Human Resource Management: Core Functions and Practices

Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) is a term used by the federal government to refer to employment practices that ensure nondiscrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, national origin, physical or mental ability, medical condition, ancestry, or age. The standard behind EEO is that everyone should have the same access to opportunities. The purpose of affirmative action programs is to encourage fairness and address the effects of past discrimination in employment by supporting targeted outreach efforts to attract underutilized minorities and women (Guide to Managing Human Resources, 2008).

Another purpose of affirmative action is to ensure that equal employment opportunity requirements are met — all federal contractors must take affirmative action to prevent discrimination in employment practices and to report on their progress. Affirmative action requires contractors to employ affirmative action plans to guarantee equal employment opportunity for underutilized minorities and women, people with disabilities, and special disabled veterans. Supervisors, managers, and administrators are responsible for helping their organizations fulfill equal opportunity obligations. This is accomplished by making efforts toward achieving affirmative action goals and maintaining a workplace that is free of bias and harassment. The goal is to build and retain a diverse workforce composed of the best-qualified people (Guide to Managing Human Resources, 2008).

Equal Employment Opportunity means that a supervisor must: provide equal access to all available jobs, training, and promotional opportunities; provide similar benefits and services to everyone; apply all policies and practices consistently to applicants and staff; and not differentiate among applicants or employees on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, physical or mental disability, medical condition, ancestry, marital status, or age (Guide to Managing Human Resources, 2008).

Staffing: Planning, Recruitment, and Selection

Determining staffing needs is an ongoing process, as employees resign or retire. During this phase, planning of present and future staffing needs is addressed. This function is called Human Resource Planning. The next step is job analysis — identifying human resource needs. The job analysis is an outline of the responsibilities or tasks that an employee will be expected to perform. It consists of two parts: a job description and a job specification. The job description sets out the employee's duties, tasks, and responsibilities, while the job specification lists the key qualifications needed to perform a particular job in terms of education, skills, and experience (Human Resources: Identify Staffing Needs, Recruitment and Selection, 2010).

Recruitment is the process of attracting qualified job applicants through advertisements, employment agencies, or word of mouth. Common advertising methods include employment sections of newspapers and, increasingly, online recruitment websites. Candidates for a new position can come from outside the organization through external recruiting, or from within by considering existing employees for promotion or a change of duties (Human Resources: Identify Staffing Needs, Recruitment and Selection, 2010).

Human Resource Development and Training

Employee selection is often thought of as a screening or filtering process. Interviews, tests, physical examinations, and reference checks are all elements of this process. The objective of selection is to identify the most appropriate person for the position, not simply the most credentialed. Employee selection can be costly in terms of time, effort, screening, and advertising. An employee who leaves a business shortly after being hired costs the business a significant amount of money. Conversely, it can be even more expensive if the wrong person is employed and refuses to resign voluntarily (Human Resources: Identify Staffing Needs, Recruitment and Selection, 2010).

Human Resource Development (HRD) is the framework established to help employees increase their personal and organizational skills, knowledge, and abilities. HRD encompasses employee training, career development, performance management, coaching, mentoring, succession planning, key employee identification, tuition assistance, and organizational development. The focus of all aspects of HRD is the development of the most capable workforce possible, so that the organization and individual employees can achieve their goals in service to customers. Organizations often provide many opportunities for employee development, both inside and outside the workplace. HRD can be formal — such as classroom training, a college course, or a planned organizational change initiative — or informal, such as coaching by a manager (Heathfield, 2010).