Contents

• Introduction 2
• Personnel Management- PM 3
• Human Resource Management- HRM 4
• How HRM is different from PM? 5
• Conclusion 7
• References 9

Description

Personnel management has existed since the time enterprises have existed. Personnel management in its simplistic form takes care of the needs of employees such as wages, working hours, working conditions and any disputes of workers. A couple of decades ago personnel management was no more than the management of employees or workers without any strategic attributes attached to the work. It was seen more as an administrative task than as an important strategic activity of the organization. However, perceptions of the importance of personnel in the organization and their management started changing in the past of couple of decades or so. Organizations increasing started viewing manpower as an important organizational resource. Companies even started realizing the fact that they can have an edge in the market against competitors, if they had efficient and skilled manpower. Thus the focus from mere management of the personnel started shifting to managing the resource that is the workforce. When the perception becomes the management of a resource, then organizations start honing the skills, nourishing, acquiring, strengthening and retaining the resource. Thus there has been a paradigm shift in the way organizations view workforce in the recent past. This essay tries to define personnel management and human resource management. The essay also discusses the differences between the two and as to how human resource management differs from traditional personnel management.