others. This paper sets to analyze personnel and line management with focus on the various differences that exists between the two. Personnel Management Personnel management is the act of acquiring, using and maintaining a workforce. The department of personnel management deals with the issues of employees and their relationship within an organization. These include organizing, planning, integration, compensation and maintenance of the human resources of an organization (management study guide 2009). The personnel manager is also a counselor, mediator and a spokesman for the employees. The roles of the personnel management as outlined by Datapole (2010) include: Planning. This involves setting of objectives, planning the human resource requirements, selection and recruitment of workers as well as their training. This also covers prediction of personnel needs, changing attitudes, values and behavior of workforce and their effects on the organization. Organization. This involves design of the structure of relationship in jobs by delegation of authority, accountability, communication and management of job positions as well as providing physical facilities. Organization establishes relationships between the employees for collective contribution towards the achievement of the goals of an organization. Directing. This involves leading, guiding, motivating and reorienting the jobs of the employees to ensure better performance and effective accomplishment of the goals of an organization. This is done through establishment of good industrial and human relations between employees. Controlling. This is the role under which personnel management checks, verifies, and carry out comparison between the actual and the plans with the aim of identifying and correcting any deviations. These are determined through auditing, surveys and interviews. Through control, the operations in an organization are adjusted to comply with plans and standards by applying corrective measures (Shetty 2010). Procurement. The personnel department in an organization is responsible for acquiring of apt quality and number of employees needed for the accomplishment of the functions and objectives of an organization. This encompasses recruitment and selection of personnel as well as their placement. Development. This process involves improving employees’ competence and skills through training, education and other programs. The aim is to instill effective reasoning process and improve workers ability for understanding and interpreting situations at work. Development should also focus on the personal growth of the employees. Compensation. Personnel management is also concerned with workers’ remuneration. In order to ensure their best contributions towards the realization of the objectives and goals of an organization, employees remunerations should be adequate and equitable (Mcvey 2006). He argues that employees are concerned not only with their salaries and wages, but also with those received by employees in the same level in similar organizations. He advices carefully set wage rules since the rules carry implications for transfer, promotions and seniority as well as other matters of importance to employees. Integration. This deals with the relationship between the employees and the organization. Proper integration ensures maximum output from the employees and secures accomplishment of the goals and objectives of an organization (Cosline 2010). She argues that proper integration between an organization and its workforce is a function of three factors- leadership, motivation and communication. In recent times, the means and ways of dealing with employees for greater productivity and performance has been revolutionized by the human relation exponents. Consequently, the personnel manager’s job has changed becoming more challenging and complicated. Maintenance. Apart from acquiring the employees, the personnel management is also concerned with ensuring continuation of abilities and attitudes that has already been established and improving the created conditions such as welfare and benefits programs and health safety. Human relations. In this context, this refers to collective relationship between employees and the management. Good relation should ensure understanding between the personnel and management and eradicate any disputes between them. This boosts the workers’ discipline and morale (Garner 2009). Personnel records. To an organization, employees are assets which like other assets need to be periodically evaluated and valued. Keeping records assists the personnel management department to determine the employees’ efficiency, seniority, salaries and assessing their valuation at the completion of each year. Emerging Trends in Personnel Management As more and more business organizations are going global, personnel management is experiencing swift changes in systems, philosophy and management cultures. Some of the trends observed recently are explained here. Introduction of quality management standards ISO 9004 and ISO 9001 of 2000 has shifted more focus on organizations becoming people centric. People centered issues such as training are now being addressed more by organizations (Hodges 2008). Human resource outsourcing is making traditional personnel management departments redundant. An international pioneer human resource BPO company, Exult, has already signed the Bank of America and BP Amoco and has plans to spread its tentacles to most Fortune 500 companies (Banerjee 2010). Increased global job mobility is making recruitment of competent personnel increasingly difficult. Consequently, organizations are forced to create an enabling culture and retention strategies for existing skilled employees. Good paying international organizations entice the employees of relatively small companies with better remuneration hence making employee retention by these small organizations a daunting task (Banerjee 2010). According to Hodges (2008), as companies go global, there arises a need for multiple skilled employees. Recruitment, selection and placement become even more complicated. Personnel managers find themselves working with people from deferent cultures all over the world. These have various needs and values and therefore adjustments have to be done to accommodate them. Barnerjee (2010) further explains the emerging trends in international human resource management. He stresses that international human resource management is placing more emphasis on a number of functions and responsibilities such as orientation, relocation and translation services in order to assist employees while adapting to a different and new environment away from their own country. The following are the special issues involved in international employees’ management; Employee selection calls for careful evaluation of the candidates’ personal characteristics. Development and training extends beyond orientation and information training. It includes field experiences and sensitivity training to aid the manager in understanding cultural differences in a better way. In order to balance the deviations between the host country and the home country evaluations, performance evaluations are combining the two sources of information from both countries for appraisal. The compensation systems are required to support general strategic intent of an organization and still need to be customized for local country conditions. Workers unions in different countries have different demands. Law establishes representation in many European countries with organizations typically negotiating agreements with unions at a national level. It is more likely that salaried workers and managers in Europe are unionized. Line Management Mitchell (2010) defines line management as administration of the activities contributing directly to products and services’ output. Examples of such a section could be a production line for a certain product or one concerned with marketing of a particular product. In every organization, the responsibility of running of the business falls on the line managers (Heerden 2009). When line managers are carrying out their duties, they encounter some aspects of personnel management that they have to deal with. According to Blair (2007), the line managers are best placed to decide on the needs of positions that directly report to them. They are best suited to undertake the responsibilities of recruitments and selections. They can also give employment agreements, determine the development and training needs, and manage the quality and performance of the employees. Based on the assessment of the quality and performance of the employees, the line mangers can review and determine benefits and remuneration of the employees. A daily close association of all these areas is required for coaching, mentorship and leadership for the employees to perform the assigned responsibilities and achieve organization’s objectives. In support of line managers to manage the human resource, Hahn (2010) gives the following arguments. Line managers are involved in setting of expectations and goals with the workers within their line. This involves what they are to deliver such as the responsibilities of the job, and how the targets are expected to be delivered i.e. the approach and behavior at work. He says that line managers are also involved in the area of carrying out performance appraisals as well as structuring personal development plans for the various employees. The line managers also take more staff coaching responsibilities within their line. Substantial relationship has been found to exist between effective coaching and guidance of the employees by the line managers and level of workers’ satisfaction, motivation and commitment (Klein 2010). It may appear as if the roles of personnel managers and line managers can complement each other as regard to addressing employees’ issues. This is because both managers seem to have some level of effects and influence on the workforce matters. However, the role of the personnel management department can not be underestimated nor can it be complemented by line management. There exist several differences between the two. Differences between Personnel and Line Management According to Nehles (2006), line managers find themselves in the position responsible for operational output and at the same time the effective performance of their teams. In order to realize the best performance, these managers are expected to perform human resource activities by applying human resource practices. However, the line managers don’t always see the importance of using these practices in achieving the goals of the organization. They are in fact reluctant in taking these human resource roles. They have no spare time to be spent on these additional responsibilities. Most have do not have sufficient competencies to use human resource practices. Sometimes they are either not properly supported by the human resource managers or are not given clear procedures and policies to perform the additional personnel management tasks. Alderman (2010) explains that line managers need time in order to successfully implement personnel management. Personnel management tasks are mostly devolved to the line managers without reducing the other duties that they have been assigned. Therefore these managers are not able to allocate sufficient time to personnel management. This is more so when there are short-term operational pressures in a line. For successful personnel management implementation by line managers, there for competences related to human resource management such legal requirements as well as agreed practices. Training can be used to develop these competences in human resource practices. However, evidence supports that many organizations do not provide the necessary formal human resource management training to line managers (Wolfgang 2004). A need exist for the personnel managers to give support to line managers on personnel management implementation. In ability or unwillingness on the side of human resource specialists to give clear proactive support to line managers leaves the later without sufficient skills and encouragement for effective management of the operational workforce. Reiling (2008) is of the opinion that some personnel managers are unable to provide the support needed by the line managers since they are reluctant to leave their human resource responsibilities and take on new organizational roles in supporting the line managers. Line managers lack a clear overall personnel management policy as well as the accompanying procedure that coordinate the practices to be used by these managers and how these practices are to be used at the operational level. These are necessary in eliminating potential bias and individual judgment in the interpretation of human resource management practices. It is very crucial to define how personnel management practices are to be performed in practice. In the absence of the knowledge of how to apply personnel management practices, the line managers adjust the practices according to their own idiosyncratic understanding (Nehles 2006). Turner (2010) cites lack of desire to carry out personnel management duties among line managers as one of their shortcomings. Their willingness to perform these responsibilities is a precondition to effective human resources management implementation. While some line managers could be enthusiastic about the human resource management responsibilities for thee workforce who they supervise, many of them are not. This low desire has arguably resulted from either lack of institutional or personal incentives. Institutional incentives may persuade line managers to take human resource management with seriousness. This incentives can be through making human management responsibilities a part of performance appraisals of the line managers or their job description or part of the business policy. Summary Management organizes people and systems and by so doing ensures effective and efficient realization of goals and objectives of organizations. There are various areas of businesses that enlist the service of managers such as finance, human resource and marketing. Traditionally, the responsibilities of acquiring, developing and maintaining the employees fall under personnel management departments. The roles of these departments include setting of objectives, planning the human resource requirements, selection and recruitment of workers as well as their training. These departments are also responsible for controlling, development, integration as well as remuneration of the workforce. Emerging trends in personnel management that are affecting the practice include new ISO standards, globalization of businesses, human resource outsourcing and increased global job mobility. Lately, there have been arguments on devolution of personnel management responsibilities from the traditional personnel management departments to line management departments which are traditionally involved in administrating activities that directly contribute to production of products or services. This is because line managers work hand in hand with the employees and therefore are supposedly best suited to address their issues. However various limitations on the part of the line managers may hinder them from effectively managing the human resource of an organization. The limitations include lack of competencies, willingness and support. Conclusion Even though line managers are able to manage the work force to a certain extent, the personnel management department is best suited to carry out this task in most organizations. This will remain so until the line managers are willing and equipped with the relevant skills for this responsibility. References Klein, Andy G 2010, Front line management should be empowered to make decisions, viewed 11 December, 2010, Armstrong Michael, 2006, A handbook of human resource management practice 10th ed., Kogan Page, London. 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