31 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION

Dr. Gurmanjit Kaur

epgp books

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

1.      Introduction

 

2.      Learning outcomes

 

3.      What constitutes human resource manage ment?

 

4.      Human resource management in education

 

5.      Objectives of human resource manage ment

 

6.      Role of human resource manage ment in Education

 

7.      Functions of  human resource management in Education

 

8.      Need for human resource manage ment

 

9.      How to manage human resource at four levels

 

 

1. INTRODUCTION 

Human resource management is the process that deals with utilizing people to perform duties and function in an organization or an institution. Human resource management in education is a set of practices and methods of integrating and maintaining the teaching and other staff in the institution or school so that the institution or school can achieve their purpose as well as meet the goals for which they were established. Human resource management is the planning, organising, directing and controlling of the procurement, development, compensation, integration, maintenance, and separation of human resources to the end that individual, organisational and social objectives are accomplished. Human resource management in education essentially is concerned with three major issues: assessing the need of staff, satisfying the need of staff and maintaining and improving the staff services. Human resource management has some specific roles to play like strategic roles and operational ones.

 

2. LEARNING OUTCOMES

After going through this topic, you will be able to:

 

●     Tell the meaning of human resource management

 

●     Identify the constituents of human resource management

 

●     Enlist the objectives of human resource management

 

●     Describe the role of human resource management in education

 

●     Analyse  the functions of human resource management

 

●     Interpret the challenges of human resource management

 

●     Rationalise the need of human resource management in education

 

●     Sensitize about the need of human resource management at different levels

 

3.  WHAT CONSTITUTES HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT?

Human resource management consists of following aspects shown through Figure 1:

 

4. HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION

Human resource refers to the personnel, staff or workers in an organization. Management means the methods by which the leader utilizes material and human resources to achieve predetermined organizational or educational institution goals. Thus, human resource management is the process that deals with utilizing people to perform duties and function in an organization or institution. Human resource management deals with the establishment of procedures for the employment and payment of workers or staff. It is the arrangement of conditions which make possible greater self-direction by staff in the performance of their duties. It is, therefore, an important function in the general context of all administrative responsibility of managing staff and consists of following aspects as depicted by Figure 2:

Figure 2: Aspects of human resource management

 

Human resource management in education is a set of practices and methods of integrating and maintaining the teaching and other staff in the institution or school so that the institution or school can achieve its purpose as well as meet the goals for which they were established. It is the motivation and coordination of the activities and efforts of teachers and other employees in school in order to obtain maximum output from them and consequently achieve the goals of education optimally. In other words human resource management is the process of motivating workers in the organization so as to obtain maximum output from them.

 

In simple words, HRM is a process of making the efficient and effective use of human resources in an educational institution so that the set goals of education are achieved.

 

5. OBJECTIVES

The primary objective of HRM is to ensure the availability of right people for right jobs so as the educational goals of an educational organization are achieved effectively.

 

This primary objective can further be divided into the following sub-objectives:

  1. To help the educational organization to attain its goals effectively and efficiently by providing competent and motivated teachers.
  2. To utilize the efficiency of each teacher available in school effectively.
  3. To increase the job satisfaction of each employee and teacher to the level of self-actualisation.
  4. To develop and maintain the quality of work life (QWL) which makes employment in the educational organization a desirable personal and social situation.
  5. To help maintain ethical behaviour and policies inside and outside the educational organisation.
  6. To establish and maintain cordial relations among employees and management.
  7. To reconcile each individual teacher/ employee or group of teacher/employee with organizational goals.

    The educational system at every level depends heavily on the human resources for execution of its programme. It is the teacher who ultimately interprets and implements policy as represented in the school curriculum, which is designed to actualize educational goals. Maintaining and improving educational standards is only possible through teachers. Teachers therefore are the most indispensable entity in the school. They are the greatest aid to learning. On the one hand the teachers are the critical resources for effective implementation and realization of the educational policies and objectives at the practical level of classroom and on the other hand they could be identified as mentors to improve the entire institutional system.

 

It should be noted that the major premise of human resources management in education is that the end results of the educative process will be determined by the effectiveness of the teachers who facilitate learning for self-actualization and national development. Human resource management in education essentially is concerned with three major issues namely:

  1.  Assessing the need for staff: The school needs to assess areas of need and recruit the staff to exhibit capable governance and leadership at various levels, both of which will promote student performance and school effectiveness. Every institute needs to develop assessment tool to; identify available services and gaps in it and assess the level of knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of its employees/teachers. The assessment will help a school or consortia of schools collect information about existing policies, prevention and intervention; student’s knowledge and perceptions of abuse; and resources and service available to students in schools and in the community. This information will assist the school or consortium in identifying strengths, gaps in resources and services, and highlight successes in order to leverage resources to achieve desired outcomes.
  2. Satisfying the need for staff: There is need to identify internal factors that motivates the behaviour of an individual. Physiological needs include things such as food, water, shelter and clothing, all of which can be satisfied with a reliable income. Disbursing competitive financial compensation will satisfy employees’ physiological needs. Organisation must provide comprehensive benefits to your employees to satisfy their safety needs. Safety needs include physical health, job security and protection for private property. Let your words and actions ensure them well that they have job security to reinforce their safety needs. Create a welcoming company culture based on mutual respect to satisfy employees’ need for belonging. Need for belonging includes need for friendship, social integration, family and romantic relationships. Giving employees the freedom to socialize can be a double-edged sword; while some employees may become loyal due to their workplace relationships, others may become dissatisfied if they do not fit into social circles. Reward high performers publicly and provide employees with personally rewarding challenges to satisfy their esteem needs. Esteem needs include respect from others, a sense of achievement and confidence in one’s abilities. Set the tone in your organization by speaking personally with as many of your employees as possible. Encourage employees and recognize rising stars in your company for their outstanding achievements. Institute should organise comprehensive employee development programs and provide ample opportunity for career growth in your company to satisfy employees’ self-actualization needs.
  3. Maintaining and improving the staff services: These ideas are intended only to illustrate some of the measures service organizations may take. In practice there is often overlap between actions and practices in each category and a number of other possibilities may be considered. Achieving consistency of human effort is an important goal of many service organizations. Clearly it is important for service organizations to establish set procedures for some of their services to ensure they are performed in a consistent way. This should be a major feature of the campaign and ranges from a supervisor saying “well done”, to a special Customer Service Awards Scheme. Therefore we have to establish a policy among all section heads towards the recognition of individual performance. A method of reward scheme, possibly in the form of free tickets, should be considered, with a committee appointed to consider nominations.

6. ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION

The goals of human resource management in education are to enhance the development of the employees or teachers so that they can contribute to goal achievement. Human resource management has some specific roles to play like strategic roles and operational roles.

 

Strategic Role: Operational Human Resource management professionals typically handle the day-to-day, tactical operations. Human resources are critical for effective educational functioning. Human resources were once relegated to second-class status in business, but its importance has grown dramatically in the last two decade. Again, its new importance stem from adequately recruited, selected , supervised, inducted and adequately rewarded, provided for, properly developed, employee appraised and promoted on the job. They will be committed to the job, remain dedicated and productive in the education system. It also represents a significant investment of the educational efforts. If managed well, human resources can be a source of competitive strength for the education. Strategically, human resources must be viewed in the same context as the financial, technological and other resources that are managed in an organization.

 

Ope rational Role: The strategic HR management staff performs a planning role that focuses on the long-term interests of the education. Operational HR functions for relations of employee and employer and encompasses maintaining policies and records, ensuring compliance to local, state and national regulations, and managing disciplinary disputes and complaints. Operational HR tasks are associated with recruiting and training of employees. No doubt, the institutions need both functions to ensure that they have the right staff, with the right skills and knowledge, at the right time to complete work for the quality in education. This allows the educational institutions to achieve their goals and objectives. Human resources management is interested in compliance with equal employment opportunities and observation of laws in educational sector; like employees or teachers must be oriented to the educational institutions, supervisors must be trained, safety problems must be resolved; wages and salaries must be administered. A wide range of activities typically associated with the day-to-day management of people as provided by laws and regulations must be performed efficiently. It is this collection of activities that has often been referred to as the personnel function, and the newer strategic focus of human resource management that has not been eliminated. In summary, it is difficult to produce one general interpretation of what human resource management means today.

 

7.  FUNCTIONS OF HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION

Human resource management works in various areas of staff development .It takes care of all the concerns of staff and its major functions could be studied under following headings as:

 

i. Staff maintenance: In Educational organizations teachers/ employee should be encouraged to participate in planning and decision making in the school. They should be encouraged by recognizing the staff as human beings with feelings, interest, emotions and treating them as such with fairness and respect.

 

ii. Staff Development: This is the process of appraising staff performances and identifying their key skills and competence that need development or training to improve their skills for better performance. It involves providing development programme and training courses that are suitable for the programme. The success of educational organization hinges on the strength and quality of its staff members. There is need to change, improve and grow in competence through training. This can be done through in-service training, conference, workshop and seminars.

 

iii. Procurement of Staff: Human resource management initiates with the process of staff maintenance This concerns for making the work environment conducive for workers, employing pertinent practices like; promotion and transfer, motivation, staff safety, security and health services. It is pertinent that educational establishments have sound policies in respect of transfer and promotion of staff to ensure that justice and fairness prevail in dealing. As work to be performed in the school is important, the mood of the man to perform the job is equally important. For maximum and productive goal attainment, the head of educational organization must ensure the comfort and happiness of the teachers/ employee. This can be done through prompt payment of salaries , and providing a safe and healthy working environment.

 

iv. Staff Relations: There must be a good communication network in the institute to enable teachers/employee to be constantly informed of the progress being made in the recruitment and selection. This will ensure that educational institutions get the best personnel to interpret and implement the curriculum programmes. Staffing of schools is a job performed by the ministry of education through its agencies in the federal and state government. Procurement of staff in education encompasses recruiting people with appropriate skills, abilities, knowledge and experience to fill the vacant teaching posts in schools.

 

v. Job Performance Rewards: This involves the design and administration of rewards for jobs performed. It is very important that management, ministry of education and its agencies take the issue of reward system very seriously. Staff performance would increase substantially if they are adequately compensated according to the quality and quantity of work done.

 

8.  NEED FOR HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Human resources management is the backbone of every organization. The triumph of every education organization depends upon the worth of persons it employs.

 

Since an organisation is a body of people, their development, acquisition of skills, motivation for higher levels of attainments, as well as ensuring their level of commitment are all significant activities. These activities fall in the domain of HRM. Human Resource Management is responsible for maintaining good human relations in the organisation. It is also concerned with development of individuals and achieving integration of goals of the organisation and those of the individuals. We often observe that management of human resource occupies a central sub system of an organization. Being the central sub system, human resource management interacts closely and continuously with all other subsystems. Human resource management helps in spotting the exact individual for the precise job. Suitability for the job and quality of work go hand in hand in determining the quality of any work force.

 

  1. Human Resource Management helps in creating better rapport between the management and the subordinates. It helps subordinates to realize individual and organizational goals.
  2. Since employees are constantly trained, they are ready to meet the job requirements. The institution is also able to identify potential employees who can be promoted in the future for the top level jobs. Thus one of the advantages of HRM is preparing people for the future.
  3. If proper recruitment and selection methods are followed, the institution will be able to select the right people for the right job. When this happens the number of people leaving the education organization will be reduced as they will be satisfied with their job leading to decrease in staff turnover.
  4. Due to proper Human Resource policies, employees are trained well and this makes them ready for future promotions. Their talent can be utilized not only in the educational organization in which they are currently working but also in other institutions.
  5. Political philosophy has undergone change all over the world. The new approach is to develop human resource properly for ensuring its better use.

The technological changes have necessitated the use of sophisticated machines.

 

9.  HOW TO MANAGE HUMAN RESOURCES AT FOUR LEVELS National Level:

a) To create conducive conditions for development of nation.

b) To provide suitable means for exploitation and utilization of a nation’s natural, physical and financial resources required for efficient and committed manpower.

c) To facilitate human resource in generating high standard of living by inculcating such skill, attitudes and values which are required for speeding up the process of economic and educational growth.

 

Organizational Level:

Human Resource Management (HRM) is a relatively new approach to manage people in any organisation. People are considered the key resource in this approach. It is concerned with the people dimension in management of an all other sub-system of an organization. The functional ability and efficiency of people in all subsystems of an organization heavily rely on the policies, programmes and practices of the HRM.

 

Professional level:

Effective management of human resource will help to improve the quality of work life. It will promote teamwork among employees by providing a healthy working environment. It can contribute for professional growth in the following ways:

 

a)      Providing maximum opportunities for personal development of each employee.

b)     Maintaining healthy relationships among individuals, and different work groups.

c)  Allocating work properly.

 

Social Level:

Sound human resource management will have a great significance for the society. It can help to enhance the dignity of labor in the following ways:

 

a)  Providing suitable employment that provides social and psychological satisfaction to people.

b)  Maintaining a balance between the jobs available and the jobseekers in terms of numbers, qualifications, needs and aptitudes.

c) Eliminating waste of human resources through conservation of physical and mental health.

 

SUMMARY

Human Resource Management is the qualitative improvement of human beings who are considered the most valuable assets of an organization – the sources, resources and end – users of all products and services. It is a scientific process of continuously enabling the employees to improve and update their present and future expected roles. So that goals of the organization are achieved in cost effective manner as well as needs of the employees and teachers are also met to an adequate extent.

 

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References

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  • Gupta, C.B. (2002). Human Resource Management. New Delhi: Sultan Chand & Sons