What Do You Know About Human Resources?

Yes, it did. The early development of the function can be traced back to at least two distinct movements. One element has its origins in the late 19th century, where organisations such as Cadburys at its Bournville factory recognised the importance of looking after the welfare of the workforce, and their families. The employment of women in factories in the United Kingdom during the First World War lead to the introduction of "Welfare Officers". Meanwhile, in the United States the concept of human resources developed as a reaction to the efficiency focus of Taylorism or "scientific management" in the early 1900s which was developed as a response to the demand for ever more efficient working practices within highly mechanised factories, such as those of the Ford Motor Company.

In the simplest terms, the objective of an organization's human resource management strategy is to maximize the return on investment from the organization's human capital and minimize financial risk. Human Resources seeks to achieve this by aligning the supply of skilled and qualified individuals, and the capabilities of the current workforce, with the ongoing and future business plans and requirements of the organization in order to maximise return on investment and seeks to secure the future survival and success of the entity. In ensuring such objectives are achieved, the human resource function purpose in this context is to implement the organisation's human resource requirements effectively but also pragmatically, taking account of legal, ethical and as far as is practical in a manner which retains the support and respect of the workforce.

At the organizational level, a successful Human Resources Development program will prepare the individual to undertake a higher level of work, “organized learning over a given period of time, to provide the possibility of performance change” (Nadler 1984). In these settings, Human Resources Development is the framework that focuses on the organizations competencies at the first stage, training, and then developing the employee, through education, to satisfy the organizations long-term needs and the individuals’ career goals and employee value to their present and future employers. Human Resources Development can be defined simply as developing the most important section of any business its human resource by, “attaining or upgrading the skills and attitudes of employees at all levels in order to maximise the effectiveness of the enterprise” (Kelly 2001)[3]. The people within an organization are its human resource. Human Resources Development from a business perspective is not entirely focused on the individual’s growth and development, “development occurs to enhance the organization's value, not solely for individual improvement. Individual education and development is a tool and a means to an end, not the end goal itself”.(Elwood F. Holton II, James W. Trott Jr)[6]. The broader concept of national and more strategic attention to the development of human resources is beginning to emerge as newly independent countries face strong competition for their skilled professionals and the accompanying brain-drain they experience.

Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who comprise the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations. Human resources is also the name of the function within an organization charged with the overall responsibility for implementing strategies and policies relating to the management of individuals (i.e. the human resources). This function title is often abbreviated to the initials 'HR'.