The History of evaluation and growth of Personnel management in India is not very old. This article will explain the flows, up and down how Personnel management or Human resource management has been achieved the valuable status in todays business or industrial environment.
Evaluation of Personnel Management in India
In 1931 it was the Royal Commission on labour law which recommended the appointment of Labour officer to deal with the recruitment of labour and to settle their grievance. The next landmark was reached in 1948 when under the Factories Act rules lying down the appointment, duties and qualification of a new Statutory officer in industry called the Welfare Officer were framed. The following decade saw the emergence of yet another functionary namely the personnel Officer. These three types of officer operating simultaneously in our industrial organization. As a result the labour welfare, industrail relations and personnel administration which together form the new profession of Personnel Management.
Growth of Personnel Management in India
In recent year due to the introduction of labour court for the settlement of industrial disputes and grievance the duties in the area of welfare and industrial relation has been decreased. As a result, welfare officer is fast yielding place to the personnel officer in many industrial establishment. in some organization where there are more than one officer with demarcated functions of personnel, industrial relations and labour welfare the trend towards relegating welfare functions to a junior officer with a senior status of personnel officer.
Despite the recent increase in his status as a labour officer and a welfare officer, the personnel officer on the Indian scene continues to perform the multipurpose role. He is found handing jobs of all kinds from personnel to anything but personnel and from pervasive to most superficial.
Status of Personnel Officer
It is due to the diversity and elasticity of the role personnel officer got several other tittle like ‘buffer zone‘ between labour and management, ‘third force‘ in industry, ‘non aligned professional‘, social worker‘ in the industrial setting and above all ‘staff adviser‘ in the organization and ‘executive‘ in the personnel and welfare spheres.
Reason behind the slow Growth of Personnel Management in India
Factor which have impeded the growth and progress of personnel Management function in India can be summarized as follows:
- Statutory officer or personnel officer have not won the support of line management in the organization in its initial phase of introducing personnel management.
- A large number of individual relations laws have resulted in a legalistic approach to labour relation that made personnel executive depends on lawyers.
- The job of personnel officer is still considered by some employers as a fire-fighting function only to head off union trouble.
- Due to lake of training about their specific duty that need to perform by personnel executive, they often cannot evaluate their success or growth that results in self demotivation.
- The human relation approach to personnel management has not taken a firm foothold in our country. The reasons for this lie in our socio- cultural consideration as described below:
- Highly Authoritarian Culture: We have a highly authoritarian culture which militates against participation and free communication- the two core ideas of Human relation.
- Abundance of Cheap Labour: Labours in western countries is scarce and costly. As such there can be no arbitrary dismissal or layoff. Good human relations are necessary for the industry’s survival in west. But this in not happening in India due to plenty of human needs.
- Technological Backwardness: Technological progress in western countries has raised the standard of living of their worker. But in India workers are hardly able to manage their basic need with a low paying and low job security. However in 2021 we cannot agree completely in this thought. But their is still have scope for technological development in our industrial system.
Suggestion to vitalize Personnel Management in India
- Organization structure should be re-designed as to promote line staff mutuality and interdependence.
- The limitation of present focus on the mere legal and welfare roles of personnel management should be realized and effort made to replace these conventional role by more comprehensive role boundaries.
- Formal training should be imparted to personnel managers in those areas that essentially related to behavioral sciences such as selection, performance evaluation, group dynamics, counselling etc.
- Personnel manager should be flexible to adjust with multitasking instead of keeping his roles limited to one specific job and adopt new ideas pertaining to his task.
Transformation of Personnel Management to Human Resource Management
We have seen a drastic change in the process of personnel management from 1931 to 2022. The scope of personnel management is now not only limited to factories. In every organization whether it may be small or big personnel management is a important part of it. But the the concept and name has changed to Human Resource Management from Personnel Management. Human Resource Management is associated with starting from recruitment, selection, placement, induction, training, appraisal, transfer, promotion, compensation management, payroll management, training and development, compliance management, managing employees life cycle etc. In simple word we can say that Human Resource Management or Personnel Management can be considered as the nerves of Organisational body that facilitate to the smooth running of the business entity as a whole.
The evaluation and growth of personnel management in India took almost a decade to get its present scenario. It is still growing due to technological development and advancement as well as behavioral change of the human being in the organization.
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